Enable Delete Pending Suggestions

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

Applies from version 2025.1.2

By default, any workflow edit (except renaming) automatically discards all pending suggestions, requiring users to recreate them.

Starting with version 2025.1.2, it’s possible to enable an alternative behavior that retains pending suggestions by default:

  • On customer-managed (on-premise) instances, Server Admins enaable it via alation_conf.

  • Alation Cloud Service customers can request server configuration changes through Alation Support.

When this feature is enabled, users editing a workflow can choose whether to delete or retain pending suggestions after applying a change to the workflow. Learn more about how users work with this feature in Retaining or Removing Pending Suggestions.

Enabling this feature doesn’t change the behavior of existing workflows until they are edited and republished.

To enable the option to retain pending suggestions after modifying a workflow:

Use alation_conf to set the parameter alation.workflows.dev_retain_suggestions_on_workflow_edit_ability to True.

  • Default value: False (feature is disabled until explicitly enabled)

  • A system restart is not required for changes to this parameter to take effect.

Setting this parameter to True enables the feature and adds a Delete Pending Suggestions toggle within the workflow editor dialog:

  • The toggle’s default state is Off.

  • When the toggle is Off, pending suggestions are retained after a workflow is modified and saved.

  • When the toggle is manually set to On for a specific workflow, pending suggestions are deleted after the workflow is modified and republished.

On how to use alation_conf, see Use alation_conf.

Note

Alation Cloud Service customers can request server configuration changes through Alation Support.

To revert to the default behavior where pending suggestions are always deleted upon workflow modification:

Use alation_conf to set the configuration parameter alation.workflows.dev_retain_suggestions_on_workflow_edit_ability back to False.

Setting this parameter to False disables the feature:

  • The Delete Pending Suggestions toggle is removed from the workflow editor dialog.

  • Alation returns to the default behavior of automatically deleting pending suggestions when any workflow is modified.