Introducing Automation Sharing and Collaboration

Emile_Koslowski · Jul 2, 2025 12:13:38 AM

This capability has been rolled out across regions over time:

May 5th: India, Japan, Middle East, Sweden (completed)
June 4th: Asia Pacific, Germany, United Kingdom, Singapore (completed)
June 9th: United States (completed)
June 12th: Europe (completed)
June 26th: Qlik Cloud Government

With the introduction of shared automations, it is now possible to create, run, and manage automations in shared spaces.

Allow other users to run an automation

Limit the execution of an automation to specific users.

Every automation has an owner. When an automation runs, it will always run using the automation connections configured by the owner. Any Qlik connectors that are used will use the owner's Qlik account. This guarantees that the execution happens as the owner intended it to happen.

The user who created the run, along with the automation's owner at run time, are both logged in the automation run history.

These are five options on how to run an automation:

Run an automation from the Hub and Catalog
Run an automation from the Automations activity center
Run an automation through a button in an app

You can now allow other users to run an automation through the Button object in an app without needing the automation to be configured in Triggered run mode. This allows you to limit the users who can execute the automation to members of the automation's space.

More information about using the Button object in an app to trigger automation can be found in How to run an automation with custom parameters through the Qlik Sense button.
Programmatic executions of an automation
1. Automations API: Members of a shared space will be able to run the automations over the /runs endpoint if they have sufficient permissions.
2. Run Automation and Call Automation blocks
Note for triggered automations: the user who creates the run is not logged as no user specific information is used to start the run. The authentication to run a triggered automation depends on the Execution Token only.

Collaborate on existing automations

Collaborate on an automation through duplication.

Automations are used to orchestrate various tasks; from Qlik use cases like reload task chaining, app versioning, or tenant management, to action-oriented use cases like updating opportunities in your CRM, managing supply chain operations, or managing warehouse inventories.

Collaborate through duplication

To prevent users from editing these live automations, we're putting forward a collaborate through duplication approach. This makes it impossible for non-owners to change an automation that can negatively impact operations.

When a user duplicates an existing automation, they will become the owner of the duplicate. This means the new owner's Qlik account will be used for any Qlik connectors, so they must have sufficient permissions to access the resources used by the automation. They will also need permissions to use the automation connections required in any third-party blocks.

Automations can be duplicated through the context menu:

As it is not possible to display a preview of the automation blocks before duplication, please use the automation's description to provide a clear summary of the purpose of the automation:

Extended context menus

With this new delivery, we have also added new options in the automation context menu:

Start a run from the context menu in the hub
Duplicate automation
Move automation to shared space
Edit details (owners only)
Open in new tab (owners only)

Context menu for owners:

Context menu for non-owners:

Monitoring

The Automations Activity Centers have been expanded with information about the space in which an automation lives. The Run page now also tracks which user created a run.

Note: Triggered automation runs will be displayed as if the owner created them.

Administration Center

The Automations view in Administration Center now includes the Space field and filter.

The Runs view in Administration Center now includes the Executed by and Space at runtime fields and filters.

Activity Center

The Automations view in Automations Activity Center now includes Space field and filter.

Note: Users can configure which columns are displayed here.

The Runs view in the Automations Activity Center now includes the Space at runtime, Executed by, and Owner fields and filters.

In this view, you can see all runs from automations you own as well as runs executed by other users. You can also see runs of other users's automations where you are the executor.

Run history details

To see the full details of an automation run, go to Run History through the automation's context menu. This is also accessible to non-owners with sufficient permissions in the space.

The run history view will show the automation's runs across users, and the user who created the run is indicated by the Executed by field.

Metrics

The metrics tab in the automations activity center has been deprecated in favor of the automations usage app which gives a more detailed view of automation consumption.

paulcalvet · ‎2025-06-10

Hello,

Do you have any news for the deployment of this feature in Europe (Ireland) ?

Thanks

Sonja_Bauernfeind · ‎2025-06-10

Hello @paulcalvet

Not as of yet. I will update the post once I know more (and can tag you in the reply).

All the best,
Sonja

Sonja_Bauernfeind · ‎2025-06-13

Hello @paulcalvet

The article has been updated. The last European region was completed yesterday.

All the best,
Sonja

paulcalvet · ‎2025-06-13

thank you @Sonja_Bauernfeind !

ChristopherBirnbaum · ‎2025-07-25

Having automations available in a shared environment is a good first step into truly collaborating on automations and having a useable replacement for QMC from on-prem.

However enabling collaboration through duplication has a few major downsides compared to collaboration by editing the same object (like for Scripts or Sense Apps). See the use case below:

we use automations for reload task chaining, therefore we have a main automations, that calls sub-automations per APP via automation-ID.

in a shared development environement, developer A creates the main automation initially, if someone else (Developer B) has to change the automation to include a new sub-automation or fix a bug, he cannot do that. He has to copy the existing automation and adjust automation-IDs in all blocks, if other automations had to be changed as well. Ultimately the original automation has to be disabled/deleted.

This is not a very "collaborative" approach and error prone.

workarounds i can think of so far:

change the owner of an automation (requires tenant admin permissions!)
- in case tenant admin permissions must not be granted easily, a tenant admin (call him Admin X) could create an automation to change the owner of certain automations for the DEV team, so the dev-team could run it on demand to be able to change & thus edit the main-automation (but this is just a workaround to have "collaborative editing" allowed)
implement a combination of "list automation" & "get automation" blocks before the "call automation" block to search for the most recent version of an automation by name regardless of owner and using the output of the "get automation" block as input for "call automation" (this adds a lot of complexity to a task-chain of multiple app-reloads)

Concluding: are there more changes regarding true collaboration features with "Qlik Automate" on the roadmap or is the current status of collaboration the end of the line?

Sonja_Bauernfeind · ‎2025-07-25

Hello @ChristopherBirnbaum

Thank you for your comprehensive feedback! I've forwarded it to the appropriate team.

As for future improvements and more direct input, I'd like to invite you to provide this through our Ideation platform, which the respective product teams actively monitor.

All the best,
Sonja

dyy · ‎2025-10-14

The person who configures the button to trigger the automation MUST BE the same user as the owner of the automation to pass the execution token. The automation owner reconfigured the button in our app and the automation now works. Prior to that we were getting 403 not authorized error. @Emile_Koslowski correct me if wrong.

Introducing Automation Sharing and Collaboration