Execute your Alteryx Apps from your Phone!

[jineshnp31]

I was looking for automation to execute Alteryx Apps 'on-demand' using my phone more like a personal Alteryx Bot.  

Major benefit I was looking to gain by this workflow is the ability to receive most up-to-date reports in email or execute long running workflows before you reach your desk, run Tableau dashboard refresh, trigger automation etc., workflows that are more ad-hoc in nature with the convenience of my phone. This could be handy if you don't have direct access to company Gallery and need results/data on the road.  

Tools needed:  

Alteryx Server  

Microsoft Sharepoint Mobile App 

Your choice of scheduling tool (Server, Autosys, Airflow) 

Step 1: Create a Sharepoint List for the 'on-demand' reports needed to execute from your phone 

To keep it simple I just added Job Type, Report Name and Execute (Yes/ No). We could add more options to accommodate parameters/dates as needed for the specific workflows. 

  

Step 2: Create Alteryx workflow to connect to your Sharepoint List and use the formula tool to build the AlteryxEngineCmd needed to execute each of the selected apps from the command line. 

Use the run tool wrapped in a macro to execute all the 'enabled' apps. 

Here's a quick link to execute apps from the command line

https://help.alteryx.com/2019.1/Command_Line.htm

 

Step 3: Schedule the workflow to run at regular intervals depending on the window you need to execute your workflows. I chose to check my Sharepoint List every 15 minutes.

Step 4: Enable/Disable the workflows you need ‘on-demand’ from your Microsoft Sharepoint Mobile App. Based on your selection, the relevant Alteryx app will be executed to email your report, refresh Tableau, etc. when it reads the Sharepoint List every 15 mins. Make sure to disable the app fon the Sharepoint List once executed or it will continue to run every time. 

This is one of the solution which is quick to implement and works very well at least to suit my current need for monitoring status reports and get quick answers in the middle of the night without requiring to log on to my desktop. 🙂 This is achievable using Google Sheets too but Sharepoint just gives a more 'app' feel to it.

For a more elegant solution, I would explore to execute Alteryx Apps from Microsoft Teams using their Graph API or Webhooks, that could make API calls to the Gallery based on keyword messages to a Channel like “Email me the Daily Volumes by Product” or “Refresh YTD Commissions” and so on. 

Possibilities are truly endless.. 

Looking for similar ideas, please let me know if anyone has built anything on these lines, would love to collaborate! 

Thank you.

Regards,

Jinesh