Engine Works
Under the hood of Alteryx: tips, tricks and how-tos.
Partial Workflow Execution: Speed Up Your Workflow Development!
If you've spent time working on large workflows in Alteryx Designer, you know waiting for the whole workflow to run can be a drag—especially when you just changed one tiny piece. That’s why I’m excited about a brand-new feature in the 2025.1 release: Partial Workflow Execution.
What is Partial Workflow Execution?
With Partial Workflow Execution, you can run your workflow up to a specific tool instead of running the entire thing. This is perfect when you're testing or tweaking just part of a workflow that might have dozens of tools and large datasets. You no longer need to manually disable containers or create workarounds to isolate sections—Alteryx Designer now lets you do this directly.
Why is This Feature So Useful?
Save Time:
Instead of waiting for your whole workflow, you only run what's necessary. This can significantly speed up your testing and development, letting you focus more on the changes that matter.
Enhancing Workflow Development & Debugging:
No more adding and removing containers. You just right-click on a tool and run it!
How to Use Partial Workflow Execution
Here’s how easy it is:
- Select a Tool: Right-click on the tool you want to run up to.
- Choose the Option: Click "Run Until Selected Tool" in the context menu.
- Run the Workflow: Alteryx executes only up to the selected tool. You’ll see that tools downstream are marked as disabled, clearly indicating they're not being executed this time around.
Things to Keep in Mind
- Partial Workflow Execution works exclusively with the AMP Engine.
- You can select multiple tools if your workflow has separate data streams.
- The feature also supports cached workflows, making iterative testing even quicker.
When to Use Partial Executions vs Containers
While disabling a container also provides a similar experience, partial executions are great to use when you do not want to deal with a container on the canvas. You can quickly right-click on a tool and select the partial execution option, whereas containers require you to add a group of tools to the container and then disable it before running. You don’t need to manage the container or downstream tools through this new option.
However, containers are still valuable when you are building macros and analytic apps. Using containers properly will allow you to include complex run logic within the workflow. This ensures that only parts of the workflow are triggered as needed, which can be very important for runs on Cloud Execution for Desktop or on Alteryx Server.
Try It Out in Alteryx Designer 2025.1
Ready to speed up your workflow development? Check out the new 2025.1 release of Alteryx Designer here and let me know what you think in the comments below!
What do you think about Partial Workflow Execution? Do you have any suggestions to make it even better?
