The Product Idea boards have gotten an update to better integrate them within our Product team's idea cycle! However this update does have a few unique behaviors, if you have any questions about them check out our FAQ.

Alteryx Server Ideas

Share your Server product ideas - we're listening!
Submitting an Idea?

Be sure to review our Idea Submission Guidelines for more information!

Submission Guidelines

Featured Ideas

When scheduling workflows in the gallery that are recurring, it would be beneficial to have  start and end times also. For example, when setting the frequency to hourly, if there is an option to run between 9 AM and 5 PM that would be great. This would prevent us to schedule workflows for all 24 hours and take up systemic resources when other important workflows could run instead

Maintaining multiple workers (five currently, soon, six) with identical setups is challenging when dealing with In-Database (InDb) connections. I must log in to each worker, start Alteryx Designer, go to In-Db settings, and create the connection. This also becomes tedious when trying to update passwords, which occurs every 90 days in my company.

 

The suggestion is to set up an In-Db connection on one worker and have it propagate to the other workers. 

indb.jpg Propagates to other workers → indb2.jpg

 

This would save time maintaining workers in the gallery and help prevent errors during setup on each worker (e.g., typing in the wrong password).

 

As an "extra credit" mission, expose In-Db connections through an API that can list, create, update, or delete an In-Db connection.

 

I just underwent an exercise of recovering my controller in the event of a catastrophic failure. One of the steps is to recover the DCME keys (DCM Encryption keys) - which is documented here: https://help.alteryx.com/20221/en/server/install/server-host-recovery-guide/dcme-keys-to-backup.html...

 

This DCME recovery needs to be revisited. This document assumes that the previous controller is running. In a disaster recovery situation, this is not possible. What, if any, can be done to recover the DCME keys if the host has is completely irrecoverable?

 

For context, having an irrecoverable host has happened. Complete hard drive failure (showing my age), nuked virtual machine and its backups (no one paid attention to the notices that the data center was shutting down), and fire.

Hello all,

According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webhook

"A webhook in web development is a method of augmenting or altering the behavior of a web page or web application with custom callbacks. These callbacks may be maintained, modified, and managed by third-party users and developers who may not necessarily be affiliated with the originating website or application. "

An example : whoever publishes an asset, I receive a notification on Teams and when a scheduling task fails, it creates automatically an analysis task on Trello.

Seems cool, huh?

Guys at Tableau have implemented it (https://help.tableau.com/current/developer/webhooks/en-us/ ) and so do the guys for Qlik Cloud.

simonaubert_bd_0-1676961290434.png



Best regards,

Simon

Idea: Option to receive an email notification when a schedule gets disabled (could be added in the user settings, see attached picture)

 

Business Impact: The implementation of this idea would reduce delays that might even have a financial impact because

not receiving any notifications when a schedule was disabled could lead to

  • important processes not being executed and users realizing that only at a later point in time (>> potential financial impact and stress)
  • the user not being able deliver a report in time (>> potential financial impact)
  • huge effort to manually track the workflow results on the server (or email notifications after a successfull run) to avoid the above two bullet points (>> financial impact due to waste of time)

 

I would be glad if you could implement this idea because I think it would be useful for a lot of people!

Hello all,

According to https://openlineage.io/ 

 

image.png

 

 

 

An open framework for data lineage collection and analysis

Data lineage is the foundation for a new generation of powerful, context-aware data tools and best practices. OpenLineage enables consistent collection of lineage metadata, creating a deeper understanding of how data is produced and used.

 

 

 
This is typically the open standards needed for lineage analysis and I think it will become more and more a differenciator with your competitors. As of today, DBT or Apache Airflow already supports it (as producer), Egeria or Marquez already support it (as consumer) and guys from Datahub are working on it  (as consumers)https://feature-requests.datahubproject.io/p/openlineage
So I think Alteryx should implement this standard API as a producer, it's the next big thing in Data Governance and you don't want to stay behind !

Best regards,

Simon

Current State:

Currently, all workflows and applications are in list-form within "My Workspace" (formerly Private Studio) and Collections.  In My Workspace, I might have workflows and applications that support a broad range of domain spaces and audiences.  As the developer (or Artisan), they're all in My Workspace, but shown as an exhaustive list with no categorization unless I name them to represent not only the function of the workflow/application but also the domain. 

 

Once those same workflows/applications are moved to collections, there can exist confusion over whether the workflow/application is intended for a schedule, manual run, or application.  Separating by naming convention gets messy and degrades clarity for non-developer roles.

 

 

Proposed Solution:

I would like to see folders, only one or two levels deep, be added to My Workspace and to Collections.  This proposed solution would not alter permissions, as those would be common for the parent collection and any assigned roles would function the same for that entire collection.  The solution is simply adding organization to enhance the user experience.

 

For example:  I might have a Collection that is intended for my Finance team....


Finance_Collection / Scheduled_ETL_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / Scheduled_Analytic_Workflows / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Applications_for_AccountingDepartment_ReceivablesTeam / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Applications_for_AccountingDepartment_PayablesTeam / Workflows
Finance_Collection / Manual_ETL_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / Manual_Analytic_Workflows / Workflows

Finance_Collection / etc...

All persons who have been assigned the role connected to the "Finance Collection" will still see everything in all of the folders but would have a better sense of what "workflows/applications" are intended for their use according to the folders the workflows/applications are organized into.

 

 

Value Added (Why This Matters):

  • Enhanced user experience (easier to find the correct workflows
  • The volume of roles and collections can be reduced, thus reducing Admin strain
  • The solution does not impact roles and permissions
  • Overall management of workflows and applications is enhanced for the Artisans

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I welcome input and feedback from the community and would appreciate your support if you find this suggestion useful for your Alteryx experience!

Today, when you share a workflow with someone else through the collection, you cannot see the manual run that the person will do, neither the person will see yours. 

This is really annoying as this is not helping collaboration between colleagues. 

Since we use an external scheduler and the server api, only the job owner will see the job execution results within the gallery.

 

Idea here would be to let the sharing of job execution result as an option in the collection.

Hi Alteryx support team,

 

We would like to use the search functionality available in the schedules tab of Alteryx gallery and when anyone searches the schedule by typing the name in search box on schedules tab, he/she should get list of the results along with the schedule information such as frequency of schedule, times run etc.

 

As of now, when one searches results are displayed as jobs and their run history.

 

Case reference -  Alteryx, Inc Case # 00606791

 

Regards,

milan

Currently, we see the Districts and Collections now compressed into a list view. 

 

Previously, the Server had the widgets feature which really showcased the self-service nature of the Sever. Losing that just made decreased the emphasis on user experience. 

 

It would be great to allow Server Admins to decide whether they want lists or widgets to be available toggles as a design feature for both districts and collections will be of great help.

 

In addition, regardless of the option, the image size and wording size should be much larger - easier for people to see. Right now, we have to zoom to 150% to make it easier for ourselves to see. Having the ability to control font size, font control with bolds, italtics, etc. will be very helpful as well.

Hello all,

Nowadays, chatting, commenting, having a discussion on assets that are published on a server is a very common feature, and a useful one !

Here an example on Tableau :

simonaubert_bd_0-1670054097259.png


Collaboration is not a luxury item !

Best regards,

Simon

Given the security requirements of our company collections need to be created centrally, which is fine for sub-organizations that only require one collection. However, the large sub-orgs require more than 1 collection, ideally we would create the top-level collection and give the sub-org the access to create their own sub-collection within that collection, but not the ability to create collections at the top-level.

When I create a DCM Entry in Gallery, it would be great if the users I share it with would also be able to reference the credentials in their desktop designer when they sync their connections to the Gallery. 

It would be beneficial to be able to add a description to collections to explain the purpose of the collection, i.e. the types of content contained within or even a waiver stating "use of the contents in this collection is at your own risk, please ensure you validate the results are accurate" sort of thing.

I am noticing what I think it's a big gap in terms of turnover and job changes.  Even though you can add workflows to a Collection for development and update purposes. Only the original owner/publisher can see the version history for a workflow. At least that appears to be the case in 2020.1

 

Is there any discussion for the road map to include a way to transfer the ownership of a workflow from one user to another? this would alleviate the need to publish a brand new version and then reset all the scheduling. 

Given some jobs are scheduled / can take a while to run it would be useful if Server provided the option to notify the submitting user when it has been completed, which a link to the results.

 

If you look at post: Re: How do I extract Server Job Run ID at runtime - Alteryx Community amongs others you can see there have been various attempts to create workarounds for this using a combination of API's & Mongo DB calls to build up the information to provide a URL in an email at the end of the flow. However, it feels like this should be an out of the box notification that can be enabled/disabled at the flow level with Alteryx Server.

When you add a workflow you have to add its schedule to share the results in collection menber's.
A workflow can be in several collections and therefore different users can schedule it. (why not)
This results in multiple schedules for the same workflow. There is no reason why a workflow cannot have multiple schedules.(mandatory in some cases)

 

Automatically adding schedules to the collection would allow users to see that there is already a schedule on the workflows in question and not to recreate one!

 

it should also be possible to create a schedule from the collection.

Hi all,

 

In an enterprise environment - DB connections need to be set up from the server and pushed down to your users; and they need to be managed across the various servers in your software lifecycle.

 

In other words - you may have a sandpit / dev server env; a UAT env; a pre-prod; and a prod env - and each of these need to have the same DCM credential IDs so that users can access these.     

(before you say "you can do this from the desktop) - that is true, however that's not a workable solution in an enterprise env because that means that users can change the password from their desktop into a prod env which is a breach of IT General Controls)

 

The solution here is to break DCM out in to a separate service - where

- all your servers (dev; UAT; Pre-Prod; Prod) can all point to one instance of DCM

- users can maintain their own connections and credentials

        - Each needs to have up to 2 owners so that you can deal with people moving jobs / leaving the firm

- users can also entitle these connections and credentials to their team members so that when the team member logs in, it shows a popup saying "you've just been given access to new credentials / connections"

- A particular connection may have multiple different variants - depending on the environment.

        - HR Data may point to a UAT version of HR data if you're on the UAT server; and to Prod if you're on the Prod server

        - if a connection is environment specific - then it also needs to have segregated credentials (since the login to your UAT HR Data may not be the same as prod).

 

Thank you all

sean

 

cc: @wesley-siu @_PavelP 

 

 

Previously, Alteryx Gallery had a progress bar when the job is running. However, it has been removed in the newer version and the screen only appear blank when the job is running. This could lead to confusion in users as they might be wondering what is happening when the screen goes blank when it actually is running the job. Users might also attempt to click the run button repeatedly due to this.

 

Hence, I hope Alteryx could bring back the old UI that showed progress bar or anything similar when the job is running so users will aware of what is happening. 

When scheduling an analytical app on Gallery, there is no UI for submitting app values. This significantly limits the value of scheduling workflows and using analytical apps. With this feature, it would allow our users to have more flexible scheduling while also simply maintaining one workflow. Because this feature doesn't exist, we have had to build workarounds by either creating multiple workflows or utilizing APIs. 

 

Since this feature is already available for manual runs and APIS (shown below), it shouldn't be a reach to also have this feature when scheduling a run.

 

Manual Method:

elsastark_0-1665672271718.png

 

API Method: GET /workflows/{appId}/questions

 

Scheduling Method (no app questions): 

elsastark_1-1665672495023.png

 

Top Liked Authors