Refreshing File-based Data and the New Dropbox Connector - Qlik Sense Cloud Business

[Michael_Tarallo]

Good day Qlik Community! In this article / video - I'm excited to present to you a preview of the new Dropbox connector that comes with Qlik Sense Cloud Business and Qlik Sense Enterprise, available later this month. In short, Qlik Sense can now securely access Dropbox and pull data from Qlik Sense supported file sources, directly from the cloud share. The connector itself, is fairly simple to use. It's just like accessing a local folder structure. However, it gives you another option for storing data files for use with your Qlik Sense apps. It even opens some new techniques for refreshing file-based used by those apps. So, instead of storing data files in my Qlik Sense Cloud Workspace, I can choose to store them in Dropbox. With this approach I can automate a data file upload process when new data arrives..... add that to Qlik Sense Cloud Business and its Schedule Data Refresh capability, and you can completely automate the data upload and Qlik Sense app refresh process!

Want to learn more? Take a look at this brief video below to see how I used the Qlik Sense Dropbox connector and common, freely available Windows tools to make this happen.

NOTE: The approach I take in the video simulates data being written out / updated to disk and then transferred to Dropbox on an automated schedule using a 3rd party scheduler (Windows Task Scheduler). It is completely up to you how you would like to achieve this. For example, you could have a database process export files directly to the Dropbox folder, or even use an ETL tool workflow and its scheduler to write out data to the Dropbox share.

Have more ideas on how this can be achieved? We want to hear from you, so share them in the comments below.

Regards,

Michael Tarallo (@mtarallo) | Twitter

Qlik

Qlik Sense Cloud Business - Dropbox Connector - Refreshing file-based data

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[Clever_Anjos]

It was possible to achieve this using the REST connector and some hard work configurating the DB API and connections.

Great to have this option now

[Michael_Tarallo]

Hi Clever - correct, earlier this year you may recall I created a simple POC with the REST Connector and documented it as a discussion thread here: Update your Qlik Sense Cloud Business workgroup data files with REST and Dropbox - Proof of Concept - it is soooo much easier with this NEW Dropbox connector - Thanks for your comment.

[pedrobergo]

Hi mtarallo‌

It´s a really good news. Save many of our hours.

Do you know if Qlik will do the same for other services, like OneDrive or GoogleDrive?

Tks

[Michael_Tarallo]

Hi Pedro - I have the question out to PM. However we do offer these connectors with our Web Connectors package - just as a reference in case you need more information.

http://help.qlik.com/en-US/connectors/Subsystems/Web_Connectors_help/Content/Setup-deploy/Qlik_Web_C...

Qlik Market  - ‌ you can learn more here:

[tucahernandes]

Hello mtarallo‌

I'm Qlik Cloud Business' subscriber. The dropbox connector option isn't available for me yet. Is it the current situation for all Business' subscribers yet?

[Michael_Tarallo]

‌HI Marcelo  I am told it will be available this month so it could be available anytime from now until the end of November.  Thanks  for your question

[evizcayaretail]

Hi Michael,

I have the same question than an other user:

"I am using Qlik sense Cloud to automatically reload data on a daily basis.

The data I would like to load consist of .csv files from one or more folders, so I don´t only want to load 1 file, but sometimes thousands.

Normally I would just make do this.

1. Load 
2.     data1 
3.     data2 
4. FROM [lib://location-data/*] 

But it fails when I am trying to do the same with DropBox

1. LIB CONNECT TO 'Valuereport (qlikcloud_qlikid)'; 
2. Load 
3.     data1 
4.     data2 
5. FROM [lib://Valuereport (qlikcloud_qlikid_varmekontrol)/folder1\location-data\*] 

And fails when doing it with FTP (Witch I would prefer)

1. Load 
2.     data1 
3.     data2 
4. FROM [lib://valuereportsa (qlikcloud_qlikid)] 

Thanks,

Ernesto Vizcaya

[Michael_Tarallo]

HI Ernesto - thanks for  your question, the reason for this failure is because the connection to dropbox or FTP is not open - let me see if there is some work-around.

[evizcayaretail]

Thanks Michael,

An in this kind of script neither

FOR EACH file in filelist('lib://qlikcloud_qlikid)/location-data/*')

regards,

Ernesto

[Michael_Tarallo]

Hi Ernesto - just got word from the cloud team - multiple file reads in those connectors are not supported. Qlik Sense Enterprise does this support this capability.