Alteryx Server Ideas

If a job fails it would be perfect if we could set something in the workflow settings so that the job would retry again in X number of minutes for the next Y number of times. We have jobs that connect to external resources and sometimes the network will reset and will cause the connections to all drop. An example would be I want a workflow to try again in 10 minutes for a maximum of 5 times so over the next 50 mins it will retry every 10 mins if it fails

In order to migrate workflows from our UAT environment to a Production server environment, we are looking for an API capability to work with the server:

- Query canvasses by name or ID (to get a list of canvasses)

- Extract Canvas to a particular location (by ID)

- Upload canvas including dependancies (with parameters for team; collection; etc)

This would assist with automating the UAT to Prod process until Alteryx Promote can step into this gap.

CC: @rijuthav @jithinmony @HengHe @RajK @ydmuley @revathi @Deeksha @MPistone @Ari_Fuller @Arianna_Fuller @JoshKushner @samnelson @avinashbonu @Sunder_Sriram @Rahul_Thakur @Rahul_Singh 

Our company has workflows where we use the Gallery API to kick off executions on server.  The user kicking off the workflow has setup API access using his account, but when he kicks off his jobs, it does not show up under his Gallery so he is unable to view the results.  In the admin panel, it shows the owner as (None) so it does not appear that workflows kicked off via the API get assigned to the user tied to the API key.

Conversations with Alteryx support revealed that these results are available via an API call, but not within the Gallery web UI.  It would be great if the user tied to the API key were added to the workflow execution so they could see results within the Gallery rather than going back through the API.  

Currently Alteryx has a timeout setting at a worker level which applies to all of the workflows/schedules that run on that node. 

It'd be great and very useful is that setting is made available at a granular level like at the Collection/User Group or workflow level. 

I've been told by Alteryx support that this is not a feature that is currently available. Hence proposing an Idea on the community requesting for such an ability!

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.  

We currently have the ability to store connections on the server which protects the credentials - however this capability does not exist for APIs for Sharepoint sites etc.

Please could you extend this to cover authentication for ALL connectors?

Many thanks

Sean

cc: @revathi

Hi,

The schedules page on server needs an overhaul.  Sorry to be so blunt but it is awful.  It is by far the worst aspect of Alteryx and one of the most important at the same time.

Here are a few points about it...

1.) Sorting needs to be fixed as it doesn't work correctly (sorting on the first column, "Workflow", returns items that start with 'L', 'S' and a zero as the first three on the list), so looking for 1 scheduled item across 10+ pages of schedules becomes a "needle in a haystack" endeavor.

2.) There are no search and/or filter capabilities which would help alleviate the pain-point mentioned above.

3.) [Missing] items automatically removed from schedule when the workflow is removed from the server.  It just jumbles up the screen with useless information.

4.) The 'Schedule' column doesn't need to reflect the name again like the 'Workflow' column. is a hyperlink and the other isnt.  I cant tell you how many times I have clicked on the wrong hyperlink only to have to go back and deal with point #1 all over again.  Can't it just be a simple calendar icon or something like that next to the Workflow name?

5.) While not as critical, but more of a 'nice to have' function.  An ability to export the list of schedules would be helpful.  If we ever need to divy up work for an employee that leaves the company it would be a good way to see all of the work they have out there and mark up the list to distribute info for reassignment purposes, etc. 

I am sure there are other aspects I am missing, but here are the most important ones to me as an end-user (Not an Admin)

Thanks for listening.  🙂

Use Cases:

1. As a server admin, planned PM outages should be scheduled.  These outages should prevent jobs from beginning execution (window of time) prior to the outage.  Jobs running at the time of the cut-off should be system-cancelled.  
2. As a server admin, unplanned outages should cause running jobs to stop.  At the conclusion of an outage, jobs that are system cancelled should be restarted.

Currently, we use Task Manager to control Alteryx Service (or command line).  An administrative function within Alteryx should support graceful stopping and starting of the service as user jobs are interrupted (or can be) by our activities.  While I currently post messages to users alerting them to admin activities, I am asked why Tableau can restart jobs (admin) and we can't.  Other admins have asked what is "hanging" alteryx service up for a STOP command.  I have explained that all jobs must be stopped in order for a quick restart of the service.  

We're using a single server today (this client) and plan to add workers to the configuration.   It would be helpful to know where work is running and be able to use admin functions across the servers.

Cheers,

Mark

Good Day.

We would like a built-in process that would search or, and resolve, workflows that are stuck in the "initializing" state. These seem to happen for various reasons but communication problems between the controller and workers .. usually a socket timeout.. which appears  to be most problematic. It seems  that these type of errors should be expected in all but the most stable environments,

Currently, the only tool that we have to solve this problem is to restart the Alteryx Service on the controller and while this works there tendency to cause some collateral damage in workflows ...erroring or restarting from their beginning.

There may be a way to solve this without restarting the service by editing Mongo using a tool like Robo 3T but that is unproven and has its own risk.

After dealing with this issue and struggling for quiet some time we think that the best option is to implement a "clean up" DB process that will run every 5 min or so, capture a list of workflows in the "initializing" state , then compare that list to one in the next 5 min cycle and fix any workflows that appear in both lists. We think that returning  any stuck workflows to the queued state would be the best Fix  option.

We just don't want to continue to use Restart the Service process to solve this issue and accept the collateral damage.

Thank you for your consideration

Tom D  

As users change roles; or possibly even leave the firm - we need to automatically manage the ownership of their and their permission.

- We need to be able to export all permissions and ownership of assets by user using an API

- We then need to be able to revoke permissions using an API (we have a central entitlement management process that this can be tied into)

- we also need to trigger a revoke on all licenses via API.

If done within Alteryx server:

- When a dept code on a user changes; or user leaves - trigger an invalidate on all assets.

- Workflow to both the primary and secondary owner to ask for a new owner

- Also automatically trigger a revoke on all licenses

Hi,

I have described my issue in the Community post here:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Connect-Gallery/Version-Management-in-Gallery/m-p/120319#M3...

Is there a way to retrieve an exact date when new version of a workflow was uploaded to Gallery? I know it works when it is today, yesterday or couple days ago but after that you can only see "2 months ago" etc. in Creation Date, which is not sufficient for any version management.

Thank you

The current Alteryx user interface is displayed in a vertical orientation without the option for customization. To optimize space efficiency, it would be highly advantageous if the filters could be arranged horizontally, as depicted in the attached figure.

Additionally, there is a usability issue with the options list for interface tools like the list box. Currently, all options are displayed without utilizing a dropdown, requiring users to scroll extensively when multiple tools with numerous options are present within a single analytic app. Implementing a dropdown functionality for improved navigation would significantly enhance the overall user experience.

Using current version of the server - you can see that there is no OAuth managed or published API endpoint for canvas delete (screenshot 1).   However this API does CLEARLY exist as you can see if you inspect what happens when you hit the delete button (screenshot 2 clearly shows the API being called - but it requires user login security token)

Please can you enable this API for OAuth - the API already exists, it just needs to be exposed with the others.

CC: @BlytheE 

It should be possible to schedule chained apps. Particularly useful when the first workflow in a chain runs a check and if the check returns true then the next workflows run and if the check returns false then the next workflow should not run. 

Possibly related to:
Schedule Configured Analytic Apps - Alteryx Community

Please Enable OAuth 2.0/OpenID Support for Alteryx Server  & Connect. Currently, it supports only AD , SAML . 

Current SAML has limitations, Unable to import Security groups from LDAP/AD if SAML is enabled.  

*This is an idea from @cneivam  from the Portuguese Community*

• Being able to control the workload in Alteryx Server (for example, making sure that a workflow can run only when another set of workflows finish running)

Can we make API function available to assign specific worker node while submitting job request using api.

At some point we would like Alteryx Gallery to support SSO via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. The way I want is to have Authentication via SAML and Authorization via AD groups. For instance one of our apps Tableau: It does authentication via SAML (SSO) and for authorization, we import AD groups into Tableau thrice a day(stores the groups in a .xml file), once the groups are in the Tableau, we secure the objects within Tableau using that LDAP groups (which kind of become local groups after import). Basically the userid after the successful authentication step is used by the app for authorization.

I just stated Tableau as one of the ways to implement Authentication and Authorization for an enterprise app. If Alteryx Gallery needs to be an enterprise app, you will need to look into this idea. 

Thanks
Raj

The Alteryx Server Usage Monitoring & Reporting  reports are very useful. In order to automate the distribution and leverage our Tableau Server we have modified one of the macros within to publish the TDE to the Server and reworked the workbook to point to it. This is a fairly time consuming process to do, so the idea is to introduce a version of the workflow which pushes the datasource, producing a version of the workbook pointing to it.