Qlik Discovery Agent FAQ

[Sonja_Bauernfeind]

This article answers the most frequently asked questions about Qlik Discovery Agent. It is split into five sub-sections:

• General FAQ
• Availability and Integration
• How does Discovery Agent work?
• Technical FAQ
• Insight Generation Logic

If you are looking for information on how to get started, check out the Discovery Agent Interactive Walkthrough and our Discovery Agent Documentation.

General FAQ

What is Qlik Discovery Agent?

Discovery Agent is an AI-powered, always-on monitoring capability in Qlik Cloud that automatically detects meaningful changes, anomalies, and trends in your data. It requires no rules, thresholds, or manual setup. Discovery Agent identifies spikes, drops, trend shifts, baseline changes, and data quality issues, then delivers clear, plain-language insights in a prioritized feed.

What makes Discovery Agent different from traditional alerting?

Traditional BI alerts rely on predefined thresholds or manual logic. Discovery Agent uses the Qlik Analytics Engine and its associative capabilities to evaluate wide combinations of data relationships automatically and proactively surface only those insights that matter. It is context aware, adaptive, and far more scalable than rules driven systems.

Who is Discovery Agent for?

• Executives who want high-level visibility into what changed
• Business users who need easy-to-read insights without deep analytics skills
• Non-technical users who do not want to build dashboards or rules
• Analysts who want automated detection to replace repetitive KPI monitoring

Availability and Integration

Does Discovery Agent work with Qlik Cloud Analytics?

Yes. Discovery Agent is built directly into Qlik Cloud Analytics and leverages the Qlik Analytics Engine for associative, large scale anomaly detection.

Does Discovery Agent integrate with Qlik Answers?

Yes. You can ask questions directly from an insight card, and context from the insight will be transferred into Qlik Answers.

Is Discovery Agent available on Qlik Sense Enterprise Client-Managed?

No. Discovery Agent is built exclusively for Qlik Cloud.

Does Discovery Agent impact app performance?

No. Monitoring runs outside active dashboards, ensuring no performance impact on live analytics experiences.

Does Discovery Agent follow Qlik Cloud security and governance rules?

Yes. Insight delivery respects user permissions, governed access, and security boundaries.

How does Discovery Agent work?

How does Discovery Agent detect insights?

Discovery Agent analyzes updated app data models using associative evaluation to identify:

• Spikes or dips
• Trend shifts
• New or emerging baselines
• Record highs and lows
• Values above or below expected patterns
• Missing or inconsistent data

No rules or thresholds are required.

Is Discovery Agent real-time?

Discovery Agent is always on, but processes changes when the application’s data model updates. Insights refresh after reload and appear in the feed once the system evaluates new data. Updated are currently capped at one reload per day.

How often does the feed refresh?

The feed automatically refreshes upon reload. For most apps, this occurs once per day or whenever new data is introduced.

Can I customize the insights I see?

Yes. You can follow specific apps or insight categories once the Following tab is released. Filtering options are also planned to help tailor results.

Technical FAQ

What are Insight Triggers?

Insight Triggers are structured metric definitions that serve as the foundation for generating analytical insights within the application. Each trigger is composed of a measure or expression,  such as a calculated field or KPI, along with a set of additional configuration parameters. These parameters include the frequency at which the trigger evaluates data and the type of calculation to be applied (example: sum, average, count).

Together, these elements define the conditions under which an insight is surfaced to the user.

Do I Have to Set a Date Period for Each Trigger?

Yes, a date period is required for every trigger you configure.

All insights generated by the system are trend-based, meaning they analyze data over time to identify patterns, changes, or anomalies. This requires a date period to be added to the trigger's associated group. Without a defined time range, the system cannot perform the temporal comparisons necessary to produce meaningful insights.

How Do I Refresh the Insight Feed?

The Insight Feed refreshes automatically each time the page is reloaded. No manual refresh action is required. The feed itself is regenerated once per day, and this regeneration is triggered by the introduction of new data into the application or applications that contain active triggers. As a result, the feed will always reflect the most recent data available as of the last daily reload cycle.

Can I Filter Individual Values in a Dimension?

Filtering functionality is available in the Feed. A Filter button is currently visible at the top of the feed during the preview phase of the application. Users can use this to find specific insights in the feed.

How Many Triggers Can I Create?

• Each application supports a maximum of 50 triggers. For each trigger that has been configured, the system will calculate and present up to 5 insights per reload cycle.
• A tenant-wide guardrail exists to help control the volume of insights in the feed, providing broad analytical coverage across your defined metrics and expressions.

Where Are Triggers Stored?

Triggers are stored directly within the application in which they are created. They are not stored externally or in a centralized repository. That means each application manages its own set of triggers independently, and triggers defined in one application will not carry over to or affect another application.

Can I Ask Questions Directly in the Feed?

Direct question-and-answer functionality within the feed is available.

The Insight Feed is integrated with Qlik Answers, enabling users to ask natural language questions without leaving the feed interface. Because each card displayed in the feed is tied to a specific application, context from the relevant card will be automatically transferred to Qlik Answers to ensure accurate, contextually appropriate responses.

Why Am I Seeing a Large Number of Old Insights?

This behavior is expected and occurs specifically after the first reload following the creation of new triggers.

During this initial reload, the system performs a comprehensive scan of all available historical data, rather than only the most recent data. This allows it to identify any and all qualifying insights across the full dataset. This is a one-time process. All subsequent reloads after this initial one will only evaluate and surface insights based on newly introduced data, so the volume of older insights will not continue to grow with each reload.

Does This Feature Require the Cross-Region Inference Toggle?

Yes. The Insight Feed and its associated trigger functionality require the cross-region inference toggle to be enabled. Please ensure this setting is activated in your environment before attempting to configure triggers or access the feed. If you are unsure how to enable the cross-region inference toggle, contact your system administrator or refer to the relevant configuration documentation.

How Do I Remove Insights from the Feed?

To remove specific insights from the Insight Feed, you must delete the trigger that is generating those insights. Because the feed is dynamically generated based on active triggers, removing a trigger will prevent its associated insights from appearing in future feed reloads.

Deleting a trigger is a permanent action.

If you wish to stop surfacing certain insights temporarily, consider whether disabling or modifying the trigger may be a more appropriate course of action, depending on your platform's available options.

Does This Feature Support Section Access?

Section Access is not currently supported for applications used with the Insight Feed.

Any application that has Section Access enabled is incompatible with this feature at this time. As a result, all users who have been granted access to a given application will be able to see the insights generated from that application's triggers, regardless of any Section Access restrictions that may otherwise apply within that application.

This is an important consideration when deciding which applications to configure with triggers, particularly for datasets that contain sensitive or role-restricted data. Support for Section Access may be introduced in a future release.

Insight Generation Logic

How many data points are required to generate an insight?

Below is the minimum data requirement:

Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly aggregation

• Spike detection, record high/low, model deviation: 4–50 data points
• Trend/baseline change: 20–50 data points

Daily aggregation

• Spike detection, record high/low, model deviation: 7–365 data points
• Trend/baseline change: 20–365 data points

Why am I not getting any insights?

Missing dates in the date field may prevent calculations. Creating a master calendar in the
load script can resolve this. Qlik is exploring options for date imputation.