Alteryx Server Implementation

Our Client's Context

The small schedule I bank in Canada was facing siloed knowledge and entire processes relying on single individuals. Their processes we’re working well for now, but had single points of failure and knowledge was in people’s heads and not in documentation. A more sustainable approach needed to be developed to eliminate single points of failure and share knowledge across the team. Reducing the bottlenecks ensures that the company can continue to build more robust processes leading to happy customers and continued growth in the future.

‍

To improve the sharing of knowledge and reducing single-sources of failure, the organization decided that a new ways of working needed to be implemented to standardize the design of workflows and remove single-sources of failure. A standard documentation procedure needed to be implemented and multiple users needed to be able to collaborate on shared workflows and each person needed to understand. The business decided that Alteryx Server was the solution to their problems, but they needed help in setting up Alteryx server, migrating Alteryx Designer workflows to server and setting the new ways of working.

‍

Taking an Audit of Challenges

Siloed Knowledge

Our client needed a way to remove reliance on individuals to maintain critical business processes. If people left the organization or took a vacation these business processes needed to be able to be run regardless of the situation. A new solution to share knowledge was needed to ensure that there was no single point of failure

‍

Migration to Alteryx Server

A big challenge for the organization was having Designer Desktop workflows on individual laptops with no centralized location nor version history of changes made. With the decision to migrate to server our client faced difficulties with proper administration of Alteryx server and migrating workflows to use the new platform

‍

New Ways of Working

For the client the adoption of Alteryx Server solved some problems such as centralization of workflows, but new problems such as how to govern server, differences in how workflows run, and documentation best practices still needed to be implemented within the team

‍

Making Deposits for Long-Term Success

To solve the problems, Compass provided three core services; Alteryx Server Setup, Alteryx Workflow Documentation Best Practices and Migration of workflows to server.

‍

For Alteryx Server setup, the Compass team worked with various internal IT members to provision the appropriate virtual machine specifications and credentials for additional tools such as Sharepoint, utilized districts and collections to separate different business units from each other and provided hands on sessions with each business user to configure their personal data connection manager (DCM) connections.

‍

For Alteryx workflow documentation best practices, the team provided a variety of workshops to demonstrate the workflow documentation process highlighting the key components such as metadata and color coding scheme to allow for ease of transfer of knowledge between team members. In addition, the Compass team documented currently implemented workflows to improve readability and provide examples as the standard for new workflow development.

‍

Finally, a number of workflows were evaluated by the Compass team to perform migration of Designer Desktop workflows to server. Various additional tools such as the Sharepoint input/output tools, Salesforce Input tool, and external APIs such as Workday were explored and implemented in workflows which were migrated to the server.

‍

‍

Setting the Seeds for Compounding Returns

The server implementation and migration of Alteryx Designer workflows has allowed the small schedule I bank to centralize workflows eliminating single sources of failure and implement new ways of working such as documentation which help to share knowledge across teams.

‍

Centralized Management of Workflows

With the implementation of Alteryx Server, all Alteryx workflows can be centrally managed in one platform leading to improved governance. Gone are the days of Designer workflows limited to single individuals, now the business can run critical processes on Alteryx server even if emergencies arise or people take vacations. The features of Alteryx Server such as collections, data connection manager and scheduling jobs were also leveraged which ensures a logical organization of all Alteryx Server assets and automating specific tasks. Increased efficiency and no downtime lead to better business processes and therefore happier customers.

‍

Migration of Workflows to Server

Some Designer desktop workflows were chosen as prototypes to implement on Alteryx Server. Many of these workflows had components specific to Alteryx Designer so modifications were made by the Compass team to make the necessary changes to be server compatible. The introduction of the user of external APIs such as Workday, and converting inputs and outputs to using the Sharepoint Tool were important in making workflows server compatible allowing any user to run the workflow if given the proper permissions

‍

New Documentation Process for Workflows

New ways of working were established within the team to improve the ability to share knowledge between team members and document business logic within workflows. A documentation standard was adopted by the organization to ensure that all workflows follow a similar progression of steps and common color coding schemes. The new documentation standards are more difficult to follow, but the organization will be reaping the benefits of ease of knowledge transfer and quick understanding of workflows for years to come.