Alteryx Designer: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 17. Introduction to Alteryx Server

In this chapter, I am going to provide an overview of Alteryx Server. The topic is worthy of another book in and of itself. However, I do want you to get a taste for why it exists and why it’s so powerful for automation and collaboration of Alteryx workflows. I also want you to start to see the full analytics process with Alteryx, which isn’t only building workflows, but also automating them to gain higher-impact insights, in turn helping your organization become more productive.

Now, consider which of the following scenarios you’d prefer:

1. You go on vacation but each day you must interrupt your beach time by jumping on your laptop to click Run, watch and ensure that your workflow runs successfully, and then send an email stating that it has been completed as expected. This easily eats a couple hours each day out of your well-earned vacation time.

2. You go on vacation and each day—while you are on the beach, playing in the waves, sitting by the pool, drinking your beverages with little colorful umbrellas in them—the Alteryx Server is doing everything that you told it to. It runs the scheduled workflow, it lets your team know the status automatically as it completes, and it sends out a summarized status email to the executives.

Obviously, I’m leading you a bit, but there is so much truth in this thought experiment. You don’t need to be handcuffed by your Excel work or manual processes. You should be able to take a “no work” vacation. Your ...