Just got Alteryx Server at your organization? Get ready for some serious time saving when you automate your work! Server is a fantastic product, but the Gallery has a whole language of its own when it comes to ways to publish and organize your flows. In this post, we’ll break down all of those components to make the move to your organization’s Gallery a little easier.
For those new to Alteryx Server, let’s go over why using Alteryx’s gallery might benefit you. Alteryx Server gives you the ability to:
- Schedule workflows for automatic running.
- Share workflows with colleagues.
- Share workflows with colleagues who do not have an Alteryx Designer license, allowing them to seamlessly use your analytic apps without needing a license.
Our key organizational components of Alteryx Gallery are as follows, and we’re going to break them down in the following sections:
- Studio/Subscription
- District
- Collection
In addition to the above, you will also find three other sections on the navigation. These largely contain outputs and details on the workflows housed in the organizational components above. For that reason, we won’t go very in depth, but here’s what each of them contain:
- Insights: The outputs of any visual reports put together in your Alteryx flows.
- Workflow Results: The outputs and workflow execution data from any workflows you have run.
- Schedules: details about your scheduled workflows.
What's a Studio/Subscription?
The private studio is the first thing you will encounter when publishing out to Alteryx Server. Each Artisan, AKA Alteryx Designer user, on Alteryx Server has their own private studio which is the first place their workflows go when they publish. Workflows in the private studio are only viewable by the person in that private studio. For this reason, you can consider this a good area for development and test before sharing out in a district or collection.
In most cases, the private studio will contain one and only one user and each user will be in one and only one private studio. However, if there is a niche situation where it may benefit to have multiple, Gallery admins are able to create shared studios. I typically do not recommend this, as there is more overhead for the Gallery admins to maintain membership of the studios, and therefore less agility for the artisans. Additionally, membership to a studio is all-or-nothing permissions-wise, meaning another member of the studio has full control of other studio members’ workflows.
In almost all situations, I would recommend keeping the 1:1 Artisan/Studio ratio and sharing workflows with team members using the organizational structures we will discuss in the following sections.
What's a Collection?
A collection is a means to organize and share workflows and insights with teammates. This is basically a shared folder. Once a collection is created, workflows can be added by selecting “Add New Workflow” and choosing a workflow from your private studio.
Collections are by far my favorite way of organizing Alteryx Server, because they allow for secure sharing and are as simple as a shared drive. Collection admins, which are similar to a Project Leader role on Tableau Server, can create collections, add users, and assign specific permissions and even new administrators to the folder.
As mentioned, studio permissions are all or nothing. Collections allow for significantly more partitioned permissions vs. using joint studios. The collection owner, and their selected collection admins, have control over which members of the collection can add, delete, or update assets. They also can control who is able to add or remove members of the studio.
What's a District?
Districts are the way to organize the public gallery. This is done by using the tags on Alteryx Gallery. Tags and Districts are created by Alteryx Gallery Curators, and then tagged by the workflow owners.
WARNING: Anything put in the public gallery or a district is available to run by any user on Alteryx Server.
Districts are the way to organize the public gallery. This is done by using the tags on Alteryx Gallery. Tags and Districts are created by Alteryx Gallery Curators, and then tagged by the workflow owners.
Once the district is created by a Curator in the admin section, the Artisan needs to do two things. First, under “Sharing” in the workflow details page, select to place it in your organization’s gallery. Next, you can add easily the tag for the corresponding district.
If you’ve ever been to Alteryx’s public gallery to browse use cases or macros, you’ve probably seen a pretty good example of how to use districts. All of the workflows under each of these categories are publicly available for all those with a gallery account.
I hope this helped clear up what each component of Alteryx Gallery contains and how you can organize your own content. Do you have more questions about Alteryx? Talk to our expert consultants today and have all your questions answered!
