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Self service reporting

Hi All,

I have a client that currently has QlikView licenses (and therefore is interested in sticking with QlikView if possible). They are a bit underwhelmed with the product. Specifically they wanted to have 'self-service reporting'.

In essence they wanted to use QlikView as a tool in which all there staff could build dashboards to suit their individual needs. I don't want to mention the dirty word of "Tabl..." but my understanding is that to create useful dashboards QlikView requires skilled QlikView users to develop dashboards that are then consumed by the majority of the users. My understanding is that some 'other' tools are a bit more focused on setting up the bare minimum and allowing the average user to explore and manipulate the data as they wish. I am keen to understand if this perception is fair and well founded or a bit of a myth.

I'm suggesting that Qlikview is a little bit more static. You gather requirements, setup relevant dashboards, then allow the user to explore the data within those dashboards.

Is this fair, or are we not fully utilizing the potential. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. I am by no means aiming to create an argument between QlikView and other technologies but rather just want to get peoples thoughts and understand what tends to work for organizations that have the same aim as my client (e.g. Ideally every user can create/develop there own dashboards without being constrained by pre-designed dashboards from 'experts').

I also presume that from a license perspective if let’s say the organization decides to have 20 super users who will develop skills in designing dashboards within Qlikview and then they will provide assistance/design the dashboards for the rest of the users. Those 20 users would all require a named license?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and input.

Dan

7 Replies
jonathandienst
Partner - Champion III
Partner - Champion III

Daniel

This looks like a client of mine who were using Qlikview as a sort of super-Excel for performing analysis on multi-million row data sets - usually pivot tables. There are a number of drawbacks to this approach:

  • It can be expensive, as every user needs a named CAL, a server is still required if you want to manage the CALs centrally.
  • There is no data governance (the same applies to Excel). This can lead to "different versions of the truth", and are especially a problem in instances such as in banking or other regulated industries. No data audit trails and no formal testing.
  • The data sets are limited to what can be loaded on a desktop system. QV is memory based, and the models are therefore memory bound. Server systems can have 10x - 500x as much memory as a desktop system and can easily handle data sets with >100 million rows.

Often you have a few "super-users" creating models and the rest simply consuming those models, so it not entirely self-service.

HTH

Jonathan

Logic will get you from a to b. Imagination will take you everywhere. - A Einstein
Not applicable
Author

My client is planning on using a data warehouse and performing as many calculations within the data warehouse as possible. By doing this it should minimise the issue or different versions of the truth, but I understand that as you state it will still be an issue for them.

And thank you for making the licencing consequence very clear, that could potentially end up costing more in licences then the value that the product is adding if not managed carefully.

rajeshvaswani77
Specialist III
Specialist III

Hi Dan,

I agree with Jonathan on this. In case its not 100% self service BI that is being looked for then the approach would be.

Based on Business requirements the dashboards should be created. The dashboard which is developed by a QlikView expert would have a normal star schema with General field names. An additional sheet would be provided in the dashboard and only that sheet will have permissions for users to create their objects using the available fields and be able to enter their own expressions. This approach is followed in some organizations.

In case the users are no too technical then expect lot of queries.

thanks,

Rajesh Vaswani

jonathandienst
Partner - Champion III
Partner - Champion III

Daniel

Just in case you misunderstood, you don't avoid licensing with a normal QV server set up - but you have more license options - in addition to named CALs, you can use document CALs and session CALs, which may be more cost effective. Desktop only works with named CALs.

Regards

Jonathan

Logic will get you from a to b. Imagination will take you everywhere. - A Einstein
rajeshvaswani77
Specialist III
Specialist III

To add one more thought to this. QlikView is in-memory and a Self Service BI tool, since the user can ask questions by clicking on any of the values and be able to see what the result is and as well as what the result is not. This is unlike other normal reporting tools where we just give the required input parameters and then wait for the result.

thanks,

Rajesh Vaswani

Not applicable
Author

Rajesh Vaswani Jonathan Dienst

I appreciate that to call it a bit 'static' is perhaps a little unfair and that even with a pre-designed dashboard the user has the chance to explore in a way that isn't possible with tradditional tools.

When I have created dashboards in the past it hasn't been in an environment where users don't do anything more than bookmarking things they find interesting. I therefore don't have any experience with users creating their own objects. I have had a play with one of the QlikView demo apps to familarise myself with what is possible. It seems to offer pretty good flexibility. One obvious limitation is that the dashboard is constrained to the data model that was used to create the QVW file and therefore if the user wants to use a different set of fields or do something like PEEK at the previous require they won't be able to, without sending it back to the QVW designer to add in the funcation.

Are you able to outline what other limitations (if any) exist using the web view to create objects?

Thanks in advance for your help.

rajeshvaswani77
Specialist III
Specialist III

Hi Daniel,

In web view the existing fields have to be used. All objects that are available out of box can be used. The user will be able to add dimensions and expressions as well. Security Permissions need to be explicitly given to the sheet that will be used to create the objects. The permissions would be allow user to add, modify, copy, remove objects. Also the objects that the user creates will be private to that user. Other users will not be able to see them.

Bookmarks on other hand could be shared ones or private ones.

thanks,

Rajesh Vaswani