Alteryx Server Ideas

Please keep in mind that this is a suggestion from a container novice! 🙂

However, our situation is such that our release upgrade deployments are taking significant time to install, test and sign-off from DEV through PROD for the four main life-cycles involved in our server environment. Even if we script the deployment to save time, there's still manual configuration needed to confirm the new version works in the next server environment.

Similar to how Promote can deploy from DEV through PROD using images/containers, my suggestion is to package the Server components into images/containers that can be similarly deployed through the life-cycles. While the container with mongoDB doesn't need to move to the next life-cycle, the containers with the web server, load balancer, and engine nodes could move with the click of a button. And if needed, reverted to prior version with similar ease.

I forgot to ask about this idea at the UX lab during Inspire, but would be very happy to hear if it's already in the pipeline!

Thank you for your consideration!

Hello,

I think there should be option to test save data connection during setup and after. Perfectly, if there was possibility to schedule connectivity check, however, just adding option to test it manually will be the step forward.

Best,

Piotr

Hello,

Current Data Connections options are limited to db connections: MSSQL, Oracle and Others.

In my opinion, it should be expanded by at least:

- FTP/SFTP addresses

- URLs to webservices or resources

- Cloud resources like AWS S3

The server should manage resources as much as possible

Best,

Piotr

Hello,

I've used a standard configuration to set up an Alteyx server. The gallery is available at https://alteryx.samplecompany.com/gallery

I'd would be really helpful if you enable to create a landing page at https://alteryx.samplecompany.com/ and add a possibility to host add extra pages. The easiest way to do this is to add an option to the Alteryx Server configuration wizard and read the pages from Alteryx workspace location.

Additionally, such landing page should have redirection from HTTP to HTTPs.

Best,

Piotr

Hello,

I can't find an option in Alteryx Server wizard to enable redirection from http to https. Alteryx Service occupies both ports so I can't (and I don't want) to deploy a redirection on port 80. Such feature would be really helpful if it comes out of the box.

Best,

Piotr

I would like to have the ability to configure my company's Gallery to display more than five applications/workflows to a page.  This is a waste of screen space and creates unnecessary clicks for browsing.

Hello Alteryx Team,

we would like to customize SAML login with additional claims (departement)?

We want to grant authentication based on claims we are using in addition of firstname, lastname, email. 

So we need custom code as well, is this possible to integrate or merge with alteryx code ?

simple example would be:

we add city to the claims and on user with from city "New York" will be accepted all others will get access denied page.

Best regards,

Heinrich

Hello,

The Analytics team for our company services 9 different lines of business, and it would be helpful to create sub folders within each line of business. It would be helpful to be able to restrict the access for each individual sub folder also. Our team deals with different teams within each line of business, and they may need to have different access due to sensitive content. 

Thanks,

Erik M

My company is using SSO which prevents us from publishing datasets to Tableau or Wave/Einstein Analytics. Is there a workaround for SSO? 

Thanks!

Hey there,

Below you can see few of my suggestion to improve Alteryx Server. 

Idea for Alteryx Server monitoring:

• Increase data what could be seen on workflow results.
• Possibly create a report with filter option (to filter by user, gallery, workflow and etc.), which would at least contain data like:
  • Successfully ran workflows, count, percentage.
  • Failure rates, counts and etc.
  • Live data for monitoring purposes.
  • etc.
• Possibility to connect to workflow results data (live data) with other tools like Tableau or Power BI to create dashboards and etc. to monitor and act on the error as soon as possible.
• Give a chance for other users to check on the workflow statuses and etc same like workflow owner.

Give server more functionality with:

• Ability for server automatically retry workflow based on configurations: in example:
  • retry flow in specific time (for example in 30 minutes)
  • number of possible retries
  • based on specific workflow (other) results ability to trigger to run another workflow
  • (Maybe there is a better way) ability to run macros which would for example open MS Excel, and run macro inside it. I have some of the workflows where workflow opens excel, runs macro inside, that macro triggers special Add In which connects to Essbase, it pulls the data, saves excel file, and then alteryx continues working with the file. So if such or similar workflows could be run on Server that would be awesome.
  • This is extremely exiting one: possibility to create environment for self-service users, which it would not be something like gallery (because gallery is more suitable for Alteryx Designers/users).
    • in that one environment admin could grant access for user and tick what specific user could see and run.
    • so for admin it would be one environment, and user would see only what is needed for him/her.
    • in that environment user would also be able to schedule self-service workflows to be received in example by email, or BOX drive or any other way. Scheduled workflow would have to be approved by an admin before it would be actually scheduled. 
  • I have not tried this one myself, but that would also be great if all alteryx server environment could be accessed by mobile devices (of course, some features would be limited).

 Hopefully you will find these suggestions interesting and useful. 

Regards,

Aurimas

The admin (aka curator) needs to be given more control. The admin should have greater control than the users of the system.

My organization is in the Healthcare industry and we have HIPAA laws to abide by when it comes to data. Not all users should be able to see all data. Developers should not have complete control over the data they publish.

Private studio

• admin should be able to control if users can publish to Alteryx gallery (compliant issues occur when our organization's data is shared to outside users)
• admin should be able to control if user can publish to public gallery (compliant issues occur when all users can all see and run workflows)
• admin should be able to delete subscriptions and users

Collections

• admin should be able to create collections so they can manage the collections and what users have access to (devs should not be able to give any user access to their workflows)
• admin should be able to control if users can create new collections (again, compliance issues)
• admin should be able to grant and remove download of workflow rights
• admin should be able to delete connections

Get tips from Tableau as they have admin controls down with their permissions process.

When saving a workflow to the gallery, none of the options I could choose from Set workflow credentials validates a workflow successfully when using database connections due to missing permission on the server (No specific Run As is configured on the Server). Apparently the server validates the workflow as following:

User is not required to specify credentials:No possibility to add credentials when running the workflow on the server. In that case, the workflow validates database connections with errors due to missing permission on the server. This error was expected.

User must specify their own credentials: This option is the most appropriate in case of working with database connections with regard to our use cases and security policies. Unfortunately this option is only enabled when the workflow is saved on the server already and run from the gallery. In case of the validation step when saving the workflow to the gallery, the server evaluates with the system user of the server. As a result, the validation fails. In that case, I expected the server to run the validation with the user from the Alteryx Designer.

Always run this workflow with these credentials: This option is not appropriate in terms of our security policy, since the workflow is permanently set with the users credentials.

So my suggestion would be to:

• Prompt dialog to enter my credentials for validation once or
• The server runs the validation with the User from Designer, where the workflow is going to be saved from.

Otherwise is see no benefit of the validation feature (with respect to our use cases and security policies)

The Inputs to an Alteryx App look very clunky and are not formatted well on the Gallery.  The App Inputs look fairly decent when executed from Designer, but the Gallery input tabs looks like a work-in-progress that never got out of beta.  We desperately need some way to make the app input tabs aesthetically pleasing and functional.  An "artisan" does not like to create a masterpiece app that has a Model-T front end.  

See following article for background reference: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/workflow-exceeded-maximum-runtime-of-30-...

I have a support case (#00278355) advising unsupported changes to the alteryx.config file, involving an undocumented setting for chainedTimeout, as in:

<engine enableAutoLicensing="true" useServiceLayerComposer="true" chainedTimeout="10800"

This setting should be documented, supported, and made user-configurable through the System Settings GUI. 

Gallery Scheduler can schedule the workflows recurring,custom and once.

Idea 1 : Incase the scheduled run fails it would be good to have an retry option incase the source file path has network latency or network glitch.

Idea 2 : It would also be good if the scheduler checks if the latest feed or file is present in the source file path and have an option to kick off to run job the moment the latest file is present.

Idea 3 : For workflow to run on start and end of the working day month date we currently do not have an option in scheduler. we have an option to choose the first day and last day but the first and last working days in a month.

Idea 4 : When we choose the replace workflow option that changes the version of the workflow on gallery the schedule automatically is disabled. We will have to manually enable the schedule and also re-enter the credentials which is difficult if we keep updating our workflows every time with new changes as per business needs. request to have the schedule option enabled incase the replace workflow is done and also not to erase the workflow credentials.

As Alteryx leans more into the Data Science space - it becomes more important to be able to keep rich documentation of the project along with the Alteryx Asset.    This does also require the concept of a "project" on the alteryx server, which would allow for meta-tags; and various different documents to be added with the project.

This would include things like Requirement documents; test evidence; test data sets etc.

This would extend Alteryx from a data prep engine to more of a data-science workbench as different user groups can participate in a specific project.

Gallery Devs - 

When I click 'Add Tags' to an application in Gallery, the tag listing comes up chronologically by time time created, as opposed to alphabetically.  It looks ridiculous to see this:

Underwear

Shoes

Dresses

Bandannas

Socks

Jewelry

This is the easiest fix ever. 

When a workflow is run manually in the gallery the user is able to enter input parameters. However when using the schedule functionality this option is not available and a separate workflow needs to be developed to dynamically derive input parameters. Effectively two separate versions of the workflow need to be created and maintained.

If this functionality could be built into a future version of Alteryx this would be of significant benefit.

When user execute workflow from library, it is better to show workflow with execution status at each step.

It will help for business to identify the failed tool instead of validating entire workflow.