Accessing your QCC subscription shows the following error message:

Subscription already consumed. 

If you are the user that consumed the subscription, go to qcc.qlik.com to log into the learning platform.

Resolution

Go to https://qcc.qlik.com/  and make certain you are logged in with your Qlik ID.

If you have accessed the page from the registration email, the error is expected as the link is only intended to be used for registration purposes. 

This Techspert Talks session covers:
- How authentication works
- Configuring your own IDP
- Resolving common issues

Environment

• Qlik Cloud
• Qlik Sense Client Managed

00:00 – Intro

01:06 - Authentication Workflow

03:37 - Setup IdP from Okta

06:41 - Setup IdP in Qlik Cloud

09:36 - Create configuration and Validation

11:42 - Recovery URL

12:13 - Importing Groups & Managing Spaces

13:40 - Troubleshooting expired Secret key

14:45 - Troubleshooting Groups

20:05 - Troubleshooting Validation Failure

21:30 - Q&A: How do we connect to users in Google?

22:02 - Q&A: How to set Azure token not expire?

22:46 - Q&A: Do we need to configure AD in tenant for multi-cloud?

23:38 - Q&A: Where is documentation for setting up SSO with ADFS?

24:26 - Q&A: Can multi-cloud use Google authentication?

25:08 - Q&A: Can the same license be used in client-managed and Qlik Cloud?

25:45 - Q&A: Where is documentation for setting up SSO with Ping Federate?

26:20 - Q&A: Can you login with Qlik ID after setting up 3rd party IDP?

26:59 - Q&A: How to map users from old IdP to new IdP?

27:33 - Q&A: How to setup 2-factor authentication?

27:58 - Q&A: Will Email Verified Override create duplicate users?

28:52 - Q&A: How to restrict access to groups?

29:49 - Q&A: Can we connect to multiple Azure IdPs at once?

30:17 - Q&A: Is it possible to use Azure AD and still have manual users?

Resources:

Qlik Cloud: The provided client secret keys are expired. Visit the Azure Portal to create new keys for your app

Qlik Sense SaaS: How to verify group information returned by Azure AD Graph API

Qlik Sense: How to request an OIDC token manually and check if correct attributes are included (PowerShell)

Using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) as an IDP for Qlik Cloud

Click here for video transcript

Introduction

This is a handy tool to run against a diagnostic package downloaded from Replicate. The diagnostic package contains recent log files (less than 10MB) and task information which is helpful for troubleshooting issues.

The goal of the script is to search for common key words or phrases quickly without having to open and read each log manually.

It is meant to be run on a linux environment with bash or shell scripting enabled.  In the steps below, I am connecting to a Centos machine with MobaXterm.  Then I am viewing the report with WinSCP after connecting to the same machine. 

Files

runT.sh : shell script to set up instance folder, and then trigger the health_check.sh script

health_check.sh : script to search through task.json and log files for information related to metadata, errors, warnings and then prints a report.

These files are included in health_check.zip which is attached to the article.  When you unpack them make sure they are executable (chmod +x ..).

Steps

1. Download both scripts and move them to an environment with bash/shell enabled.

2. In the same folder or directory location, upload the diagnostic package as a zipped file.

*Note this can be the only zip file in the directory when running the ./runT.sh

3. When you run the script, ./runT.sh, you must supply and folder name. When I use this, I call the folder the case name, but could be the task name, etc.

Example:

#./runT.sh squeeze_example

This will create a new folder in the directory called 'squeeze_example' with the unzipped contents of the diagnostic package and the report_date.out file.

Here is a sample of the report_date.out file. 

Environment

• Qlik Replicate 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Introduction

The scheduling feature is now available in Qlik AutoML to run a prediction on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence.

Steps

1. Open a deployed model from Qlik Catalog

2. Navigate to 'Dataset predictions' and click on 'Create prediction' on bottom right

3. Select Apply Dataset, Name prediction datset, select your options, then click on 'Create Schedule'

4. Set your schedule options you would like to follow then click confirm

5. Your options now are to 'Save and close' (this will not run a prediction until the next scheduled) or 'Save and predict now' (this will run a prediction now in addition to the schedule)

Note: Users need to ensure the predicted dataset is updated and refreshed ahead of the prediction schedule.

Environment

• Qlik AutoML 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Introduction

I needed to test a ML experiment recently with a QVD instead of a csv file.

Here are the steps I followed below to create a QVD file which was then available in Catalog.

Steps

1. Upload the local csv dataset (or xlsx,etc) and analyze which will create an analytics app

2. Open up the app and navigate to "Data Load Editor"

3. Add a new section under the Auto-generated section (with the + symbol marked with a red arrow above. Note this section must run after the Auto-generated section or will error the data is not loaded.

Add the following statement:

Store train into [lib://DataFiles/train.qvd];

or

Store tablename into [lib://DataFiles/tablename.qvd];

4. Run "Load data"

5. Check Catalog for recently created QVD

Environment

• Qlik AutoML 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Introduction

During the 'Create' phase of an AutoML experiment, there is a section at the right hand pane called 'Data Treatment'.

This section tracks any Feature Type changes you make to your training dataset.

Example

I started the process of creating a ML experiment for the Ames housing dataset.

Then I changed 'Wood Deck SF' and 'Open porch SF' to Categorical instead of Numeric type under the 'Feature Type' column.

The result is these changes are now tracked in the Data Treatment section.

Environment

• Qlik AutoML 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Introduction

This article outlines the steps for generating API keys for AutoML in the Qlik Cloud environment. API keys can be used for real time prediction pipelines.

Steps

1. Log into your Qlik Cloud Environment

2. Navigate to Management Console

3. On left hand side scroll down to Integration-> API Keys

4. Click to open this page. On the right hand side click 'Generate Keys'

An API key is generated.

Copy the API key and store it in a safe place.

Note: you need developer role on your tenant to generate API keys.

Environment

• Qlik AutoML 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Introduction: Setting Error or Warning notifications across all task can generate a large number of notifications. It is recommended to set error or warning notifications for selected task rather than for all task. For this example, we are setting up an error notification on a specific task.

1. Navigate to Server -> New Notification

2. Select 'Task Events' -> Give it a name -> Errors and Warnings -> Any Error

3. Select Recipients -> Select Message

4. On the Associate page choose 'Selected tasks' and select the individual task you would like notifications

5. Finish and complete the notification

Environment

• Qlik Replicate 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Qlik has local training offices around the world. Please contact a local representative for Training and Certification related issues.

You can find Regional contact details at Training Contacts.

Please review the Frequently Asked Questions prior to reaching out.

This guide explains what to do when receiving a training card and how to proceed to book a course in order to redeem it.

1. Select the training course from here 
2. Click Add to Cart.
3. Click Checkout.
4. If not yet logged in on Qlik.com, log in using your username and password.
5. An overview of the selection made should appear.
6. Click Continue.
7. Select payment method Training Card and insert the Training Card Number.
8. Hit Submit.

In this article we will go through the steps to view newly imported QVDs within the Qlik Catalog environment

Environment

• Qlik Catalog 

1. Login as the Podium User
2. Navigate to the Security Module
3. Select the Groups Tab
4. Select Add Group
5. Create your Group Name
6. In the Select Sources window, select the name of your QVD source
7. Add existing groups to this group
8. Assign roles to the users within that group
9. Add whichever source connections you would like this group to have access too
10. Finish Configuring the Group
11. Logout of the Podium User
12. Login as a user from the newly created group

This session addresses:
-Understanding new SaaS capability
-How to get started
-Troubleshooting common issues

Environment

• Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS
• Qlik Application Automation

 

00:00 - Intro

01:08 - What is Qlik Reporting Service

01:45 - Difference from NPrinting

04:28 - 1st: Sheet Size should match Paper Size

05:32 - 2nd: Reports based on Public Sheets

06:18 - Creating an Automation from Templates

07:30 - Creating Report Automation from scratch

10:18 - Previewing the Report File Size

11:02 - Troubleshooting automation workflow

11:50 - How to skip a block

12:25 - Reviewing Automation logs in QMC Catalog

13:02 - Identifying and correcting errors

13:43 - Information to create a Support Case

14:34 - Limitations

15:18 - QnA: Can you see the file size of a report?

15:56 - QnA: Can you see how many times a report is downloaded?

16:18 - QnA: How does this compare to NPrinting?

16:59 - QnA: Does this work with QlikView?

17:08 - QnA: Can any app be used to generate a report?

17:32 - QnA: Can Reporting be added to a button?

18:12 - QnA: How can you preview the report?

18:55 - QnA: Email attachment or file storage for download?

19:31 - QnA: Is it available for QSEoW?

19:57 - QnA: Rights to generate reports?

20:10 - QnA: Possible to use different report colors than in App?

20:34 - QnA: Possible to adjust font size or resolution?

 

Resources:

Triggering an automation from a button on a sheet

Help page documentation - Limitations

Qlik Application Automation Info Checklist

Reporting Service Forum

 

Q&A:

 

Q: How does this compare to NPrinting?

A: NPrinting is a fully developed, on-premises product for QlikView and Qlik Sense, which offers a wider range of report formats besides pdf.

Q: How much of NPrinting functionality does Reporting Services cover and how is the roadmap?

A: Qlik Reporting Service is not a replacement of NPrinting; it is a new reporting service in Qlik Cloud. More features will be added. We have a dedicated forum: Reporting Service

If you have any ideas to improve the service, please submit it as feature request: Ideas

Q: How to send out emails with Excel reports? pdf is fine.

A: The current format option is pdf only.

Q: Is this available on Qlik Forts?

A: No, Qlik Reporting Service cannot access data stored in Qlik Forts.

Q: Can we deliver a report as a spreadsheet? If not, is that a feature for the future?

A: You can accomplish it by using Qlik Application Automation: Using Qlik Application Automation to create and distribute Excel reports in Office 365

Q: Does this apply to QlikView, as well?

A: QlikView is not supported.

Q: Does it matter how many people are distributed to in an automation "run"?

A: No limit on the number of report recipients, but automation jobs have limitations such as the duration of execution. Qlik Application Automation limitations

Q: If we purchase the additional license there will be another additional limitation?

A: It would be up to its license. For further information, please contact your account manager.

Q: Does QRS use our organizations SMTP Server? If so, is the send rate customizable, one of the issues with NPrinting is that the send rate exceeds the allowable by Office365?

A: Any SMTP server should work.

Q: Isn't it possible to combine content from different applications/tabs?

A: A report is generated from a single app.

Q: Is report automation intended for normal users of the application? If so, what security rules are needed to enable this capability?

A: You can only make a report automation with Qlik Sense apps you have permission to access.

Q: Can't the report filter data for each different user that is going to receive it?

A: Yes, you can. Please watch this demo: Did you say Report Bursting? Show me more!

Q: Could you please let me know how can we migrate our Qlik Sense apps from Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows as well as QlikView apps to Qlik Sense SAAS?

A: Please refer to our help site: Moving from client-managed Qlik Sense to Qlik Sense SaaS

Q: Will the generated reports look exactly like the sheet export to pdf? What happens to elements like tables that don't fit the screen? As far as I remember, they are simply cut in the pdf extract but can flow over to a next page in NPrinting.

A: Please leverage Manual download in PDF. The preview shows you a final outcome in advance.

Q: What about the 100 reports mentioned on the price list?

A: The limitation are listed here: Qlik Reporting Service specifications and limitations

Q: Is it possible to add filters based on the different user when distributing the report, like NPrinting, Example John Doe only wants to see Country US, but Jane Doe want to see US & Canada?

A: Yes, you can. Please watch this demo: Did you say Report Bursting? Show me more!

Q: What NPrinting functions cannot be done in Qlik Reporting? My question is: why the client usually makes those evaluations about what functionality he will not have anymore if he has to choose to change from NPrintng to Qlik Repoprting?

A: Qlik Reporting Service is a part of the Qlik Application Automation Connector, which facilitates the report distribution tasks. While NPriting is a separate on-premises product with more mature features. Having said that, more features on the road map.

Q: Where can you send the files to?

A: You can send a report as attachment or a public storage using the following connectors: Amazon S3, Dropbox, FTP, Google Cloud Storage, SFTP.

Q: Hi, about launch an automation from a Qlik Sense app, which rights are needed so users  can launch this automation or report?

A: You don’t need a specific right unless your tenant admin disable the Application Automation.

Q: Is there a limit of the size of the PDF that can be generated?

A: No file size limit, there are other factors you may want to consider. Please see the limitations: Qlik Reporting Service specifications and limitations

Q: When will other file formats (for example, PowerPoint) be supported?

A: They are on road map, so please stay tuned.

Q: Can you use only complete sheets or also specific diagrams?

A: Yes, as long as they are public sheet. You may want to consider the size of the sheet; otherwise, the sheet may not fill a report well.

Q: Can you repet please how much reports can we send for free?

A: Number of reports per tenant per day: 10,000.

Q: Can you "print" a whole Table? Or only the first 20 Rows, which are seen?

A: You can make a selection in a block and filter it. Add a selection to the report

Q: Hi, you talk about 5000 free runs : it is about automation or report number ?

A: This is the automation number. The report number is 10,000.

Q: Can you use filter?

A: Yes. Creating a Qlik Reporting Service report

Q: Are there plans to be able to send Excel format as the report?

A: Application Automation can distribute data in a Excel format: Using Qlik Application Automation to create and distribute Excel reports in Office 365

Q: Can you add the company graphical profile?

A: If you can add it as image on a sheet, then yes.

Q: In the future will be possible to generate other report formats such as PowerPoint?

A: If you have an idea, please submit it in our Ideation: Ideas

Q: Can you include 3rd party chart types (e.g., Vizlib charts) in Qlik Reporting Service?

A: Yes, what you can see in the sheet will be in a report.

Q: If you need native reports as PPT you should use NP?

A: Yes, Qlik Reporting Service only generates a report in PDF.

Q: Do you have central place to monitor all automation/reporting tasks? To see errors, last execution time or status?

A: Tenant admin is able see all the automation on the list in Management Console.

Q: Any plans on bringing this to Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows?

A: No, this is a feature in Qlik Cloud.

Q: Please forgive if this has already been covered as I joined late, can we select landscape or portrait paper format?

A: You can adjust a sheet size, which will be your report size.

Q: When do combination of apps in one report come?

A: Please submit your idea in our ideation page: Ideas

Q: Is multi-format reporting on the roadmap for QRS? or will multi-format reporting stay with NPrinting only? Do you believe that eventually QRS can complete all NPrinting tasks?

A: Qlik Reporting Service is a different feature in Qlik Cloud. If you are looking for a solutin in Excel format, you can use Application Automation to generate and distribute a Excel spreadsheet: Using Qlik Application Automation to create and distribute Excel reports in Office 365

Q: Can you use it for on-demand reporting?

A: You can trigger a report from the sheet by implementing an action button: Triggering an automation from a button on a sheet

Q: The actual limit of 100 report, is 100 runs or 100 reports? I mean, can I send one report to 200 users with 200 different filters?

A: Please see the limitations around Qlik Reporting Service:
Qlik Reporting Service specifications and limitations

Q: I heard about a limit of 100 free reports by tenant by months?

A: Please see the limitations around Qlik Reporting Service:
Qlik Reporting Service specifications and limitations

Q: Can you show us how you set the screen size of the report so that it matches the page layout?

A: You set the sheet size in the app, which will be your report. The reporting service will try to optimize for portrait/landscapes.

Click here for video transcript

 

AR_H_TIMESTAMP is the time associated with the change record and indicates when the change happened on the source. The AR_H_COMMIT_TIMESTAMP indicates when the change was committed on the source.

For reference, see Discussion: Difference Between AR_H_TIMESTAMP and AR_H_COMMIT_TIMESTAMP

If you would like to capture an instance when Qlik Replicate is making changes to target you can add a column via global transformation or at the table level:

1. Column Datatype = DATETIME(6)
2. Computation expression = datetime('now','localtime')

The expression, datetime('now','localtime') will capture the timestamp of records being inserted, deleted or updated in Replicate. We currently do not capture the time on the target system.

Environment

• Qlik Replicate 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

This Techspert Talks session addresses:
- How Qlik Data Transfer works
- Deployment best practices
- Troubleshooting common issues

00:00 - Intro

01:00 - What is Qlik Data Transfer?

02:03 - Where to find Requirements and Limitations

03:53 - Troubleshooting Blank Screen 1: Windows Policy

04:40 - Where to find QDT Log Files

05:18 - Setting the RemoteSigned Policy in PowerShell

06:21 - Troubleshooting Blank Screen 2: Admin Rights

07:28 - What if you don't understand the log message?

07:49 - Troubleshooting Blank Screen 3: Certificates

08:38 - Run MMC as Service Account

09:59 - Install QDT on it's own machine?

10:22 - Troubleshooting Unable to Connect 1: Cypher

10:47 - Generating an tenant API Key

11:56 - Checking port 443

12:57 - Using gpedit - Edit Windows Policies

14:06 - Troubleshooting Unable to Connect 2:

15:04 - Checking Windows Firewall

15:59 - Q&A: What are differences between version?

17:01 - Q&A: Recommended QDT Version

17:23 - Q&A: Which user can create QDT tasks?

17:58 - Q&A: Which user ID can create tasks?

19:04 - Q&A: Where to find QDT in Qlik Sense SaaS?

19:58 - Q&A: Is this available with Qlik Sense Cloud?

20:14 - Q&A: How to see Managed Space in Destinations?

21:15 - Q&A: Is this available with QlikView

Resources:

Installation Requirements

Uploading Data Limitations

Adding Cipher Suite for Qlik Data Transfer

Qlik Data Transfer unable to connect to the tenant

Troubleshooting Qlik DataTransfer

Installing and Using Qlik Data Transfer

PowerShell Command to check if Port 443 is open:
Test-NetConnection -ComputerName CLOUDTENANTLINK -Port 443
Example: Test-NetConnection -ComputerName qdt.eu.qlikcloud.com -Port 443

Qlik Download Site

Videos:

Installing Qlik Data Transfer (video)

Uploading on-premises data with Qlik Data Transfer (video)

Qlik Data Transfer – Quick Demo (video)

Q&A:

Q:  How to connect a network-folder on the server, where QDT is installed?

A:  If you have a shared drive like \\SERVERSHAREDDRIVE you can use it within the Qlik Data Transfer application. Mapped drive aren’t supported. QDT is installed in C:\ProgramData\Qlik\DataTransfer and this is not a customizable path.

Q:  We sometimes have these errors in the Tasks overview of the QV QMC:

• Error: Exception in save source file: Could not find file '\\xyz.qvw.tmp'.
• Error: File is not ok. Target file was not saved.
• Error: The task "xyz.qvw " failed.
  Could you help with this?

A:  Doesn’t seem to be a Qlik Data Transfer issue, for your specific issue you might want to contact Qlik support team. Before do it, check if you have any dollar sign in your network shared folder, as the best practice we suggest our customer to use UNC path "\\<servername>\<share>" rather than drive letter and $ sign, because sometimes hidden path is problematic for file access.

Q:  How do we get the latest version of data transfer?

A:  You can get it in the download page:
https://demo.qlik.com/download/   Or go to Qlik.com -> Support -> Downloads

Q:  I get an errors when I try to send a Qlik Sense's App.

A:  You need to check the logs of Qlik Data Transfer and see if there is an obvious reason of the failure. If you find an error you can search this error in Qlik Community.

Q:  Can you confirm that only an user with profesional licence can use it? And this user requires necesarely acces to space where the QVD are loaded?

A:  Yes, this is the requirements, it is also specified in below help page:
https://help.qlik.com/en-US/cloud-services/Subsystems/Hub/Content/Sense_Hub/QlikDataTransfer/install-Qlik-DataTransfer.htm

Q:  When you select "Personal" space on data transfer, which users personal space does it transfer to?

A:  It will be transferred in the “Personal” space of the user who has created the Qlik Data Transfer API key.

Click here for video transcript

This session addresses:

- Requirements and Preparation
- Demo: Upgrade Failure
- Demo: Platform down after upgrade
- Troubleshooting tips & resources

Environment

• Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows

00:00 - Intro

00:39 - Agenda

01:34 - Required preparation

02:34 - How to find the version to upgrade to?

03:33 - Can we upgrade directly to latest patch?

04:16 - What needs to be backed up?

04:50 - What can go wrong?

05:18 - Demo Upgrading QS

06:39 - How to Troubleshoot Upgrade Failed

07:11 - How to investigate the upgrade log files

08:52 - What to search for?

10:31 - Demo system down after upgrade

11:20 - What order to the services start up in?

12:06 - How to check the Repository Database with pgAdmin4

13:18 - Where to find the Qlik Sense Logs

13:41 - What to look for in log files

14:42 - What is Qlik Sense Util?

16:00 - Troubleshooting the Proxy service

17:20 - Useful Upgrading Resources

17:58 - Q&A

Resources:

System requirements for Qlik Sense Enterprise

Backing up a Qlik Sense site

Qlik Fix Video: How to Backup and restore PostgreSQL database in Qlik Sense

Release Notes

Installing PgAdmin4

Upgrading documentation

Patching Qlik Sense

Troubleshooting your Qlik Sense Installation or Upgrade

Qlik Sense - Troubleshooting Upgrade and Patch failure

Keeping your Qlik Sense Installation Current

Q & A:

Q: We have upgraded Qlik Sense from June 2020 Patch 4 to May 2021 Patch 5 , we have installed bundled version, PostgreSQL version 9.6. How to create separate DB node from bundled version and how to upgrade postgreSQL from 9.6 to 12.x version?

A: So if you want to migrate from bundle to standalone you could follow this article: How to Configure Qlik Sense to use a stand alone PostgreSQL.

If you want to stay on a bundled postgres and run version 12.x here is an article that could help you: Qlik Sense May 2021 Upgrade bundled PostgreSQL to 12 5 version.

As always, my recommendation is to test this in a test environment before applying the process in Prod.

Q: Can we have more than one windows version in the Qlik Sense cluster nodes?

A: It should be technically possible but not recommended and perhaps not even supported. It is important to keep your cluster as identical as possible as there could be feature/settings difference between Operating System version causing inconsistent behavior. 

Q: I tried an Update, but it hangs durring removal of older patch.

A: It is possible to manually remove the patch and then update to the newer patch. Sometimes is happens that for some reason the installer is not able to perfom this operation successfully.

Q: Do the streams and applications carry over to the new version?

A: Yes, they do along with all your settings. 

Q: Hello, is there anything specific when upgrading a multi-node environment (in terms of installation and troubleshooting)?

A: In a multi node environment it is recommended to stop all nodes and start by upgrading the central node. If you are using the Qlik Sense failover feature, make sure which node is having the role of central node before stopping the services. Also, when you stop your nodes, always stop the rim nodes first and then the central node at the end.

Q: We are multi-node and multi-environment. Whenever upgrading, each node takes a fair amount of time, is this normal?

A: Yes, and this is most probably because of the dispatcher service which covers multiple subservices.
In addition to that it is possible that a 3rd party software such as an antivirus is scanning each and every upgrade operation like copy files which as a result slows down the whole process.

Q: I get the error qlik notification service already exist. Support says its under investagation. Would upgrade to the a newer version fix this?

A: I wouldn’t recommend upgrading a non-working environment except if advised otherwise by the support team. This is a risk to make things worst.

Q: Is this the same process for QlikView Server?

A: While there are some similarities especially when it comes to the steps prior to the upgrade such as testing, system requirements and backup. However the actual process is different. There are articles and help documentations covering this such as: Upgrading and Migrating Best Practices for QlikView Services

Transcript:

Hello everyone and welcome to the September edition of Support Techspert Thursdays. I’m Troy Raney and I’ll be your host for today's session. Today's presentation is Troubleshooting Qlik Sense Upgrades with Bastien Laugiero. Bastien, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Hi everybody. So, my name is Bastien Laugiero. I’ve been working at Qlik for almost six years now focusing primarily on Qlik Sense on-promise; and I recently moved to a new role as a program delivery manager focusing on our SaaS platform.

Okay, and what are we going to be talking about today?

So, today we're going to talk about Qlik Sense upgrade and troubleshooting approach. The first thing I would like to talk about is the requirement and preparation for a successful upgrade. Then we're going to go through a couple of demos: one that shows an upgrade failure and another one that shows a platform down after upgrade. So, basically a successful upgrade, but a platform that won't come up. And there's gonna be some takeaway at the end of the sessions, some articles being shared and so on.

Okay. So, when it comes upgrading Qlik Sense, what constitutes a successful upgrade?

There is never any guarantee that an upgrade is going to be successful, right? We are talking about software here. So, there are however key factors. It’s the amount of preparation we put prior to the upgrade. That's basically going to guarantee at least a recovery in a working state.

And what kind of preparation would you consider required for an upgrade?

A very simple step and often missed is to read the documentation, right? So, you can look at upgrading Qlik Sense and you will end up here. So, here the whole process is being described. Something that you really not want to miss is to look at the system requirements, the precautions, backup and so on. But everything is detailed on this page here.

Okay. Help is a great place to start. Where else can admins look for guidance?

Take a look at our Knowledge Base and Release Notes. So, this can be found in our Community. If you go under Community.com, you've got Support and Release Notes here. You can also search in our Knowledge Base. For instance: “Upgrade to Qlik Sense August 2021” and see if there is any results.

How do customers really know what version of Qlik Sense they should be upgrading to?

That's a good question. So, if you go to Qlik.com, if you go under Support and Download; you're going to end up in our Download site. Select your product “Qlik Sense” and you will have all the versions available.

So, the latest should be on top there?

Exactly. And that's what we see here on the screen, right? August 2021, and we've got the initial reason the patch one available.

And where can you find what's in the release, like features or fixes you might want?

For that, you can go to Help.Qlik.com, under “Qlik Sense on Windows” you're going to find this “What's New in Qlik Sense,” and you can select the version that you are targeting to upgrade, right? We're gonna talk about August 2021, and you've got a list of different features and so on.

Yeah, a lot of new features there.

The last thing I always recommend to do is: to look once again at the Release Notes, because the reason it contains the defect fixes that are available as well as new features, settings that needs to be enabled to enable potential features. So this one is very very rich in terms of information.

Okay, and if someone like with this version that's the latest, it already has a patch. Should we upgrade automatically to the latest patch? Is that possible?

So, no. We're going to take a quick example here. Let's say that: you want to upgrade from Qlik Sense May to Qlik Sense August patch 1. You cannot upgrade directly to August patch 1. You will need to first upgrade to the initial release, and then to the patch.

Okay.

So, once you are on the initial release, so let's say August 2021, you don't need to upgrade to patch 1, patch 2, patch 3, patch 4. You can go directly to the latest patch.

But you need to start with the initial release first?

Always, yes.

Now, I know that in IT in general, but especially when upgrading Qlik Sense, the most important step is backing up. What specifically should be backed up so that Qlik Sense can be restored if anything unexpected happens?

The first one will be the product backup, so Qlik Sense backup. You can go into our Help site. And here you've got the process to actually backup your Repository Database, important files. That's the first thing you need to do. We also provide some Qlik Fix video on how to do that step-by-step as well to follow here. The second thing that you can do is to take a server backup or virtual machine snapshots. This is often easier and faster to restore from this type of backup.

What kind of failures can occur when upgrading?

There are two type of failures in my opinion. The first one will be: so you get a pop-up that shows that your upgrade failed, and we're going to see that in the next demo. The second one is the installer says that you've upgraded successfully to target release; however, when you start up your services, you can't access the Hub, you can't access the QMC. So, the platform seems to be down even though the Windows services are up and running.

Okay, well, let's jump to the demo. What did you want to show us first?

So, here we have this virtual machine running Qlik Sense November 2020, and we're gonna basically upgrade it to Qlik Sense May 2021. As you can see here, I’m not going to jump to February in between. I’m going to go directly to May. I’ve been taking all the precautions that I was talking about before. I’ve checked my system requirement. I took my backup. Now I’m just gonna run the upgrade. Always run your installer as an Administrator.

And you've downloaded it locally and now you're just running it?

Exactly. Alright so, here we're gonna click on Yes, because we want to run the installer. Click on Upgrade.

I like that the installer recognizes the pre-installed version, that's cool.

Accept the terms. Service account information. And here, enter the Repository Database password for this demo. I’m going to just put the wrong password. Just a quick note on that: I’m able to make this upgrade fail, because I have stopped all the services. Normally, if the services are up when I’m actually running the upgrade, there will be a check of the super user password. And if it's wrong, the installer will tell you that. We want to install the latest bundles. We accept the terms for the bundles. And we're going to start the upgrade process. So, it's going to fail at the Qlik Sense Repository Database. Here, we've got our upgrade failure. So, in most cases, you're going to see actually a meaningful error message here that you can actually search then into our Knowledge Base. And we can just search for “Password Validation Failure.” We can just filter on “article only.” And here, you will end up with different articles related to that error message.

What if the error message wasn't so helpful or clear is that one? Was that a link to the log files from the upgrade?

Exactly. So, this is a link to the installation or upgrade log file. So, this is important, because if you have to reach out to a Support to help you troubleshooting this issue, they will often ask you for the installation or upgrade logs. So, these are the logs that we are expecting to receive. So, if you click on that link, you're gonna end up on this folder here. So, this was the logs that were created during my initial installation on November 2020. As you can see, it just gives us the release name here. So, there are a lot of different logs, and the reason is because Qlik Sense has multiple services to upgrade. And each service will be represented by a specific log file. So, this is the order it went through. So, the first one as you can see it's PostgreSQL, so Qlik Sense Repository Database, and then it will continue here. If it fails at any time, let's say it fails at the Scheduler; so, it's not going to go through the other services. However, you will see a rollback log file on top of each of the ones that were already upgraded. So, you're going to see this these five here, plus an additional five with a dash roll back at the end. So, what you - the log that you want to open is actually the latest one that don't that, don't have this rollback…

Reference.

Exactly. If we go back to PostgreSQL. So, there was no rollback here, because it just failed at the password validation. So, it fails right at the start, so there was no rollback to perform. But this is basically the latest log that we've got from the installer. So, this is the one we're going to look at, right?

So, when you're looking at a log file what do you usually search for to zero in on what is important?

Yeah so, you can search for “Value 3.” So, “Value 3” it's an error code that will trigger a rollback basically. The other thing that you can search that is always associated with that return Value 3 is “Error Code 1603” here. If you start to read a little bit above that error, you can find back our Password Validation Failed error message. However, you may have other error messages here that you can search in our Knowledge Base.

Okay so, if it fails, you're not sure what the message means, you could theoretically copy that message that you find here in the log file, search in a Community, and hopefully find more information? But this is definitely a log file that Support would need if they if you require some additional assistance?

Exactly.

Okay.

My advice here is that: when you send logs to Support, don't just select the latest log. Take all the logs that are associated to your upgrade basically.

And it's pretty easy to see which ones they are, because in this in this case, we're upgrading to a different version and it's designated there in the first part of the log which version wrapped it into.

Correct.

Now quick question: since this upgrade failed, is the November 2020 still active and functioning on this system?

Yes. In fact, we can take a look at the services here.

So, it didn't really affect the current installation.

No, it didn't. The installer is built in a way that if there is any failure, it will roll back to the previous state. However, it may happen that this rollback is not happening correctly, and therefore this precaution of taking a backup becomes critical.

Yeah, I totally understand working in IT that everything starts with a backup. Okay, you had a second scenario you wanted to run us through. Tell us about that?

All right. So, we're gonna look at scenario where the upgrade is actually successful, but you are not able to start your platform. My services are started; however, when I try to launch the QMC, I’m just getting a 404 error. So, well, the first thing I want to do since I am on the Qlik Sense Server here; the first thing I want to test of course is if I’m facing any DNS or network issues, I’m going to try localhost. And I’m going to basically end up with the same problem, which means that my Qlik Sense platform is down here. The troubleshooting approach is a little bit different, right? Because we we're not going to look at the upgrade or installation logs, because those who are successful. What we want to look at is the Qlik Sense service logs.

Okay, taking a look at the services, would you help explain what all the services do exactly?

So, we've got the Qlik Sense Repository Database, which contains basically the entire configuration of your platform. So, this one is the first one that needs to function basically for the other services to pick up the configuration. The next ones are the Repository Service and Service Dispatcher. And then you've got the remaining ones which are the Engine, Printing, Proxy Scheduler that all depend on the Repository Service to be started to function properly. When you start the services here in Windows, there is an entire startup phase that's happening in the background we're going to look at through the logs.

So, since the Repository Database starts first, is that where you would begin looking in the logs?

Exactly. So, there is a much easier way for this one at least to to see if this one works fine than looking at logs.

Okay.

We want to connect to the database, right? This is a Postgres database running in the background. One thing that we can do is to actually try to access the database. We usually do that with pgAdmin. There is an article actually explaining how to install it and configure it. It's called “Installing and Configuring pgAdmin4.” So, you can find that in our Community Knowledge Base.

And that is a free utility, right? That people can download?

Exactly. So, what we want to do is to basically try to connect to this Repository Database. So, I’ve already have a pre… connection that is already created, but the setup is very simple, right? So, the host is “localhost” because my service is installed on this machine. Got Postgres, and I will put my super user password during the setup. If we try to connect here, I’m gonna do “Connect Server,” it's gonna ask me for my super user password. And here, I can see that I can access my databases. I can open them, the connection here is working fine. So, I can assume that this service is actually functioning properly.

Since the database is running fine, what's the next step?

Will be to look at the Qlik Sense Repository Service, right? For that, we need to look at the Qlik Sense logs.

 And where do we find those?

So, the Qlik Sense logs are - you can find them under C: > ProgramData > Qlik > Sense > Log. Here you've got all the logs for each services.

So, each service has its own log folder?

Exactly. Got the Repository folder, and we're going to look at Trace and System. So, if we look at this log, just scroll to the bottom here. We can see an error. .

Ah, right there.

What we are seeing here, if we look at the couple of lines above is: it's trying to connect to the QSR Database. It's waiting 300 second for a response, which is five minutes. So, we can assume that this service is not able to actually connect to the QSR Database; and that's most likely the root cause of my issue. So, once again, this is just a troubleshooting approach. You may have different error messages in there. The idea is just to take this error message, search for it in our Knowledge Base and find some potential root causes and solution.

Okay.

In this particular case, so, I just modified manually the connection string the Qlik Sense Repository Service so that it will fail to connect to my database. I can quickly show that. So, if you go under C: > ProgramFiles > Qlik > Sense, you've got something called Repository > Util > QlikSenseUtil.

Okay, so what is this utility?

So, this utility it's basically providing several information: such as your connection string, your service cluster setup, and more. We usually use it for service clustering connection string editor. So, if you start to read your connection string. So, this is my QSR connection string here. What I’ve done is simply modify this port so that it won't be able to reach my QSR Database, because the default port is 4432 and not 5432. If I start to save this, and exit; I should now be able to actually start my services.

Now you're restarting because you actually changed that connection string, right?

Exactly. So, I need to re-trigger a connection attempt.

Okay, and once that's finished, you should be able to connect to the QMC?

Then yes, I should be able to access my QMC if I’m not facing any other error of course. There should be a line in this log that says “Startup Phase Completed.” So, you can just search for that, and there I can find it. So, that means my Repository started correctly.

If that started up fine, but we still weren't able to access the QMC or Hub, what would be next?

The next service that I would look at is my Proxy Service, because my Proxy Service is the one that delivers the web interface.

Okay, so, that actually hosts the QMC?

Exactly. I can take a Qlik look at my Proxy logs. So, same thing: Proxy > Trace, and then we've got System Proxy.

And I noticed before there are a couple warnings there.

Yes. So, that's because of the startup phase, right? it tries to connect to my Repository, but since my Repository was not up and running; so, it failed, but it's retrying, right, until it can. Then you can see the last line on this log is “Proxy is Running.” So, that means this service started up fine.

Great.

It's always important to look at the entire context, and not just stop at the first error or warning, because it might be actually a false alarm, right? So, if we now try to access our QMC, and our services are working, and I can connect to my environment.

Great. And would you say those are two of the most common issues that people face when they're upgrading: the upgrade fails or the upgrade succeeds, but the services don't work correctly?

Yes. Exactly. Now, the root cause can vary from case to case.

Sure.

From version to version as well, because our R&D team is working very hard on trying to fix those potential use cases, but there might be new ones coming in other release, right?

Just as a reminder, we will be sharing the links to everything that's been discussed today along with the recording. Bastien, are there any other resources you'd like to highlight?

So, I just wanted to highlight a couple of things. Here are a few links around our System Requirements for Qlik Sense, how to back-up your Qlik Sense site, a link to the Release Notes and the upgrade process. And finally, I’m highlighting here a couple of articles that will help you troubleshooting your Qlik Sense installation or upgrade if any failure occurs. So, it's kind of a summary of what we just discussed today.

Okay, great! Thanks. Okay, now it's time for Q&A. Everyone, go ahead and enter your questions in the Q&A panel on the left side of your On24 console. Bastien, which question would you like to address first?

All right. So, the first question is: how to prevent Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows from rewriting config files such as C: > ProgramFiles > QlikSenseproxyproxy.exe.config, which as for example: the keeper live timing parameter.

So, unfortunately this is not possible. So, when we do a major version upgrade, these files are being replaced or overwritten with the new ones corresponding to the updated version. My best advice here is to actually keep track of these changes you are making in these config files, to then update them post upgrade. Do not replace these configuration files from a previous version to a newer one, because they could be different, like new settings for example or deprecated settings. So, it's very important to keep the original file and just change the setting that you had configured before the upgrade.

That's good to know. Next question?

Do all nodes in a separated environment needs to be disconnected from the Repository before proceeding with the upgrade?

So, in a multi-environment, it's recommended to stop all nodes and start by upgrading the central node. So, if you are using a Qlik Sense failover feature, that's a Qlik tip here: make sure which node is having the role of central node before stopping the sources. It's very possible that actually a rim node became a central. And this one you will either need to move back the central node role to the original central. You will need to consider this stream. Know that the central node and basically be the first one to upgrade. Also, when you stop your nodes, always stop the rim node first, and then the central node at the end. When it comes to the rim node, there is not really any - it's not really important in which order you are going to stop your rims. But the central should be the last in any case.

That makes sense. Next question?

Please include any tips or suggestions you may have regarding certificate changes that occur during a Sense upgrade.

So, there are normally no changes to the certificate during an upgrade. They're not being touched. It has happened in the past for some specific releases that the certificate needed to be renewed as a post upgrade activity, but this is always documented in the Release Notes; so, with step-by-step instructions as well. So, finally the certificate is also part of the backup that you take before upgrading, so if sometimes it happens that something can go wrong; and in this case, you will have this backup to cover you. But in general, there is no change on the certificate that's happening in Qlik Sense.

Okay, next question?

So, we had a lot of problem in the past with broken certificate that then needed to be recreated reinstalled, so that's why we postpone upgrade unfortunately.

So, this issue - it's often environmental, and can be caused due to many different reasons such as: a security policy applied on the server, or third-party software such as antivirus blocking or blocking the files basically or corrupting them. So, as mentioned before, my best advice here is to make sure that you are backing up the certificate before upgrading. Which means that if they get corrupted post upgrade or at any time, you can safely restore them without any problem.

That's interesting that it's not, that happens people, but it's not actually Qlik Sense that's affecting it. It's just being affected by the environment.

Correct, and that's the thing with Qlik Sense. It runs on Windows and is very dependent on the overall environment that it's installed on.

Okay, next question.

Upgrading multi-node Qlik Sense from November 2019 to February 2020 was unsuccessful. Some users can log on, some cannot. How to check the root cause in the log file?

So, it's very difficult to say to say right now without any clear symptoms and clear message. So, what I will do is: based on your question, it sounds like the upgrade was successful from the installer (which was what we discussed previously in the demo), but now you are you are facing some post upgrading issue, right? In that case, I would just suggest to focus first on the symptoms that the users are experiencing. For instance: is there any specific error message or specific behavior that they experience when it faced with the problem and start from here. Alright. You can search this behavior or error messages in our Knowledge Base. That should give you a good point to start, here.

And if it has to do with logon issues, what log files or what service log file would you recommend looking at?

So, if that's pure logon, I will first check the Windows event log. So, that depends also which authentication method you are using, right? Let's say that you are using Windows authentication in this case. The first thing to know is that Qlik Sense does not take care of the authentication. So, if you use for instance Windows, you will need to check the Windows event log security at the time the user had the failure to see if there is an error messages there. If you are using single sign-on, you probably need to check your in the single second side as well.

Very good, thanks. Next question?

All right so please cover upgrades related to Postgres Repository sitting on node outside of Qlik.

So, the process is no different, right? Qlik Sense will automatically detect where the database is and will proceed with the upgrade. However, note that Qlik Sense will not upgrade your Postgres. You are responsible to upgrade it if you wish, making always sure that the version you choose is actually listed under the Qlik Sense system requirements for the version that you are running of course.

Okay.

If moving from one version to another and you are currently several release out of date, do you need to install each releases in turn?

The answer is no. You do not need to upgrade to each release in between. However, if you want to install a patch, you need to first install the initial release associated to that patch. So, let's just take a quick example: you are running Qlik Sense February 2018 which is a very old version, and you want to upgrade to Qlik Sense May 2021. You can do that. You don't need to upgrade to each major version in between. However, if you want to upgrade to Qlik Sense May 2021 patch 4, you will first need to upgrade to Qlik Sense May 2021 initial release; and then apply the patch. And here the for the patch, same applies. You don't need to patch to apply the patch one by one. You can go directly to patch 4.

Thanks for clarifying that. So, next question.

Where can we find the latest patch?

So, this is something we quickly saw in the presentation before. You can find it in our download page which is accessible from Qlik.com in the Support area of that website, right?

Do I need to apply all patches or just the latest?

This is kind of related to the question we just answered before. So, no you don't need to apply all patches one by one. A patch is cumulative. So, which means that you can simply install the latest one and all fixes from the previous patch will also be included.

The next question is: we got error 1068 “The dependency service or group failed to start” with the Repository Service. What does that mean?

In my experience, so, this error message happens when you try to start one of the Qlik Sense Services in the service console, the Windows service console; and this basically it's very possible that the service account does not have the right privileges to start the services. I know that there are some articles that use about this error here. So, we'll just search directly for the error message in our Knowledge Base, and you should find information on what caused this and what is the potential solution.

Good.

What right does the QS service account require? Does it also need a license?

So in terms of Windows privileges, it's recommended that the Qlik Sense service account is part of the local administrator group on the Qlik Sense server. However, if for security reason this is not an option; so, it's very often that your IT department will not allow you that sort of privileges. There is a way documented on Help.Qlik.com to run the Qlik Sense services without admin privileges. When it comes to the license, the Qlik Sense service account does not need the license. The license is really about accessing the Hub, opening and creating application, so you don't need to have a license to access the QMC and do administrative tasks there.

That's good to know. Okay, we're getting near the end. Next question?

So, the next question is: usually I test future new releases of Qlik Sense server with the desktop version. Since there is no desktop version anymore, how do you guys test new versions before upgrading your whole cluster?

That's an interesting question. So, and here we are really talking about how deeply you should test your environment before upgrading. So, my recommendation here is to always have a Qlik Sense server test environment, because Qlik Sense desktop is very good to test your application and how they will behave with the updated version. However, something that you also need to consider testing is the server part of the software. Potentially the overall upgrade process as well, so that you are familiar with all the steps that needs to be taken when it's time to upgrade your production. So, testing application it's of course needed, right? But you also have the server side, the server parts of your upgrade that also need to be tested, in my opinion.

Is that like a license they could get from their account manager to have a test license?

Yeah, this is - you can reach out to your company to see what your options are, but yeah definitely having a test license is possible for a given period of time here.

Okay, we have time for one last question.

So, is the upgrade similar for QlikView?

Interesting question. So, while there are some similarities, especially when it comes to the steps prior to the upgrade such as the testing the system requirements, the backup and so on. The actual process is actually different. We are talking about two different products that work different way, right? So, there are there are definitely articles and help documentation covering this. So, you can search in Help.Qlik.com for the upgrade process, and you can also look at our Knowledge Base for upgrading and migrating best practices for QlikView.

Great.

I hope this was useful. Thank you all for attending and have fun with your upgrade!

Thank you everyone! We hope you enjoyed this session. And thank you to Bastien for presenting. We appreciate getting experts like Bastien to share with us. Here's our legal disclaimer. And thank you once again. Have a great rest of your day.

This session addresses:
- Deep dive into visualizations
- Demonstration of most effective charts
- How to exploit controls to the max

00:00 - Intro

01:36 - Decision Tree with Election data

03:33 - Radial Dendogram - map chart

04:34 - Changing map chart perspectives

05:45 - Cartograms

07:14 - Dynamic labels

11:01 - Tracking Qlik Sense features

12:00 - Time Plan calendar - Trellis table

14:20 - A and B Testing

16:28 - Custom Time axis

19:04 - Custom Time with colors

20:12 - Less is more

21:26 - Q & A

Resources:

Demo App with Visualization Examples

Qlik Design Blog

Qlik Help site

Qlik Community - App Development Forum

Simplifying Set Analysis

Q and A

Comming soon...

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to the May edition of Support Techspert Thursdays. Today's presentation is Top 10 Visualization Tips for Qlik Sense Enterprise with Patric Nordström. Patric would you kindly tell us a little bit about yourself?
Thanks Troy. It's good to be here. I’ve been with Qlik since 2017. I came aboard with Qlik with the Idevio acquisition. I’ve been working in the Qlik echo system since 2007 or something. I’m the product manager for Qlik Sense Visualizations and Qlik GeoAnalytics.
Okay.
So, that's what I do.
Great, thanks. And what will you be sharing with us today?
Most of my time I spend talking to customers, listening to their problems and suggesting different solutions; coming up with requirements for R&D. In many cases, the customer doesn't know the product that well so. There's so many things that you actually can do with the standard settings inside of Qlik Sense; so I see it as a bit of a mission to remind everybody what a great tool it is and how many things that we can actually do within Qlik Sense without having to build something very special, because it's so flexible.
Yeah, I know you have a lot of wonderful tips here. I don't think we'll go through them all, but I thought we'd start. Since being an American, I carefully watched the presidential election recently, and trying to explain the intricacies of how that works can be challenging. And I understand you have a solution for that?
Well, I was playing around with decision trees lately. It's useful in many different applications and one of them is for visualizing the outcome of elections.
Okay.
I was looking for some public data to play around with and the election is of course quite fun to play with.
Certainly.
We have a couple of charts that are suitable for this type of data. One of them is the Org Chart. It's just a table with nodes and information to the parents. The parent would be the Node ID; just a table linked to itself.
And that's a default out-of-the-box diagram, right?
Yeah, so it comes in the Visualization Bundle. So, it's over here in Custom Objects > Visualization Bundle.
Okay, there it is.
So, it's meant to visualize company rosters, but it can easily be adapted to show the outcome of decisions. This tree shows the possible outcomes of the swing states.
Okay, and how would you interact with this?
Yeah, so this is how we start. And then we decide whether we think the Democrats or the Republicans will win in Florida. So, if we think the Republicans will win, we will come to the next swing state which is Pennsylvania, and we can see the current state. If Florida is won by Republicans, Pennsylvania's by Democrats and then the Democrats win Ohio, and the Democrats wins. So, it's a nice way to show a rag tree, not completely balanced. As soon as any of the parties win, it will actually show that in a darker color. Of course, the Republicans had a different position to start with, so they have to go through a number of elections before they call it a victory.
Right.
So, it's a nice way to traverse a tree. It doesn't show the whole tree at the same time. If you're more interested in the complete decision tree, you can instead show them in a Radial Denogram instead, which is the same type of tree, but I’m now showing all the nodes at the same time.
Okay.
The Org Chart showed the beginning of the tree in the center, but this one is expanded to show all the branches in the tree. You can highlight the possible wins for the number of ways the election can go, well estimated to go. And you can also highlight when it can be a tie; which is quite…
Yeah, rare.
…interesting that it actually can be a tie.
The last was the Org Chart. What's this it in this case?
I’m using the Map Chart instead.
And this could be good for displaying any kind of decision tree, right?
Of course. I mean you could use this for any type of decision tree data where you have some kind of pattern, where you have a yes or no decision. One outcome leads to another, and you want to show the different types of possibilities.
Okay.
I’m just playing around with radial coordinates, but you could also use the same tree and have a different coordinate calculations, and then you would have a flat tree; and then you could play around with it if you want to have different types of perspectives: up or down, or left to right. It's just the transformation of the coordinates.
I love that putting it on a cyclical group, so you can switch quickly between different visualizations, and see the same data shown different ways. That's cool.
Yeah, it saves space as well. I mean most of the time, you have many ideas when you want to build a dashboard. And the first thing that you do is that you try to cramp into nine different graphs and diagrams and tables and everything at once. You win in both how the user experience the app, and how well you can perceive your message by showing bits and pieces of the information at a time; not revealing everything at once.
I know a lot of times especially with data from the election, people are trying to apply it to a map. But do you have a way of focusing more on the data points, but still having some sort of geographical elements to it?
Yeah, so that is also something that I’ve tried to build out, showing some kind of simplistic way to show geography.
Yeah, exactly.
We do have a Map Chart and you can see the geography is exactly how it is; but you want to show KPIs that doesn't have that much to do with geometry.
Yeah.
So, this is a way to present a simplistic way to show maps as squares or hexagons or circles. In many cases, you have to do this by hand. Instead of doing that, I used an Excel spreadsheet as a template. So, I organized the states in a row-column order, just to place them and then I can move them around. It's not exactly how the Earth looks like.
Yeah.
It serves its purpose to show some kind of simplistic map over the U.S. instead.
Exactly. It's kind of elegant in its simplicity, I like that.
Yeah sometimes, it's the actual geometry gets in the way. And by modifying this grid, you want to do it for other countries, you can just change the names of the states for the region that you're interested in and reload it. And you will have this type of cartogram also for your special region.
That's great. Now, you're obviously an expert on charts and visualizations. In your experience, when users first notice a diagram, what is it that stands out to them? What do they focus on?
Yeah, so that is another thing that I usually bring up all the time is that: the first thing that they look at is the title and the subtitles. So, they spend more time reading that instead of reading the plot, which is quite surprising to us; that they are so focused on the actual charts. You don't really know what the user will make out of the dashboard, but I think we can come up with better titles. I mean the easiest way to do it is just to have the dimensions showing ‘Sales by Year,’ say ‘Shares by Category,’ some kind of explanation. But you can actually do it do it better in my opinion. If you look at the chart, what am I trying to communicate? If it's a line chart showing sales over time, then perhaps I’m interested in the trend. And then it makes sense to show how big was the increase or decrease in the last period. And we can also show the total increase over time. You could do that by building up the titles dynamically using Set Analysis perhaps together with Maximum and Rank to build up the titles. Then the titles will be dynamic. Even if the user is making a different type of selection, or the data is reloaded; the titles will still be valid. We do have a Snapshot functionality with the Storytelling, where you can add Annotations to the chart.
Yeah.
But this is a way to build some kind of dynamic, that will be true whatever kind of data you throw at it. And you could do this for the Line Chart, but you could also do it for the Pie Chart. If Pie Chart is probably something about shares, so you probably want to highlight the largest share, and then you could have the second and the third. Bar charts is mostly about comparisons. So, then you could have the title express how big is the largest value compared to the second one, or you could also incorporate what the top three represent in the total value.
That's a much more powerful title, get a lot more information immediately from the chart than just the default.
Yeah. It's an eye-opener at least to me, when I when I played around with it, that it actually carries much more information that.
Yeah.
I’m lazy at this as well. I usually said just some boring kind of titles, but it really pays off to make it a bit more elegant or try to use that space that you have.
It's really well done. You mentioned: you built these dynamically using a Set Analysis. Is it possible to take a look at how those are built?
Absolutely. It's not like rocket science. If titles is switched on, I just picked the maximum year divided by the year prior, and then I could see whether it goes up and down. It's not that that hard; especially if you know a bit more how the dashboard should be used. Then you could probably, you could tweak it even further. In this case, I’m also using the new function of the Dimension-based Reference Lines. So, I throw in a little Annotation inside of the chart, and that's goes over here.
Okay.
I picked the last year like that. Just to place it somewhere, and then I add the title the increase or decrease within the, in the label. And then I have a show condition, in this case to switch it on and off to make the point.
Is that, do you know when that feature became available?
So, that was one of the latest editions.
So, okay. I know that's a common problem that comes into Support actually. We get questions all the time about what features are available in what version, especially when it comes to on-prem customers wondering when they should, to what version they should upgrade. So you have a way of keeping track of that?
Yeah, I have to put it in an app; but otherwise I can't keep track of that.
So, what are we looking at here?
I’m keeping track of all the releases in or all the new features in each release that are relevant to my, to my area.
Okay.
Dimension-based Reference: already in 2020 September; so it's been around for quite some time.
Is this, is that app publicly available?
It's not, but maybe it's something that we should have put in, because there's a lot of people asking for it.
Yeah.
But I tend to meet more and more cloud customers. And they do already have all the functionality. They don't worry so much about which version they're on. I like to keep it also to show the progress, that we are actually adding a lot of functionality to the product all the time.
Do you have a favorite kind of chart, or one that you've used a lot recently?
Yeah. I can't help myself. I was planning a building project at home. You have to apply for the building permit; you have to get the permit; you have to wait a while before it becomes in effect; and then you have to order the stuff that you want for the building. I decided I want to show it in some kind of calendar, with each one of the months together, with the weeks. And then I added some sliders. If it takes shorter time for me to get a handler, and maybe they are quicker to give me the approval. In many cases, you see Gantt charts for project planning. But in this case, this was for our community. I wanted to talk to people that didn't perhaps play around in dashboards that much. So, they were more comfortable showing data in a calendar, because most people have seen a calendar.
Exactly. But what kind of object are we looking at here?
This is the Trellis Container.
Okay.
Instead of having to make seven tables, I can just make one table and build out the functionality inside of it. I have added the days, then the weekdays. Whether it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; and some background color to show if it's a weekend. I added my activity last, the week number and then I have four variables that adjust the timing for things. It doesn't take that much data either. The only thing that I placed was the variables, and then I built up a calendar from the start date to the end date. I’m just auto generating all the dates between max and minimum date.
That's really cool, actually. Just be able to quickly see how it all these different decisions and times will affect your end date.
Yeah, it becomes really evident. People are asking: when do you think we will actually have this in place? And then it's an easy way to show people, understand that this thing has to be in place before this one, and there's a certain amount of delay time before we can actually have it in place.
A common challenge in my department at least one that we face is testing new changes in a system to kind of analyze if there might be improvements and where. How would you recommend visualizing that for that?
A and B testing is probably the most popular analysis that you could do.
Okay.
Of course you could use Qlik Sense both to calculate the statistics behind the A&B test, but also visualizing how well you can rely on the data. You have two groups: one where you let them show the difference or the change; and the other one keeps the old. And then you try to see if you have some kind of confidence that the changes that you made really made an effect on. In this case, it's conversion. So, I like to show it as Bell Curves. So, this is the conversion rate for the control group; and this is the conversion rate for the variance group. And then just calculating conversions between visitors. There's a conversion rate uplift is the percentage of how much better is this in the conversions; and then you can calculate the standard deviation. Said value, P-value and in this case. It's all about the P-value, so if the P-value is below 0.05 then you would have a 95% confidence over significant test results. I added a slider where I can change the conversions in the variance group. So, if I increase it, I have higher confidence; if I decrease it, so few other conversions, I can see that now it's no longer statistically safe, or I can't be sure within 95% that the change is a significant test result.
And that Bell Curve is kind of a powerful visualization as well.
And it's quite easy to build up in Sense as well. I mean you already have the normal distribution as a function in the engine. To me, it resonates well. Of course, you could show it just as a table. I like the way that it spread out the estimate of the normal distribution.
I know in Sweden when you're looking at calendars, and stuff like we were before; weeks is very common. Do you have a way of making custom times, like with weeks instead?
When you drop an Excel file inside of Sense, and you're loading it. It will actually create a master calendar for you, and it has some basic settings. But it maybe it's not that super well known that these time-aware charts, when you have a continuous axis, you can actually decide how they should look like. The normal standard way is probably to show years, and then months, and then dates, perhaps. But if you work a lot with weeks then it makes sense to show week numbers instead; which is quite popular in in Sweden. Not so much in the U.S., perhaps.
Yeah.
When you build up the calendar, you declare derived fields (so to speak), and then you have expressions for the different parts of your time axis. The meta information that goes in (that decides how the time aware chart should look like) is the way that it's tagged. So, dollar axis (that will actually show on the axis) and then you have two different ways to show qualified: that means that this axis will show when you are zooming in. And Simplify: this is the axis that will be shown when you're zoomed out. And you could also have helper expressions that will not be shown in the UI, but you can if you want to build up something more complex. So, now I’m sort of zoomed out. I show the years, and then I show the week number for the first week in each quarter. I can't have all 52 weeks, because then it won't show me any week numbers. As I’m zoom in, you can see the individual weeks. And at a certain time, it will switch over and show me the individual week numbers instead. And if I go even further, it will actually show me the dates again.
Oh, wow! Even all the way to times. That was pretty cool.
Yeah, as we switch over to week numbers, so we show all the week numbers. We also change the quarters to show both the year and the quarter number. Otherwise perhaps, you get too lost when you are looking at week 27, whether you are on 2020 or 2021.
That's good to have that additional reference.
You can build up your own fiscal year, perhaps. In Sweden it’s quite common to have fiscal years that start at a different month. Could have your fiscal year starting on May 1 for instance. But there is actually some customers that have a fiscal year that starts at a certain week number. Then it becomes a bit tricky, because if you have a year that started week 36; then it's no longer symmetric. You will have years that are different length depending on, because week numbers are kind of sliding. It's easier to calculate or build up an offset if you start on a month rather than a week. But you could still build something. In this case, I’m playing around and using colors instead. This is a customer of ours that have a fiscal year that started week 36. The week numbers are correct. So if I zoom in here, we can see that they actually starts at one. But it's actually week 36 in this case.
Okay.
And I’m using the color functionality together with the time axis to show where the fiscal year starts and ends.
Now I know you have a lot of tips and recommendations there in this app that you put together and developed. We don't have time to go through them all of course. Do you have any general advice for developers who’re trying to decide what is the best solution to the problems they're trying to solve?
Yeah. In many cases with design or anything, that you usually try to add too much stuff. And you're not done when you have no space to add things. It's probably when you should start to take away things that are less important in order to highlight something. So, you're not done until you have taken away everything that is not relevant any longer. And especially if you work with electronic dashboards and not with paper reports; then you have all the possibilities of adding interactivity that can fill the gap. And the human brain usually works really if provided an overview first; and then you get details later. So, you could use when you hover over something, you can get a custom tool tips that provide additional information for that space that you're interested in. Of course, the whole paradigm of Qlik Sense: with making selections and narrowing down the scope that you're interested in, also helps a lot in order to consume a complex data set.
Great! Thank you very much. Okay, now it's time for Q and A. Go ahead and submit your questions to the Q and A panel on the left side of your On24 console. Patric, which question would you like to address first?
So, we can go from the top.
What's the most effective way to display filters? Especially if there is a number of them are used to struggle to understand on how to use them?
I would say that the most common used filter is the Selection Bar. So, when they started to use some kind of selections that is the most peoples are interacting with, then you have the possibility of adding filters to your to your page, or to your dashboard to help the user for an initial selection. And that's what filter pane is for. I’m not sure if everybody knows how the filter pane works. Because if I’m adding something to the filter pane, I can add additional fields to it. If I add a lot of different ones, it will actually collapse and help you to keep them organized. If you want to make selections on it, you can still do it; but you can still also you can expand it. So they can get easier full screen view of all the selections. I like to work with the titles with the filter panes. Instead of just showing the title for the field, you can actually (like I did here in my feature overview). So, instead of just showing Year here. I’m showing: if I make a selection, it will actually show me that in the filter pane. Of course, this is also included in the selection bar; but if I make another selection, I have a dynamic title, so instead of showing Year, I’m showing the actual values for the year. It works really well if it's something obvious; like years, because you don't have to spell out that this is a year. Most people recognize that directly. And you can do that with other things as well, so.
That's nice.
This is 2021 button, and canon, and you could have a look at it that at the same time. So, that's my best tip for selections. I also, if you're making some kind of guided application where you want the user to click and make a certain type of selection; you can help the user to have - you have buttons that you that the user should hit. And you could apply either a selection directly, or a bookmark.
Okay.
Instead of showing everything. There's also the Global Selector. That will show you all the fields which; I don't know how many users are actually using, but this is a quick way to get to see all the data that is available within your side of your app.
All right. Next question?
Yeah. Next one is: can we evaluate which visualizations or metrics takes the most time to load?
So, in my experience, when you visualize something, it's much about the actual metrics behind. So, the expressions that you make, that is what can actually take time to render. So, I usually try out all my expressions first, before I, or especially if they take a lot of time. I try to debug and try to write better expressions just by looking at them populating a table, perhaps to start with. And know that they are actually producing the result that I’m interested in.
Right. That makes sense. Testing is always important.
Yeah, I mean especially, you probably start with some kind of subset, and then you load the full data. And it might be behaving a completely different way. So, it's, you have to work with the app through the different phases I think.
Okay, next question?
Where can we find more information about Qlik Sense extensions and maps?
So, it's all on the Help Site. It's organized with the different products, so I would say that if you're looking for reference information, then you will have all the information at the Help Site. Then there's additional information; perhaps more tutorial specific ones. The one thing is the reference documentation, but you sometimes you would need, you want to do something very specific. And then reference documentation might not take you all the way. So, there's the Qlik Design Blog of course. And then at the Qlik Community. We have different forums. So, if you're going to perhaps for Qlik GeoAnalytics, so.
I notice you're very active there.
Yeah, I try to spend a lot of time here. So, then there's a tutorial section where we could see the in the document section for GeoAnalytics, where you can find tutorial built out tutorials if you want to load a shapefile for instance or if you want to do something more specific.
Okay, next question?
Can you give an outlook which functionalities from the on-prem version will follow in the cloud edition? Which gaps will remain?
So, most of the things we release in the cloud version first nowadays. And then we gather all the new functionalities, and they will go into the on-prem version four times a year. So, if you have a cloud account, it's good to keep track of all the new features; because you get them immediately in Qlik SaaS, so that is a good way to keep track of new things.

When are you going to have out-of-box colors font borders, etc.?
So, you might have seen that we have added a lot of features. I think we pushed up more than 96 different features the last five milestones. So, there's a lot of - we focus on three different areas. We push out new charts, completely new charts, new functions inside of the charts, more like accumulations and trend lines, etc. And then we are also adding custom settings. So, in the Line Chart for instance, you could have dashed or solid lines, you could have curved or straight lines. So, that's type of short specific settings. We will also add more common settings to, like that are more common for the short background; perhaps the title. So, that is something we want to add, but and we will add it continuously, released by release. But we wanted to start out with the most important parts first. But there will be more settings like that as well. It's relevant (I guess) for people who want to have more control over their application; and want to build something very specific. You can control these settings already today by using a Custom Theme. So many of these are exposed that way you could also use css to tweak.

And if you want complete freedom to do anything that you want; perhaps you should also - you should build a mashup instead. Leave the Sense application and just embed the charts that you like, and you then you can tweak it any way you see fit.
Okay, Patric we have time for one last question.
We can go: which is the best way to connect with to see more of these type of visualizations?
I would say to stay tuned to the Qlik design blog. There's a lot of nice articles posted over the years on how to design and how to build for this specific app or for. This app with tips, it's part of a series. So, this was part number five. So, there's four other apps that you could, they're all available on the Qlik Community. So, if you search for in Qlik Community and “Top 10,” you probably get a hit for this one. And they are linked together, so you could explore them. The Qlik Community is a great resource for sharing and for finding inspiration to build things with Qlik Sense.
That's really great, because I’m sure a common question amongst our attendees is ‘where can we get a closer look at this app that you've been sharing?’ Great. Well, thank you very much Patric! I think this will be helpful for a lot of people.
Yeah, thanks a lot for having me here. It's great to be able to spread the word on how things that you could do with Qlik Sense.
Okay, great. Thank you everyone. We hope you enjoyed this session. And thank you to Patric for presenting. We appreciate getting experts like Patric to share with us. Here is our legal disclaimer. Thank you once again and have a great rest of your day