topic Re: Media extension for Qlik SaaS in Management & Governance

Media extension for Qlik SaaS

madsgrathe — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:25:13 GMT

Anyone know of a good media extension for Qlik SaaS?

I would like to show pictures hosted on an external sites in a dashboard - for instance Facebook or Instagram post pictures - in a single object.

So far the only media 'friendly' extension I have gotten to work in Qlik SaaS is the Climber Cards extensions and that's not really what I need.

Thank you in advance for any help you might be able to provide.

Kind regards,
Mads

Re: Media extension for Qlik SaaS

madsgrathe — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:32:13 GMT

Ok, so I ended up finding a solution 😁 I'm posting it here for anyone who might run into a similar problem.

First things first: We need to go into the Management Console of the Qlik SaaS tenant, under 'Content Security Policy' and add the site that hosts the picture to the list of sites. Multiple sites can use the same name but you need to enter the URL into the 'Origin' field. In the 'Directive' field I checked off 'img-src' and 'media-src' and it is working so far for Facebook posts.

Then I used the excellent 'Advanced KPI' extension developed by Qlik's own @Dennis_Jaskowiak (thank you, Dennis, for a very useful extension, not only for this purpose!). His extension allows us to CSS code to define the background of the KPI object. Just go to object properties under Appearance -> Background and set Switch Background to 'On', set 'Switch to CSS' to 'On' and edit the CSS definition in the expression editor. I entered the following in the CSS expression:

='{ "background-image": "url( '&[Picture_URL_Datafield]&' ","background-size" : "contain" , "background-position" : "center" , "background-repeat" : "no-repeat" }'

Since the [Picture_URL_DataField] contains a specific URL for the Picture of each Facebook Post in my data, this lets me use the data model to filter to a specific post and show the picture from that post.

Works like a charm 😎

Re: Media extension for Qlik SaaS

Dennis_Jaskowiak — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:16:12 GMT

Awesome idea. Didn't even know this object could work as a media extension for SaaS 😁. Currently, I'm thinking about an object to bring in plain HTML and that is optimized for CSS usage. SaaS is a good point for that. Thank you very much for your post.

Re: Media extension for Qlik SaaS

madsgrathe — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:31:43 GMT

I just noticed that I wrote

Since the [Picture_URL_DataField] contains a specific URL for each Facebook Post in my data

...when what I meant was:
Since the [Picture_URL_DataField] contains a specific URL for the Picture of each Facebook Post in my data...

Just wanted to clarify that 😁

Re: Media extension for Qlik SaaS

madsgrathe — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 09:33:32 GMT

@Dennis_Jaskowiak wrote:
Awesome idea. Didn't even know this object could work as a media extension for SaaS 😁. Currently, I'm thinking about an object to bring in plain HTML and that is optimized for CSS usage. SaaS is a good point for that. Thank you very much for your post.

You're very welcome. And thank you for building such a powerful and flexible extension. I've begun to use it more and more for my dashboards and analytical apps.

Looking forward to your next extension - I will definitely be checking it out.

Re: Media extension for Qlik SaaS

Dalton_Ruer — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 16:48:43 GMT

Great question and super excited to see others begin extending their environments in Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS.

I created a SaaS Enablement video series, including this one on adding Extensions and demonstrate how to configure the Content Security Policy. https://youtu.be/0As1vc2uqwg

One of my favorite is a You Tube extension from Joe Warbington. It allows you to embed YouTube videos directly into your application. If you are measured based on the amount of time your users spend in y our applications you can simply embed super viral videos to ensure your users spend 15 minutes at least watching the video, to boost your numbers.

Or a better reason is to embed a help/training video directly into the application itself. One that teaches end users how to navigate your application, accomplish A, B, C etc.

For your convenience here is the link to the extension in GitHub and I've commented in GitHub for you so you know what origin and directives you need to get it working. Then you just plop in your YouTube ID to the control and the extension is good to go for your consumers.