What's New in Server 2024.1

In this release, we've provided admins with the option to transfer ownership of workflows and schedules between users without them needing to be in the same studio as the new owner. This will make it easier to manage workflow and schedule ownership, especially when employees leave the company. This will improve collaboration and prevent tedious rework when workflow owners change, avoiding data pipeline disruptions.

For workflows, this means that when the workflow is transferred to a new owner, the workflow will move from the old user’s studio to the new user’s studio and the ownership field will be updated. When workflows are transferred, the version history will remain which is essential for audit compliance and version control.

Along with this new functionality, new notification options are available in Notifications. These are automatically on when you upgrade. Notifications are sent when you transfer workflows via both the Server UI and API. Both past and new owners are notified. For more information, go to the Notifications help page.

You can transfer asset ownership in Server UI or using Server API V3 endpoints.

We’ve added support for SQL user-managed instances alongside the existing MongoDB integration. This addition provides you with the flexibility to leverage relational databases according to your preferences and requirements. We included the SQL DB support feature in both FIPS-compliant and non-FIPS environments. At the moment, we support only Microsoft SQL Server.

To start using SQL DB with your Alteryx Server, you need to configure it in Alteryx System Settings.

For more information on how to manage SQL DB in Server, visit the SQL DB Management help page. Under this page, you'll find more details about SQL DB schemas, connection strings, and Mongo to SQL Migration Guide. For a general overview of our SQL support and migration from MongoDB to SQL, visit Server SQL DB Customer FAQ.

We've made the following improvements to the crypto migration process:

We have improved our searching and sorting capabilities on Server for both admin and non-admin users, enhancing the overall experience of the Server UI. Now you can do the following with ease:

For more information on search, go to Search for Assets.

We changed Designer's SAML authentication browser from Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) to the machine's default browser. This will help you avoid security issues with CEF becoming out of date before Designer can be released with an updated version.

All timestamps in the Server databases have been converted to the UTC format. By default, in the user interface now all the date-time fields will be displayed as per user’s profile time zone. The only exception is the frequency field, where it shows the timezone that is chosen at the time of creating the schedule.

If you are taking timestamps directly from the Server database, please note that these timestamps have been migrated to UTC format for standardization across the product and to alleviate daylight saving time issues.

In case you upgrade from an older version to 2024.1, the timestamps of existing assets will be converted to the new UTC standard when AlteryxService starts.

Note that AlteryxService uses third party libraries to keep the updated time zone information in the database. These need to be updated as and when there is an update. If there is a time zone which is not providing correct offset values, please wait for the library update.

We’re introducing DCM Environment Connection Handling allowing you to define what connections present on the Server should be used instead of workflow connections when executing workflows on the Server. This feature is available to all Curators through the Server UI and via Server APIs.

For every environment, you can define a list of Connection IDs that should be replaced by a different connection when found in workflow during execution. In other words, for such an environment, each of the source Connection IDs (present in the workflow) will be resolved as the target connection (defined by Connection ID) at engine runtime. That means a single workflow can be executed differently (using different connections) on each Server without making changes to the workflow itself. DCM handles connection replacement dynamically at the execution, without updating the YXMD workflow.

In a single-Server setup, you can still make sure that the workflow is executed differently in the Designer than on the Server. This enables an easier lifecycle of workflows across multiple environments (dev, test, production) without making changes to it.

For more information about DCM Environment Connection Handling rules, go to DCM Connections and DCM Connection Handling. To review permissions needed for DCM Environment Connection Handling rules, go to User Roles and Permissions.

To check the API endpoints to manage DCM Environment Connection Handling rules, go to the DCME Endpoints help page.

You can utilize the DCM configuration to fetch secrets used in DCM credentials at runtime from a vault by providing a custom script or executable that would handle authentication and secret retrieval. Forming such a vault is possible through Designer and Server.

Generic External Vault allows you to configure a generic vault that can retrieve secrets from any vault with a programmatic interface using basic authentication.

For more information, go to DCM - Server, Data Connection Manager: Server UI, and DCM Generic External Vault.

Along with other new DCM features and changes, we’ve added new DCM permissions, giving Server Curators better control over users' DCM connections present on the Server.

These permissions are automatically enabled for new and existing users, except for the Manage Generic Vaults permission.

For more information, go to the User Roles and Permissions help page.

Now you can share the same connection with one user for collaboration, and with another user or with the same one for execution. For more information go to Data Connection Manager: Server UI.

There is a new authentication method for HashiCorp Vault. Server can now use mTLS (“mutual TLS”, also known as “TLS Client Authentication”) to obtain DCM secrets from Vault.