Best Practices for Code Review of Workflows that Output Data?

[terry10]

Our team performs code reviews on our Alteryx workflows to test assumptions and to check for clarity & correctness. An issue arises for workflows that upload data or publish to Tableau. Up until now, we've been manually disabling containers with the Upload or Publish tools, but we'd like to move to an automatic process.

What automatic processes have you set up to allow others to review and test workflows without the risk of overwriting output data??

[DataNath]

Hey @terry10, it’s not fully automatic, but within the ‘Runtime’ Workflow configuration tab, there’s a tick box that will disable all tools that write output, rather than doing them individually. I think the Tableau tool would still need to be handled manually with it being a macro, though.

In terms of automation, you could look into creating an app where you can make a copy of the workflow that needs testing, select that in a File Browse and the underlying workflow will edit the workflow XML to delete the nodes relating to Output Data and the Tableau output tool.

[terry10]

Thanks @DataNath .  Unfortunately, that "disable all tools that write output" doesn't cover Uploads or Publishing to Tableau, only the Output Tool (though I've submitted that as an idea previously).