Alteryx Server Ideas

Currently, if you want to change from Built-in to Windows Authentication, you have to:

To switch authentication types, you'll need to start from scratch.


1. Stop the AlteryxService
2. Open a Windows Folder Explorer and go to the directory you have MongoDB loaded (System Settings->Controller->Persistence->Data Folder
3. Rename or delete that folder (a simple backup would be to rename the folder, you can move it to another directory as well)
4. Open the Alteryx Server System Settings and click next to Gallery->General.
5. Select the new Authentication process you would like to use.
6. Finish the System Settings and the new database will be created.

The Gallery and Scheduler databases are closely tied.  Workflows that are uploaded, results created, and schedules created from the Gallery are stored in the Scheduler database.  So you will need to start from scratch on both the Gallery and in the Scheduler.

This is a non-starter for any company that has any amount of time invested in establishing the use of the Gallery.   Starting over is not an option, but improving security, streamlining access protocols as a part of overall data governance is a must.  Please consider fixing the authentication protocol to make it so we don't have to start over.

Thank you,

The shared data connections from the Gallery have been very helpful in centralizing data connection information between desktop users and their workflows when saved to the Gallery. The In-DB tools currently cannot take advantage of the Gallery Data Connections and require a completely separate setup that is both confusing and adds additional connection management work for creation/password changes. 

It would be a great enhancement to Alteryx if all connections for the different types of tools could be centrally managed from the shared Data Connections manager found in the Gallery.

Best regards,

Ryan

Hello Alteryx Devs - 

So, I'm poking around the Atlerxy Gallery API stuff with an eye toward building a set of classes that can interact with workflows without exposing Gallery proper to the community at large.  That being said, I was a little dismayed to find that all interactions require inclusion of *user specific* API Keys and Secrets.  It can be dealt with, but ultimately it means that configuring a middleware tier between the real world and Alteryx server requires an additional hierarchical level; i.e., understanding which of the developers came up with workflow X and having *their* API Key / Secret attached at configuration time.  

Anyways, it might be easier to just have a global trusted key / (super) secret.  If you get that, you can execute a workflow.  

Maybe we have a special studio that people could clone to, and in this way, you'd only have to track a single key/secret outside.  

I mean, the existing system works OK for one offs, but if you wanted to have a (semi) modular system in place, dependence on understanding publishing entity specifics seems to muck things up for no discernible benefit.  Of course, maybe in some places there is benefit to this scheme (?), but it is causing me to craft some weird work arounds early in development, which gives me a sinking feeling.

Or am I doing it wrong? 

Thanks for listening. 

brian

I love the gallery data connection feature - we're going through some big systems architecture changes, resulting in new locations for many datasets. Having a single place in the Gallery Admin area to update connection information works beautifully.

We're running into issues with the gallery-hosted data connections when trying to run some apps on our private gallery though. The trouble comes up when the gallery-hosted data connection appears inside a macro that's part of an app. We get an "Unable to translate alias" error when trying to run these types of apps.

If we have an app using gallery-hosted data connections that are outside of a macro, the gallery is able to resolve the connection alias fine and work properly. The issue only appears when the gallery data connection is part of a macro used inside an app.

We use macros a lot in our app development because it allows us to use standard methods for accomplishing common tasks. Using macros also enables us to set up automated testing workflows to make sure our processes produce expected results. As it is, we're unable to take full advantage of the gallery-hosted data connections because they don't work within macros, and instead have to continue using hardcoded connection strings. These are a bigger maintenance burden as our underlying systems evolve and are updated.

Although the connectivity to the eMail infrastructure is set up on the controller and worker nodes - there is no ability to set up automated alerting for errors on workflows from the server.

We would like to be able to set up the gallery as follows:

- Every job is owned by a user or a distribution list

- If that workflow throws an error or warning (this should be configurable on the server, whether warnings are included), then the author should be e-mailed with a link to the specific workflow and the error log.

This can be done in a round-about way, by running an error-reporting alteryx job after the fact - but this kind of alert needs to go out almost immediately given our dependance on Alteryx for specific SLAs.

cc: @avinashbonu ; @Deeksha ; @revathi

Currently the Gallery's Admin API is a bit light on functionality. It only works with data connections & workflows and not regular server admin functions. Endpoints I'd love to see, but not limited to, are:

• Create/modify/diable users
• Create/modify/delete subscriptions (including assigning users to subscriptions)
• Job status
• Add/modify/delete workflow schedules

Suggested information to be included in audit logs.

A secure audit record of all activities on the system:

1. General user access
2. User creates / modifies / archives / deletes data (ie: history on what the user did)
3. Administrator actions

At minimum the logs should include the following:

1. Unique user identifier
2. Unique data subject identifier
3. Function performed by the users
4. Date/time stamp of what was performed by user

I believe many customers could benefit from this type of audit logging, especially those who are required to obtain specific security certifications for their alteryx deployments.  From what I can see online there does not seem to be out of the box functionality for this. If anyone has implemented any type of audit logging like this please feel free to comment.

Thanks

-Vincent

I think it would be a great feature to include the performance tuning logs as an optional output in Alteryx Server. 

 - This would allow me the ability to leave performance logging turned on, so I could see what was happening during an automated scheduled run of the workflow. 

Performance Log :   <Link> (or attachment)

I would also like to see a tool (or tools) as optional outputs such as:

File(s) Generated:  

    <List of Files:    <Link to Files>    <Size of File>

These type of outputs would be greatly beneficial options instead of "This Workflow produced No Output"

Thanks for reading

Randy

Big time user of the Gallery API. In fact, I wrote an R package for it (shameless plug: https://cran.r-project.org/package=alterryx).

It is great that you can queue a job for an application using the Gallery API but it would be great if I could also cancel a running job.

We spent almost a full day on Friday internally, and also about 3 or 4 hours of time for 3 Alteryx Server engineers (thank you all - MattH; ZachH; WayeW) and Ben Burkholder trying to get our gallery server to start.

Error message was "

Failed to construct Gallery daemon process, process exited code <9002>

This was all that was provided in the server log files; the gallery log files; and the Windows Event Viewer.

In the end, it turned out that the issue was very simple - the MongoDB had open locks in place that needed to be deleted; and then the service came up immediately.

Several man-days of our effort; as well as the precious time of the Alteryx Engineers who gave up their Friday afternoon to help could have all been avoided if the error-message on the server failure said "Login failure on server due to open locks - please clean out locks on db.locks collection" with a link to the solution or a lookup code that be researched on the Alteryx support site.     

Please could we go through the server service and eliminate all the exit codes and replace with human-friendly error messages - that way we could allow this kind of issue to be self-diagnosed, and allow the Alteryx Engineers to spend their time building the next generation of Alteryx Server rather than diagnosing a table lock.

cc: @avinashbonu @revathi @Deeksha @BenBu @WayneWooldridge @MattH @SteveA @ZachH 

Hi,

It would be nice if scheduled workflow credentials could be linked to the workflow and not the individual versions of the workflow.

It is problematic for the user that they need to remember to reschedule the workflow, whenever they publish a new version of the workflow.

Best,

Daniel

Today, if I want to save a job onto the Alteryx Gallery, I need full permissions to do so and it is a manual process.  For some organizations, this level of access is deemed excessive, which can make properly leveraging the Alteryx Gallery difficult.  Having the ability to write a "deployment" script that could publish a workflow to the Gallery, and potentially add a new workflow to a Collection would be incredibly helpful in these cases.

I have been looking at the content in Alteryx Public Gallery for some time and I have had some concerns about the safety and usability of the macros/workflows in the gallery. 

I think there should be an option to rate, review and provide feedback on stuff that is out there on the public gallery. This will be helpful in many different way.

1. It will generate trust about the workflow/app. If I see that something is rated higher and has been used and commented by a lot of users I am more inclined to use it
2. It will provide a lot of ideas on how a particular workflow/macro can be used in different ways 
3. Review/Feedback will help the author to make changes as required or suggested by users.
4. The macro's will probably show up in google search based on key words provided by users in their reviews.

......

I had initiated a thread some time ago related to this, there is some useful information in there if someone has same concerns.

 https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Gallery/Can-Apps-and-Macros-in-Alteryx-public-Galle...

Thanks,

Ashish

Hi there,

Please can we extend the support for MongoDB to include MongoDB Enterprise latest versions, and certify at latest version within 3 months of release (both with the connector components, and the server infra)?

Given the deep dependence that Alteryx server has on MongoDB, being current with the latest version is critical (since many enterprises have a policy of moving to the latest version within 6 months, and shutting off old after 12.

https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/release-notes/3.4/

https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/release-notes/3.2/

Mongo 3.2 has been out since Sept 2015, and my understanding is that Alteryx Server is not yet certified for 3.2 - so it may be worth skipping to 3.4 (released 11 Sept 2017).

Many thanks

Sean

It would be GREAT if we could have an optional notes field in the gallery. When many tools are uploaded to a collection, the titles alone are not descriptive enough for end users. I have to publish a separate "menu" for reports that are available in the gallery. In some cases I have to number them. I wish users could just browse for themselves to find the application that is suitable for their use case. 

The only reference I can find to this idea is here : https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Gallery/Share-Results-in-a-Collection/m-p/231 .  It references that the feature of "sharing workflow results" was "on the Roadmap" in 2014.  I did some searching through the current Ideas page and cannot find anything.  I also reviewed the release notes since Alteryx 10.5 and cannot see that this was added.

A user approached me today with a problem of "Many people need access to the results of this data, and I want everyone to be able to see all the results".  While you could potentially email these results to a specified user set, that would require maintaining both a collection and an email tool in the job, and could potentially cause notification fatigue if users only care when they go to the Alteryx Gallery.  Similarly, results could be saved to a networked location, but that would require a user to go to two locations in order to find this information.

As such, having a toggle that allows users with permission to view a workflow, to also see the results of any/all users, would be huge. 

I am looking for a way to secure the server In-DB Connections either based on individual user or using an AD group.

Thanks,

Partha.