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Release Notes 9.2

Release 9.2

August 3, 2022

What's New

Connectivity:

  • Support for Google Sheets connections using OAuth2 authentication.

    Note

    This connection type is not supported for integration with a Hadoop-based running environment.

Connectivity:

Lock/unlock column data type:

You can now lock or unlock a column's data type. When the data type is locked, the Trifacta Application no longer attempts to infer the column's data type when subsequent recipe steps are applied.

Tip

You can unlock the individual 's column data type through column menu. To the left of the column name, you can click the icon and select Automatically update to change the column's data type. For more information, see Column Menus.

Tip

As an early step in your recipe, you can use the Advanced column selector in the Change column data type transformation to specify locking of the data types for all columns.

For more information, see Change Column Data Type.

Install:

  • Support for Dockerized installs for AWS and Azure deployments.

    Note

    You cannot upgrade from an Dockerized on-premises installation to Dockerized AWS or Azure. You must perform a fresh install.

    For more information, see Install for Docker.

Java UDFs:

  • Enable the capture of userId and user email address within your user-defined functions.

    Note

    This feature must be enabled.

    For more information, see Java UDFs.

Changes in System Behavior

Set column data type transformation locks the column's type by default:

Starting in this release, the column data type is locked by default when you change the column data type.

Note

This change in behavior does not affect recipe steps that were defined before this release. Column data types continue to be re-inferred after those recipe steps. For those steps, you can edit them and mark them as locking the data type, if preferred.

If required, you can unlock the column's data type. For more information, see Change Column Data Type.

Generate an initial sample:

When generating an initial sample from a set of files in a directory, the maximum number of files that can be read is now limited to 50.

  • Previously, the Trifacta Application read files until either 10MB of data or all matching files had been scanned.

  • This change is to limit the number of files that must be read for various operations in the Transformer page. It only applies to generating the initial sample type. Other sampling types, such as random sample, can scan the full set of files.

As needed, an administrator can change this maximum limit.

For more information on sampling, see Overview of Sampling.

Email notifications:

In a future release, the setting for email notifications based on job success will default to Default (Any Jobs) at the project or workspace level and at the flow level. This change means that the user who executes a job and others who have access to the flow receive, by default, an email notification whenever a job executes for flows where email notification settings have never been modified. As part of this change, each email will contain a richer set of information about the job that was executed.

If needed, this new default setting can be modified:Individual users can override these settings for individual flows. For more information, see Manage Flow Notifications Dialog.

New Azure Key Vault secret permission:

If you are deploying the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform into Azure and are using an Azure Key Vault, the Recover secret permission is now strongly recommended. Soon, this secret permission will be required for all Azure key vaults. For more information, see Configure Azure Key Vault.

Flow collaborators can now edit custom SQL:

Collaborators on a flow who have the flow editor permission can now edit any custom SQL used in importing datasets into the flow.

Deprecated

Hortonworks support:

The Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) is no longer supported. Please switch to using a supported version of Cloudera (CDH or CDP). For more information, see Product Support Matrix.

Note

As part of the above deprecation, the following Hortonworks-only integrations are no longer available for the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform:

  • Hive Warehouse Connector

  • High Availability for Hive

  • Zookeeper Quorum

High Availability on AWS:

  • In prior releases, documentation was published for installing the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform in a highly available environment on AWS using an EKS (Kubernetes) cluster.

  • This method of high availability deployment is no longer supported. For more information, see End of Life and Deprecated Features.

  • You can still deploy an HA installation in AWS using the standard on-premises method. For more information, see Install for High Availability.

Custom data types from dictionary files:

  • Custom types via dictionary are no longer supported.

    Tip

    As a replacement, you can create a custom type using regular expressions. This method is suitable for data types that follow a describable pattern or have relatively few unique values. For more information, see Create Custom Data Types Using RegEx.

    Note

    For custom data types that contain a large number of discrete values, you can import your dictionary file as an imported dataset and then perform a left join between the column to validate and the imported dataset to determine if the column values are valid. For more information, see Validate Column Values against a Dataset.

    For more information, see End of Life and Deprecated Features.

Planned deprecation

In a subsequent release of Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta Enterprise Edition:

  • Support for Java 8 will be deprecated. Customers must migrate to using Java 11. Additional instructions will be provided.

    Tip

    For Release 9.2, Java 11 is supported at runtime only.

  • Java 11 requires Spark 3.x. When Java 8 is deprecated, support for Spark 2.x will be deprecated. Customers must migrate to using Spark 3.x. Additional instructions will be provided.

  • These changes have the following implications:

    • Cloudera clusters do not support Spark 3.x. Customers using these running environments must migrate to Cloudera Data Platform.

    • Some deployments of EMR can migrate to using Spark 3.x in this release. For more information, see Configure for EMR.

    • Some deployments of Databricks can migrate to using Spark 3.x in this release. For more information:

  • For more information on these changes, please contact Alteryx Support.

Key Bug Fixes

Ticket

Description

TD-70522

Cannot import converted files such as Excel, PDF, or JSON through SFTP connections.

TD-69279

Test Connection button fails a ValidationFailed error when editing a working connection configured with SSH tunneling.

TD-69004

Patch httpd to version 2.4.54

TD-66185

Flatten transformation cannot handle multi-character delimiters.

New Known Issues

Ticket

Description

TSMC-115

Connection Error: org.apache.hadoop.security.KerberosAuthException: failure to login: for principal: <redacted> from keytab

error.

Release 9.1

March 10, 2022

What's New

Databricks:

Support for Databricks 10.x using Spark 3.2.0.

Note

Some versions of Databricks have been deprecated. See below.

Job execution:

The Trifacta Application can check for changes to your dataset's schemas before jobs are executed and optionally halt job execution to prevent data corruption.

Tip

Schema validation can be overridden for individual jobs. For more information, see Run Job Page.

Sample Job IDs:

When a sample is collected, a job ID is generated and displayed in the Trifacta Application. These job IDs enable you to identify the sample jobs.

Import:

For long-loading Parquet datasets, you can monitor the ingest process as you continue your work.

Note

NOTE: This feature is in Beta release.

Note

This feature may require enablement in your deployment. For more information, see Configure JDBC Ingestion.

For more information, seeFlow View Page.

Changes in System Behavior

Snowflake execution:

Support for splitting columns on multiple delimiters during Snowflake pushdown execution. See Snowflake Running Environment.

Nginx:

Upgraded to Nginx 1.20.1.

Deprecated

Databricks:

Note

Supported for Databricks 8.3 has been deprecated. You can downgrade to Databricks 7.3 LTS or upgrade to Databricks 10.

If you have enabled user mode for ADLS Gen2, you must upgrade to Databricks 10. See ADLS Gen2 Access.

For more information, see End of Life and Deprecated Features.

Note

Support for Databricks 5.5 LTS has been deprecated. For more information, see End of Life and Deprecated Features.

Key Bug Fixes

Ticket

Description

TD-60881

For ADLS datasets, parameter indicators in Flow View are shifted by one character.

New Known Issues

None.

Release 9.0

January 31, 2022

What's New

Snowflake Running Environment:

For flows whose datastources and outputs are hosted in Snowflake, you can now push down execution of transformation jobs to Snowflake for much faster execution. For more information, see Snowflake Running Environment.

Connectivity:

Build connections to accessible REST API endpoints.

Warning

This feature is disabled by default. For more information about enabling REST API connectivity in your environment, please contact Alteryx Support.

For more information, see REST API Connections.

Dataset Schema Refresh:

You can now refresh your imported datasets with the current schema information from the source file or table. Schema refresh enables you to capture any changes to the columns in your dataset.

Changes in System Behavior

None.

Deprecated

None.

Key Bug Fixes

Ticket

Description

TD-68162

Flow parameters cannot be displayed or edited in the Transformer page and cannot embedded in recipe steps.

New Known Issues

None.

Release 8.11

January 10, 2022

What's New

Performance:

  • Improved performance during design time through intelligent caching of recipe steps.

    Note

    NOTE: This feature is in Beta release.

  • Improvements in job execution performance, due to skipping some output validation steps for file-based outputs.

    Note

    When scheduled or API jobs are executed, no validations are performed of any writesettings objects. Issues with these objects may cause failures during transformation or publishing stages of job execution.

EMR:

Changes in System Behavior

Sample sizes can be increased up to 40MB

Prior to this release, the size of a sample was capped at 10MB. This size represented:

  • the actual size of the sample object stored in the base storage layer

  • the default maximum size of the sample displayed in the Trifacta Application. This sample size can be reduced from 10MB, if needed.

Beginning in this release:

  • The actual size of the stored sample has increased to 40MB.

    Note

    On backend storage, sample sizes are now four times larger than in previous releases. For datasources that require decompression or conversion, actual storage sizes may exceed this 40 MB limit.

    Note

    These limits are configurable. See Changes to Configuration.

  • The size of the sample displayed for a recipe can be configured to be up to 40MB in size by individual users.

For more information, see Change Recipe Sample Size.

Data type mismatches can now be written out in CSV format

Beginning in this release, for CSV outputs mismatched values are written as regular values by default. In prior releases, mismatched values were written as null values in CSV outputs.

SeeImprovements to the Type System.

Deprecated

Embedded onboarding tour is deprecated

In prior releases, Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta Enterprise Edition included a tour that walked users through the application. When the tour was enabled, it was accessible through the Home page.

This tour has been superseded by other resources, including tours available through in-app messaging, example flows and datasets, and training.

For more information, see End of Life and Deprecated Features.

Key Bug Fixes

None.

New Known Issues

Ticket

Description

TD-68162

Flow parameters cannot be displayed or edited in the Transformer page and cannot embedded in recipe steps.

Tip

To edit your flow parameters, select Parameters from the Flow View context menu.

Note

There is no current workaround for embedding in recipe steps. While your existing parameters should continue to work at execution time, avoid changing names of your flow parameters or editing recipe steps in which they are referenced. New flow parameters cannot be used in recipes at this time.

Release 8.10

November 22, 2021

What's New

Session Management:

You can view the current and recent sessions for your account in the Trifacta Application. As needed, you can revoke any unfamiliar devices or sessions. For more information, see Sessions Page.

Changes in System Behavior

Ingestion:

Maximum permitted record length has been increased from 1 MB to 20 MB. For more information, see Working with JSON v2.

Note

This new default limit can be modified if you are experiencing performance issues. See Configure Application Limits.

Publishing:

Improvements to publishing of Alteryx Date values to Snowflake. For more information, see Improvements to the Type System.

Split transformation:

When splitting a column based on positions, the positions no longer need to be listed in numeric order. See Changes to the Language.

Deprecated

None.

Key Bug Fixes

None.

New Known Issues

None.

Release 8.9

October 26, 2021

What's New

Plans:

  • Create plan tasks to delete files and folders from file-based backend storage.

    For more information, see Create Delete Task.

  • You can now reference output metadata from within your plans. See Plan Metadata References.

Collaboration:

  • You can view the list of collaborators and their corresponding avatars on shareable objects, such as Flows, Plans, and Connections pages.

Sampling:

  • Adjust the size of samples loaded in the browser for your current recipe to improve performance and address low-memory conditions. See Change Recipe Sample Size.

Changes in System Behavior

None.

Deprecated

None.

Key Bug Fixes

None.

New Known Issues

None.

Release 8.8

October 12, 2021

What's New

Flow View:

  • Updated context panel for output objects. For more information, see View for Outputs.

Changes in System Behavior

Import:

Improvements have been made in how double quotes are handled in CSV files during import to align Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta Enterprise Edition with other systems that support CSV import.

  • Example values in source CSV file:

    """My product""",In stock,"16,000",0.05

    Note that the value 16,000 must be double-quoted, since the value contains a comma, which is the field delimiter.

  • Previously, this value appeared in the Transformer page in columns as the following:

    c1

    c2

    c3

    c4

    """My product"""
    In stock
    "16,000"
    0.05

  • As of this version, the Trifacta Application handles the values in a better manner when displaying them in the Transformer page:

    c1

    c2

    c3

    c4

    "My product"
    In stock
    16,000
    0.05

    • c1: Escaped values (tripe double-quotes) in the source no longer render in the application as triple double-quotes and are represented as quoted values.

    • c3: Note that the double quotes in c3 have been stripped. Leading and trailing quotes are trimmed if the quotes are balanced within a cell.

      Note

      This change in behavior applies only to newly created imported datasets sourced from a CSV file. Existing imported datasets should not be affected. However, if a newly imported dataset is transformed by a previously existing recipe that compensated for the extra quotes in the Transformer page, the effects on output data could be unpredictable. These recipes and their steps should be reviewed.

      This change does apply to any newly imported dataset sourced from CSV and may cause the data to change. For example, if you export an older flow and import into a new workspace or project, this change in parsing behavior applies to the datasets that are newly created in the new environment. Recipes may require review upon import.

  • When results are generated in CSV, output files should continue to reflect the formatting of the source data before import. See above.

    Tip

    You can also choose the Include quotes option when creating a CSV output.

    • When profiling is enabled, values that appear in CSV as "" are now marked as missing.

Deprecated

None.

Key Bug Fixes

None.

New Known Issues

Ticket

Description

TD-63974

In imported datasets sourced from CSV files, double quotes that are escaped with a backslash ( \"backslash-escaped value\") can cause remainder of row to be compressed into a single cell.

In this section: