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.

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Our client’s knowledge was not up to par with innovative industry standards, working with siloed knowledge that had whole processes relying on single individual. The process was functional but not optimal as it wasn’t documented firmly. Reducing the bottlenecks ensures that the company can continue to build more robust processes leading to happy customers and continued growth towards success. Rectifying the process to required a more sustainable approach such as standardized documentation to foster collaboration. The client devised that the project should be managed on Alteryx Server, a software they required assistance to implement.

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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.

Siloed Knowledge

Generating standardized documentation meant that anyone on the team could run the workflow. Eliminating reliance on a single individual, saving time and increasing productivity for both parties.

Migration to Alteryx Server

Our client was well versed in Alteryx Designer Desktop, using it develop their processes. To enable collaboration, those processes had to be migrated to Alteryx Server, where version history and standardization of workflows were accessible.

New Ways of Working

The migration process to the new server solved workflow centralization issue. However, new problems would arise if not delt with accordingly. Server governance, knowledge of differences between workflows, and standardization documentation still had to be implemented across the team.

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

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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.

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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 cross-functional knowledge transfer. The Compass team simultaneously documented currently implemented workflows to improve readability and provide examples as the standard for new workflow development.

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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 when migrated.

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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 without interruption. The features of Alteryx Server such as collections, data connection manager and scheduling jobs were also leveraged, ensuring a logical organization of all Alteryx Server assets and automation of 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. While the new standards may require a bit of adjustment, they promise long-term benefits, including simplified knowledge transfer and quicker comprehension of workflows for years to come.