Alteryx Server Ideas

Our team is still fairly new to the Gallery, so if there's something existing that I'm missing, I'd be glad to hear it.

I recently found the following thread : http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Publishing-Gallery/Get-App-User-name-at-Run-TIme/m-p/775/highlight/t...

Which included a text box input with a title of "_cloud:UserID".  I was able to use this to pull in things such as the users login information, email address, etc.

I would like to be able to use a function similar to this in order to generate user-specific usage reports, or dynamically update a "Send Email" tool with the email of the running user.

However, when I inquired about this "_cloud:UserID" API call, I was told that it is an undocumented and unsupported call.

Ideally, I'd like an application/macro tool that does something similar - which takes the user's credentials automatically from the gallery and runs the Application based on those credentials.  This could modify Emails or filter the output of the Workflow.  I'm sure there are other use cases as well.  I think having an officially supported tool to manage this would allow for a wide variety of dynamic applications on the gallery.

I've been writing applications and regularly need to REQUIRE fields for data entry.  When I do, I include ERROR MESSAGES at minimum.  Often I label the field as something like:  Name (Required).  Wouldn't it be nice to have a red star or have the data field in another color for background?  Taking this a step further, the validation rules being activated within the screen (rather than during run) would be awesome.

As long as I'm posting ideas, it would be nice to have an Alteryx supported function to identify the user within the application global variables.  For users, it would make my apps more friendly if they could save their configuration (*.yxwv) in the gallery.  Extending that thought, within my application I would like to be able to have easy access to their responses as well.

My use case for access to the .yxwv file data is that I will repeat some of the fields back to the user within my output.  When needed I will write the responses to a text input tool and format it for display in the output.  That requires an additional action and maintenance within the application.

Just a few application thoughts.

Thanks,

Mark

The SDKs are great and allow the community to expand Alteryx in many ways. I think it would be great to have some way to package these so we could easily share them and provide updates and fixes.

Not sure how many people use the SDKs but being able to easily share and install the output would help up take I think.

As an enhancement to the gallery, I'd like to be able to save my application parameters in the gallery in a similar fashion to when I run an app locally.  Users can view the results of an application run, but can't save the parameters that created the run.  I'll go a step further than this and ask for another enhancement.  I'd like to be able to access the questions & responses within the execution of the app to display them during reporting.t

Use case:

For a list generation application, I need to present to the user the criteria applied during the selection process.

Input Address: 49015

Type of Vehicle: Chevy

Minimum Year: 2010

Maximum Year: 2015

I've got a working solution that is okay, but not very "Alteryx-easy".  I need to have a second update attached to the interface tool to update the user response.

Thanks for your consideration,

Mark

Currently when I log into the Gallery, I can see all of the users who are using license keys assigned to me.  I would love to be able to run some reports on usage and activation date as well as export the list of users to excel/csv.

-Dan

The more I'm digging into the Private Gallery (on our own Server, not gallery.alteryx.com), the more I'm feeling that the UI and functionality is very non-user-friendly.  

I would like to do something that I think is very basic (I am the Admin of the Gallery):

1.  Create Apps and put them in various Collections.

2.  Grant people access to certain Collections.

3.  Have those people, when they log in, only see the Collections to which they have access to (that I granted them).  And then run the apps in those collections.  Nothing      more, regardless of who they are.

4.  Given all three of the above, but I do not want to see them listed as an Artisan, nor do I want to see them have their own studio

Currenlty, no matter what I do, they have Studios, and some are listed as Artisans (and as mentioned in a prior post, you can't delete their Studios).  I've tried using Windows Authentication, but I get errors so that's not an option.  It would be nice if the above were options regardless of the Authentication type.

When setting custom "Theme" settings for a private gallery, the filter icon seems to be missing. Other similar UI elements are color themable such as the search icon:

Via the setting here:

But the filter icon doesn't have a section to set its color to something besides the stock teal:

Can we please have this icon be color themable? My customized theme has all of the teal removed, except for this icon.

Thanks,
Ryan

It would be useful if the Admin of a Private Gallery (in house server) could delete studios and/or members.  Also, it's confusing that a member who's added also gets a Studio automatically set up.  Members (for my purposes) are only supposed to be able to run apps in collections that I grant them access to.  They should not get their own studio.  Even if they can't use the studio (or even know that they have a studio), it's not very efficient to have all these studios show up on the subscriptions screen.

I was trying to embed the javascript share embed source or an <iframe> tag from our Tableau server into the Pages functionality of Alteryx Gallery Server admin section. What I like to do is be able to show inside the Gallery pages the Gallery Usage and Scheduler setup, usage and results from a Tableau workbook we built of the MongoDB. In this way our Alteryx server users can view their usage and Admins/developers can see what is scheduled and results over time.

In general embedding webpages besides a link as iframe or javascript embedding would be a nice feature. We have an Alteryx Community page internal with various collaterol pages we can embed and share for training purpose directly on the server if that could be enabled.

Currently the BODY element of the editor does not allow for javascript or the <iframe> html tag.

Hi,

 We need a way to figure out at which tool alteryx workflow is currently at (i.e., workflow execution progress log) when the workflow is running on the alteryx server scheduler.

This is very useful especially if you have analytical workflows that take long time to run (say 4-6 hours) and at the moment there is NO WAY to figure out at which stage the execution is at from the scheduler.

We can't open the log file on the server as the workflow is IN PROGRESS (we get the standard The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process) . We can't see the underlying progress log under Scheduler Queue tab either.

It will be useful to capture that information in MongoDB or somewhere so that we can read the In progress log in the real time..

 Thanks,

Sandeep.

It would be great if there was a way to turn-off the validation processes associated with saving applications to a private gallery.  Alteryx is an amazing workbench because it allows users to build a variety of correct solutions.  However, we cannot publish several of our quite correct solutions because they don't pass the, as we see it unnecessary, validation requirements for saving to our private gallery.  The issue, if unresolved, will be a roadblock in our application development and deployment process.

A couple examples..

• An application that is SQL code with parameter strings that need to be replaced by users selection from application interface.  Cannot publish because syntax errors before parameters are replaced.
• Application appending In-DB SQL queries from multiple connections inside of container tools.  Union tool has error because it does not see inputs from closed containers.    

It would be nice to connect multiple Databases from different servers, without configuration of Linked Servers

There is Alteryx Designer, Alteryx Server and now why not an "Alteryx Cluster"?

• I've seen some vendors merging the self-service analytics tools with Hadoop
• I presume they believe the business unit needs to create a data lake for a specific purpose for a specific time span (like a dedicated analytics project etc.), not so frequently but yes they do.
• And these vendors too want this without a need for full stack IT developers or having to invest in huge bare metal databases...

Does it sound attractive to you to build a Alteryx Server+Hortonworks bundle or package that you may set it on 2 or more machines and your compute cluster is ready to go?!

As far as I know Alteryx Server has MongoDB installed on it

guess not to create a data lake but to store gallery macros and version history...

Best

Idea:

To create an IoT district for the Alteryx Gallery...

Rationale:

Many vendors are now focusing on the IoT wave,

having some examples on IoT use cases would be a nice resource for many...

• Please star the idea if you like it,
• Comments are more than welcome

Best

So there are freemium apps in the gallery and

server customers have their own apps published in their private galleries...

What if one want's to sell apps like in iOS app store,

Provide insights from the app as a service either prepetually, annually or monthly so that the locked apps can be used

• on a basis of pay per monthly subscription model or
• pay per transaction model etc.

possibly payments being handled over Alteryx Public Gallery.

Does the Alteryx roadmap include such a business model in the future?

Best

It would be really useful to be able to obtain the user name of some one running an app in the Gallery. This could be used for instance in row level security for people running an app that produces a report and that data is considered sensitive

I'm really enjoying the new Save As functionality to push to the gallery, but had a request that would make it even more useful for me. 

I saw that you can open workflows directly from the Gallery and edit them with version control, but it would be nice if it was possible to do a Save As on a local workflow and point it at an existing copy on the server.  I need to maintain a local copy of my workflow for dev/prod separation, but currently my way to push to prod is to do a Save As to my Private Gallery, remove the existing copy from the company gallery, and then share my newly created workflow into the company gallery.  This causes some headaches like no version control, switching out icons everytime, and overall just a messy way to push to prod.  

It would be helpful if there was a way to overwrite an existing workflow in the gallery rather than editing it directly.  

In larger organizations or organizations with global coverage, it is possible for users to be in different time zones from each other and the Alteryx server. 

WIth our implementation of Alteryx server, we have the server time zone set to that of our data warehouse, but this time zone is different than my own by -2 hours. In the case of scheduling a workflow in the future, I normally correct for this by setting the scheule in the time zone of the server and things work alright. 

Problem 1:

It falls apart is when I want to schedule something in the future, but it is within the timespan between my time zone and the server time zone. For example: It is 6PM my time, and 4PM server time. I want to schedule a workflow to run at 5PM server time (7PM my time). When I try to set this up with the Version 10 scheduler built into Alteryx desktop, it overides the date field upon saving to run the following day instead of today as it thinks im trying to schedule the run at a time that has already passed (which it has in my timezone, but not in the server time zone). Upon trying to edit this schedule to reset the date to today, it again reverts upon saving.  

The only way I have found to get around this is to reset the time zone of my computer to match the server time zone, then set the schedule, then reset the time zone of my machine back to local time again. This is not the best experience, and will likely be required more frequently for users as their time zone difference increases. 

Problem 2:

When wanting to run something server side immediately (I do this in cases where the runtime will be long, or im mobile and on a machine with a lower amount of processing resources) the "Once" option can be used in scheduler to push something to server and run it. In my case, due to the timezone difference, the default time set when trying to do this is the current time in my time zone, but 2 hours ahead of the current server time.

I have two proposed resolutions:

1) Transmit Server time zone information to the local scheduler to have everything involving scheduling in Server time. Also for any timestamp fields, include the time zone designation so its clear to the user.

2) Use information from the user's machine and information from the server to do timezone conversions behind the scenes so whenever scheduling or viewing schedules, all timestamps are in local time to the user. I feel this is the prefered solution for the best user experience, but would also be the more complex to implement. 

Thanks,

Ryan

In Gallery 10, List Boxes (that are within a Radio Button) have their contents sorted horizontally.  Previously (Gallery 9.5) the contents of List Boxes was sorted vertically.  This new orientation makes it very difficult to find specific items within the list.  The problem is particularly severe for long lists, when it becomes common for the check box and associated text to become separated on two different lines.