Qlik Cloud Analytics: Is it Possible to Recover a Deleted App or Sheet?

[Chip_Matejowsky]

Can deleted Qlik Cloud apps or sheets be recovered? Can apps, sheets, or automations owned by a deleted user be recovered?

Once an app or sheet has been deleted it cannot be recovered.

 

The following cannot be recovered:

• A deleted app
• A deleted sheet

The following can be recovered

Specific conditions are required.

• Orphaned apps (created when the user has been deleted)
• Orphaned personal Objects belonging to a deleted user
• Orphaned Automations belonging to a deleted user

 

Orphaned Apps

Orphaned apps can be reassigned. See Qlik Cloud Analytics: Can the owner of orphaned Apps be changed after the owner is deleted? for instructions.

For more information about what to consider before deleting a user, see Deleting users.

Orphaned Objects

As long as authentication is done using an OAuth client, and the admin.apps scopes are enabled, Orphaned Objects can be reassigned. This can be achieved using the APIs or qlik-cli.

For additional reading, see:

• OAuth Scopes
• APIs: Sets owner on an app object. The user must be the owner of the object.
• QLIK-CLI: app object change-owner

Example using qlik-cli:

1. Create an OAuth client (Create a M2M OAuth2 client)
2. Verify the admin.apps scopes are enabled
3. Authenticate using the OAuth client (Connecting to Qlik Cloud with OAuth)
4. List all objects within an app by running:

   qlik app object ls -a APPID

   We currently don't show the current owner of each object. You will need to find a way to identify the correct object.

5. Reassign the object by running:

   qlik app object change-owner --appId APPID --objectId OBJECTID --ownerId NEWOWNERID

Best Practices

Qlik suggests the following techniques to ensure no work is lost:

• Duplicate the app to the same or different 'Shared' or 'Personal' space
• Setup a test or 'recycle bin' space where duplicated apps are kept until it has been verified that the app can be fully deleted
• If space is a concern, export the app without data and re-import it to the 'recycle bin' space. This will allow you to keep an empty master copy of the app

Qlik has received feedback in the past to implement a recovery feature: Recycle bin for SaaS editions of Qlik Sense (#279017) (Log in to Qlik Ideation to leave comments and vote.)

[arychener]

Hi @Chip_Matejowsky,

I've just noticed that deleting a user means deleting his automations...
I'm surprised by this behavior, which isn't at all what's described in the help file: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/cloud-services/Subsystems/Hub/Content/Sense_Hub/Admin/SaaS-delete-users....

Is this a new behavior? Does the help need updating?

Does the deletion concern all resources (spaces, data connections, etc.)?

Thanks a lot for your clarifications.

Regards,

Amélie

[arychener]

In addition, this article seems to say the opposite: https://community.qlik.com/t5/Official-Support-Articles/Qlik-Cloud-Analytics-Can-the-owner-of-orphan...

[Sonja_Bauernfeind]

Hello @arychener 

We've updated the article to better reflect other items such as automations and have linked it over to the help site as well as the orphaned app article. However please note that the article originally aims to answer the question of whether or not apps or sheets can be recovered.

I'll also reach out to our documentation team to have the "Delete User" section reviewed and have automations added.

All the best,
Sonja 

[arychener]

Hello @Sonja_Bauernfeind,

Thanks a lot for your feedback and these clarifications.

Are you confirming that only the automations of a deleted user are also deleted?

Best regards

Amélie

[Sonja_Bauernfeind]

Hello @arychener 

The consequences of deleting a user are listed here:

• The user is no longer available in the tenant.
• API keys associated with the user are revoked.
• User entitlement becomes available for reassignment.
• Spaces, apps, scripts, and data connections must be reassigned to a new owner.
• If the user is the owner of a reload schedule, ownership must be reassigned or a new schedule created to prevent scheduled reload failures.
• Audit logs in the Administration activity center contain details of the deleted user event.
• Notifications and alerts owned by the user are also deleted from the system.

This is currently missing the statement of what items are lost, so I have updated this article with:

The following cannot be recovered:

• A deleted app
• A deleted sheet
• Personal objects belonging to a deleted user
• Automations belonging to a deleted user

This information should be on the help site, which I am putting into motion.

All the best,
Sonja

[arychener]

It's very clear!

Thanks a lot @Sonja_Bauernfeind 

Best regards

Amélie

[PythonMCSJ]

Hi,

Just wanted to share our experience.

A customer of ours were recently in this particular situation, in which multiple IDP (Azure) users were deleted in the Qlik Cloud tenant, because of a rogue automation mistakenly calling the Delete User API endpoint. They reached out to Qlik Support, but were told that there was nothing to be done. No disaster recovery, no nothing.

Luckily, they were using an external backup solution (Qloud Cover Backup). Using the Qloud Cover Backup solution, together we were able to restore the deleted users (with their user license and roles as well). This process gave each user a new user ID in Qlik Cloud, leading to content still being owned by the deleted users. With the new users now in Qlik Cloud, we could restore the automations through the backup tool, by overwriting the target owners (also done with the tool).

What we could then observe was very similar to what @Sonja_Bauernfeind describes. Apps, data connections, data files, notes etc were owned by the deleted users. However, a very important point here, is that:

     Private and community content (sheets, bookmarks, stories) were NOT DELETED

in the orphaned apps. Despite the user being deleted, they were still there - as orphaned sheets, invisible for all users (since the owner was deleted). Because of this fact, we were able to move all the sheets, bookmarks and stories back to their original owners, using an OAuth M2M token and a Powershell script. For the rest of the objects (apps, data connections etc), these were moved using automations, using mappings for the old user ID's to the new user ID's. All done within a few hours.

Hope this can help someone in a similar situation.

Kind regards,

PythonMCSJ