How to Understand your Alteryx Workflows
One of Alteryx’s marvellous features is the ability to provide consistent visibility between users - both stakeholders and analysts. For example : User A can build a workflow and User B can view this process and the steps they have undertaken at a later date, with minimal explanation between both parties. This helps reduce any room for error when other users view and integrate the workflows within the organisation.
But what happens if…
You're a non-Alteryx user and you don’t understand what is happening in a workflow?
You want to know how often your employees are running workflows each day?
You want to track which output files are related to which workflows?
You want to know which inputs are now redundant because of a change in procedure?
Well fortunately for you, we can extract the Alteryx workflow and run it into plain text so you, stakeholders and management can understand and visualise the value you are receiving for each user and licence.
Why XML files are key to understanding your workflows
A workflow can look organised and easy-on-the-eye (shall we say) when it sits on the Alteryx canvas. But you can also export it as a plain text XML file aka computer language, which we have to say, doesn’t look as a neat and serves no automation function within your business, but it does allow non-users at a high level to see the process that is being initiated.
What other advantages are there to viewing an XML workflow file?
You can easily view all the dependencies:
inputs
outputs
external databases and references
APIs being made
Deeper understanding of your workflows, so you can make confident data-driven decisions as well as understanding the role and importance of Alteryx.
Pinpoint areas of the tool palette used to create the workflow, which allows opportunity for other employees to be trained.
Overall, this XML file is the gatekeeper, since it contains all of your workflow data. Therefore its classed as the first step in organising and maintaining data governance for any Alteryx driven organisation.
Let’s go back in time and talk about the history of a workflow
We all know how it feels when you accidently forget an ingredient whilst baking and the end product is inedible or doesn’t look how it should. So we identify the problem and make sure we remember to add it in next time! Well the same happens with workflows - a process can fail due to a change in inputs or output schemas. Identifying where and when this change has occurred is crucial to achieving a successful workflow.
Every time you create a workflow, Alteryx kindly tracks your actions eg. inputs, outputs, run commands, errors, warnings and the time of the run and how long the workflow run took to build. You can also use this feature to understand how often a user is using Alteryx and determine the value of each licence. To enable this tracking use the following steps:
Head to your Alteryx Designer
Go to Options > User Settings > Edit User Settings
Tick Override System Settings
Point the Logging Directory to a folder where the information can be stored.
We don’t want to give the WHOLE game away, because one part we haven’t mentioned is how to analyse a log file or an XML, which is of course in Alteryx!
If you would like a demo of Alteryx and how it can be used to automate business processes or perhaps a discussion into how you can keep secure data governance with Alteryx please do not hesitate to contact us.