Have you ever wanted to create a Gantt chart in QlikView, only to find out that this chart type is not one of the pre-defined charts? Then you should be happy to learn that it is possible to create a Gantt chart and that it is not very difficult. To be able to create this chart, you need some type of event in the data model, where each event has a start date (or time) and possibly also an end date. Further, an event should belong to some grouping, typically a project or a phase in time. Given the above, we can now start making the graph: Create a bar chart with the appropriate event grouping as dimension (e.g., project, phase, or other group of events) Add the duration of the project as expression: Max(EndDate)-Min(StartDate). If you only have one date per event, you just replace both StartDate and EndDate with the date that you have. The duration will then be the time between the first event and the last. Add the start of the project as an offset to the bars: Min(StartDate). [Chart Properties-Expressions-The plus sign to the left of the Expression-Bar Offset] Set the graph orientation to horizontal bars. [Chart Properties-Style-Orientation] Remove the “Force 0” option. This option will force the start of the time axis to be Dec 30th 1899. [Chart Properties-Axes-Expression Axes-Force 0] Format the expression axis labels as dates or as months (e.g. M/D/YY or YYYY MMM). [Chart Properties-Number-Date] Now you should have a Gantt chart. If you want to improve the way it looks, you may want to consider the following suggestions: Add a grid. [Chart Properties-Axes-Expression Axes-Show grid] If you want a label on each bar, add a second expression defining the text for the label and use this as “Value on Data Points.” [Chart Properties-Expressions-Display Options] Don’t forget to disable the “Bar” option for this expression. This is the first check box in the Display Options group. If the chart shows a range which is too large, add static min and static max to define the display range of the expression, e.g. Min(StartDate)-5 and Max(EndDate)+40, respectively. The additional distance on the upper limit is to leave space for the text. The unit is number of days. [Chart Properties-Axes-Scale] If you have a second dimension, you can add this too. But if you do, make sure you use the “Grouped” option and not “Stacked.” The latter does not work well with bar offsets. [Chart Properties-Style-Subtype] You may want to use the same color within each value of the first dimension, e.g., one color per project. One good way to define the color (e.g. RGB values) is to do it already in the dimension table in the script and use this color in a color function in the bar background color, e.g. RGB (ProjR,ProjG,ProjB). [Chart Properties-Expressions-The plus sign to the left of the Expression-Background Color] This Gantt chart solves most cases where you need to display that duration of a group of events. Should you need a more complex Gantt chart, you may need to make it as an extension object instead. HIC ...View More

One of QlikView’s key differentiators is the associative experience, the ability for business users to easily navigate through data sets to not only find answers to their questions, but to also discover new insights, and spot hidden trends. Only QlikView provides business users with this level of flexibility and insight.Once the business users find a key insight or trend though, they might want to compare that with a slightly different view. For example, if they find that bike and accessory sales in Europe have flattened out over the last few quarters, they might wonder how that compares with the rest of Europe. Of course with QlikView they could immediately select the other European countries instead of France and immediately get the answer. But what if they wanted to see those two or more different views side by side?One of the approaches that are used in those situations is using set analysis. With set analysis, it is possible to create data groups in charts and use them for visual comparison. The limitation of set analysis is the person creating set analysis should know about the type of groups that the other users would like to compare and set it up in advance accordingly. QlikView 11 Comparative Analysis (Alternate State is the technical name of the feature) overcomes this challenge. The goal of Comparative Analysis is to make it easier and flexible for business users to see two or more data sets in the same application, alongside each other in the same graph, in graphs next to each other, or even as reference points for calculations and comparisons.Comparative Analysis is a developer enabled capability, meaning developers need to set up the basic framework for comparison in an application. But it is a user-driven feature; meaning business users can then define the selections they want to compare. This video shows how to create alternate states, assign QlikView objects to them, and the concept of inheritance of alternate states. I will post about more creative ways of using alternate states in a couple of weeks, stay tuned! ...View More

Have you ever wondered what it takes to create QlikView extensions? Here’s someone who knows: Brian Munz, QlikView extensions “imagineer,” as I think of him. His official title is web technology lead on the demo and best practices team. Brian was the lead developer for the current version of demo.qlik.com and the version of AccessPoint that ships with QlikView Server in QlikView 11.Since QlikView 10 (released October, 2010) QlikView has enabled customers and partners to create extensions; web developers can bring custom and third-party data functionality or visualizations into QlikView, where they become fully interactive just like native capabilities. “Some of the cooler extensions I’ve seen,” said Brian, “are very powerful in terms of utility. It’s not solely about custom visualizations. You can use extensions to connect on the back end to other products (like Google Analytics) or add a Twitter feed or button, or detect browsers and devices . . . those kinds of things.” Brian has built mapping extensions, which plot regions on map (colors and shades them) based on data points, using Google Maps and open source mapping tools. He also created a geolocation extension, which enables the app to find the user’s current location (check it out here). I asked Brian what it takes to build QlikView extensions and here’s the way he put it: “A lot of work is around answering the question, ‘What am I trying to show?’ Once you figure that out, it’s about connecting to the data. Web developers often deal with SQL and MySQL — with databases with rows and columns. With a QlikView extension, the data comes into the extension the same way. Once you get the syntax right for pulling the data out of the source system, you say, ‘Oh, I know how to do this. I've done it a million times before.’ You then have to decide how the extension should communicate back to QlikView. A web developer who has worked with Ajax or JavaScript APIs can learn to do this without too much headache.”To create extensions, you need some level of JavaScript coding proficiency. To create a fairly simple extension, you could search for code snippets and paste them together. If you want to do something more complicated, you need heavy-duty JavaScript coding skills. It also helps to have a general level of comfort with other Web technologies like CSS and HTML. How long it takes to build a typical extension object? “There really isn't ‘typical,’” Brian said. “It depends what the extension object is. If it's enormously complicated it could take months. If it’s simple, like a marquee that scrolls across the top of the screen, showing KPIs, that could be done in an hour. Creating an extension that’s a map that has different regions of the country showing up in different colors takes longer, compared to just integrating with an existing JavaScript library.” Building QlikView extensions can take as little or long as any web project.“The beauty of it,” Brian said, “is in the combination. Web technology is extremely powerful, and so is QlikView. Having them work together seamlessly increases the total full power of QlikView.” ...View More

Eighteen years ago I had just started a new job at QuikTech (no that’s not a typo) and my boss – one of the two founders – dropped a shrink-wrapped FoxPro database in my lap while saying: “You see, I have this idea about color coding information – green, white and gray. Can you see if you can achieve that with this database?” At the same time, two other people in the company were given the same task but with other tools – Excel and a multimedia tool called Authorware. Neither of us succeeded very well, so we decided to call a really good developer that two of us knew from university and ask him if he could do something in C++. A couple of months later we had the first version of QuikView, later renamed QlikView. It had list boxes and nothing else. No tables, no graphs, no aggregations, no numerical calculations. We sold these early versions to companies that needed logical visualization of data. Many things have changed since, but the core in QlikView is still the same: The logical inference engine; the user selects a field value and QlikView answers by indicating which other values are implied by the selection and which are excluded. QlikView was different from all other tools on the market in that it was not a number-crunching tool – it was a tool for visualizing logical relationships. QlikView is still today different from all other tools in this regard. In fact, the logical inference engine is what enables the user to explore data freely without predefined search paths, which is the core of Business Discovery. The first two years with QlikTech, I had many hats. At the same time I was the project manager, the product manager, the R&D manager, the technical writer and the pre-sales consultant. But we did not use these labels then. We did not have clear roles and flexibility was important. Since then, I have implemented numerous QlikView solutions and been heavily involved in defining new QlikView versions. Today, my responsibilities have moved toward communication about the product. Hence, the QlikView Design Blog. Here, I and other “QlikTechies” will write about how to build QlikView solutions. We will write about scripting, visual design, extensions, server configuration, do’s and don’ts, etc. It will sometimes be very technical and sometimes not. Please give us feedback on the content. Send us questions and suggestions. We are here for you. Welcome to the QlikView Design Blog! Henric Cronström, Technical Product Advocate ...View More