Distribute charts over email as embedded images

[sergeyko]

Hello - I am looking for collective intelligence to see if we can find a solution for our use case.

We need to distribute our Qlik Cloud charts to our end users over email. The key requirement is to embed charts into the body of the email so the users can see them right away.

Is there any way we can achieve this with app automation? We are open to any custom solutions folks can suggest.

In my mind, the workflow looks as follows:

• Fetch a chart as an image from Qlik Cloud
• (Optional) Store the image on a file share (we use S3)
• Open the image in app automation, encode to base64 if needed
• Insert the image into the email body formatted as markdown or HTML
• Repeat N times for other chart images
• Send email

@Emile_Koslowski - We chatted about it briefly at Qlik Connect. You mentioned there may be a solution that requires some custom code. Would appreciate any pointers you can share.

[sergeyko]

The closest I could find in the community is this thread. They seemed to get close but still could not implement the end-to-end solution.

https://community.qlik.com/t5/Qlik-Application-Automation/How-to-send-Dashboard-as-an-image-to-MS-Te...

[Emile_Koslowski]

Hi Sergeyko, we just released the Get Chart Image block in the Qlik Reporting connector in automations that allows you to grab the image and then send it to Slack, MS Teams or embed it in an HTML email (given it's within size limits of the email provider). More information can be found here: https://community.qlik.com/t5/Official-Support-Articles/How-to-send-a-chart-image-to-Slack-Microsoft...

[sergeyko]

This is fantastic news, thanks for posting a reply @Emile_Koslowski. We are going to try this new feature to replicate the email reports we still run with NPrinting.

Just curious, why does the new Get Chart Image block requires a bookmark to run? If we need to export multiple images, will it be possible to leverage the same (temp) bookmark assuming the selections are exactly the same for every chart we need to export?

[Emile_Koslowski]

The bookmark is not required, it's an optional parameter. But if you want to include selections then you'll need to use it.

Yes you can reuse the bookmark in multiple Get Chart Image blocks but be aware that the temporary bookmark will be deleted after a while.

[sergeyko]

@Emile_Koslowski Thanks for clarifying! I did not realize this new block was separate from the existing options for adding selections and generating reports. The optional bookmark filter makes total sense.

[sergeyko]

@Emile_Koslowski - We run some tests and were able to generate chart images. The new block works great, thanks for adding it!

When it comes to sending the images over email, we are only able to send one image in the attachment. Encoding to base64 as explained above did not work for us because Outlook either does not support or forbids showing base64 images in the email body. I imagine most of the clients using the same business email client will experience the same issue.

Is there any option to embed a chart image using a link to the actual image after storing it somewhere? (e.g store on S3/SharePoint, then reference via <img> tag in the email) Ideally, we are looking for the same experience as we get with NPrinting where all the embedded images are shown in the email body and available for saving. We are getting the same experience with chart previews in emails generated by Qlik Cloud alerts and subscriptions. Wondering if we can achieve something similar with automation.

[sergeyko]

Quick update here: We found a way to embed a chart image that works in Outlook. Tested attaching the chart image to the email and embedding the image using CID as follows:

<img width=100 height=100 id="1" src="cid:Logo.jpg">

This works great in Outlook and should be supported by most email clients. The only caveat is we can only embed one image this way. From what we can see, every file generated by Get Chart Image block gets the same path & name. @Emile_Koslowski - Is it something you can tweak quickly so we can get distinct files for different images generated in the same automation? Allowing user to to rename the image file will be best. The rest should work fine since we can add multiple attachments to the email and reference them in the body via CID provided they have unique names.

[sergeyko]

Hi @Emile_Koslowski - Any update on this thread? This is an awesome feature and we would love to start using it for sharing charts in emails if you all can enable generating multiple chart images with unique names as part of one automation.

[sergeyko]

@Emile_Koslowski - Wondering if you have an update on this topic. We are still looking for the ability to generate multiple chart images with unique file names as we can embed them into emails using CID, which is supported in Outlook.