Connecting workflow in alteryx designer with other customized softwares

[Stranger]

Hey community,

I am currently working on a project which requires me to integrate workflow made on alteryx designer with other customized software. We know we can connect workflow made on alteryx designer to softwares like PowerBI, Tableau. But is there any way we can integrate workflow in designer with our own app which has a front end in java like angular??

How we will establish the data connectivity from workflow on designer to front end? 

Is there any way we can trigger the workflow running in the backend using our controls/filter present on the front end??

Thanks!!

[drew9]

Hi @Stranger, 

Not knowing anything about how your application works, I can think of a couple ways you could go about this. One would be having your front end application output the files to a shared location which your workflow would have access to. You could make this dynamic with wildcards and some creative file management. This option will probably cause more headaches in the long run though.

The second option would be to stand up a database that your app outputs to and Alteryx pulls from.

Third option would be to connect to your app via an API. More on that here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Guide-to-Creating-Your-Own-Connecto...

Also, Alteryx unfortunately no longer supports running workflows automatically in designer. This would require Alteryx Server.

[tlarsen7572]

Your best bet is to look into the Gallery API:

https://gallery.alteryx.com/api-docs/

You can call the Gallery API from any front end framework or tooling that can make HTTP calls, but particularly web frameworks such as Angular.

I've also experiemented with using the engine API to create my own web server application that can host Alteryx workflows in a web environment without a lot of the Gallery-related overhead for things like oauth and job management.

Either option requires a server license; a simple Designer license will not be sufficient.

[warrencowan]

I haven't tried this yet (CAVEAT) but we have talked about it, and that is to use some sort of automation testing software like Jenkins.

Jenkins can run a webserver on your designer machine to receive a request from a web app, and then execute command line instructions. If you have designer plus scheduler, then it can run an alteryx flow from the command line.