What's New in Connect 2020.4
The 2020.4 release brings several features such as Notification Queue, new Custom Field type, the Designer Tool Details section for analytic workflows, many improvements for metadata loaders, and more.
Advanced Search: Save Query as Virtual Folder
Connect now allows you to create a virtual folder directly from Advanced Search. Specify the filter by selecting the appropriate fields and select the Save Query as Virtual Folder button. For more information, see the Virtual Folders article.
Notification Queue
Notification Queue allows you to decide what operations you can perform with the items in your queue. For example, you can clear, stop, or restart the queue. To access and set the Notification Queue, navigate to Admin Menu > Maintenance > Notification Queue. To check the Notification Queue status, go to Admin Menu > Settings > SMTP Settings. See Maintenance for more information.
New Custom Field Type: Link Field
From the version 20.4, you can use a new custom field type - Link field. By using it, you will be able to add a custom link that behaves as an active HTML link. See Asset Configuration to get more insight about the custom field types.
See the following short video demonstration about the new custom field type.
Alteryx Designer Tool Details Available for Analytic Workflows
You can check four Designer tools mostly used in analytic workflows (Join, Formula, Filter, and Summarize tool) and their configuration in Connect, and utilize the power of Connect search across multiple workflows. To see the details, navigate to the Alteryx Designer Tool Details section. For more information, check the Analytic Workflows article.
Metadata Loaders
Alteryx Gallery Loader: Creating Database Objects
To quickly get an overview about used database data sources, especially in case of a new Connect deployment, use the Load Database Objects option when loading the objects from the AYX Gallery.
When you use the AYX Gallery loader, the workflow objects are created in Connect. If you enable the Load Database Objects option, the loader will try to also create the database objects. The input tool has to provide full information about the object (servername, catalog name, schema, and table; columns are not supported). These objects will be visible after loading in Data Sources > Databases.
More information about this new feature can be found in the Load Metadata from an Alteryx Server Gallery article.
Alias Manager
Use Alias Manager in case you don't have an associated lineage in Connect due to a different server name or IP some users might have entered. To help complete the lineage information, enter the (server)alternate name on the server level. For more information about Alias Manager, see the Maintain Data Lineage article.
Amazon Athena Loader
You can now upload metadata to Connect from Amazon Athena. Check the Load Metadata from Amazon Athena article for more information.
Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 Loader: Authentication via Certificate
For ADLS Gen2, you can newly authenticate via Client certificate. It means that from now on you can decide between the Client secret and the Client certificate. For more information how to setup the Client certificate see the Load Metadata from a Microsoft Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 page.
Python Upgrade for Metadata Loaders
Make sure you have Designer version 20.4 as the Python engine was upgraded.
Additional Enhancements
Active Directory Loader Enhancements
From now on you can define the way how Full Name and XID of a user will be constructed. You can use any LDAP attribute. To specify the Full Name, navigate to AD loader, then Full Name and enter, for example, ${displayName} (${sAMAccountName}). User will be displayed as John Doe (jdoe). Additionally, in the Other section of the AD loader you can enter XID Definition. For example, ${mail} will create an XID john.doe@mail.com for the user with the email john.doe@mail.com. See Settings for more details.
Boolean Fields Representation
Boolean fields are now represented as checkboxes. For example, in user profiles in People (Notify changes).
