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pamaxeed
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III

NPrinting Best Practises

Hi all,

we have a customer which wants to use NPrinting as a Self Service Tool for their own business User. I would like to know which are the Best Practises for a scenario like described below:

  • Main App is deployed on the Qlikview Enterprise Server and available through Access Point to the end users
  • Main App includes Windows NT Section Access Mechanism for data reduction
  • Advanced Business Users would like to created static Reports using NPrinting 16 based on the Main App Qlikview file.
    Every of this Business User should see only his own data when playing with NPrinting for the report generation and distribution.
  • Deployment of user .nsq files on NPrinting Server for automated distribution in specific folder

Now I have the following questions:

  • How is the best way to allow Advanced Business Users to create their own NPrinting reports following the Best Practises?
    Create a copy of the main App in a dedicated user folder so that we are sure that we do not touch and change the main application published on the  Access Point?
  • How we can assure that these Business Users only work with their own data when creating NPrinting Reports? I read that Windows NT Section Access is not supported.
  • If we create a copy of the main app for every Business Users reduced to their own data, how we can keep those files synchronized? Lets assume we will have a new release of the main App with new charts and visualizsation...

Thanks for your input!

Regards,

Patric

6 Replies
ogster1974
Partner - Master II
Partner - Master II

Best practise for nprinting would be create a dedicated app for nprinting full stop.  keeps the visualisations available under your control and the size of the app down which will improve processing speed.  link the refresh of this app to the main app via qvds to optimise the task reload speed.  new visualisations are then available under control of the owner of that app.

If you want them to create new reports then you need to make them developers in nprinting to access the report creation feature.  limiting their data access can be done as you suggest by section access on the nprinting app in sense.

Some of the questions you raised nsq files are only in 16 v17 that connects to sense doesn't have this concept.

Hope this gets you started.

Regards

Andy

pamaxeed
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III
Author

Hi Andy,

thank you for your answer.

We are using NPrinting 16 and Qlikview 12.

So correct me if i am wrong creating a reduced app for every NPrinting User (Business User who will be a Developer in Nprinting) would be the correct solution.

The problem here in my understanding is exactly the step of the data redcution as NPrinting 16 does not support Windows NT authentication so this means it can not handle the reduction of data through Section Access via NTNAME.

In this case my Idea would  be to create a main NPrinting project which is repsonible for the "Loop and Reduce" functionality, for distributing the reduced Qlikview App to those users in a specific user folder (similar to the Publisher capability). In this case we would have to create a copy of the main app (only for NPrinting purpose) without Section Access feature to take it as input for the distribution of the reduced app to the NPrinting users. So at the end the users could work on the own reduced .qvw app file for the creation of their own NPrinting Reports.

Further all NPrinting users can be defined in a specific AD group and those recipients could be retrieven and loaded directly from a Qlikview App (ex. table object).

Does it makes sense?

Regards,

Patric

Lech_Miszkiewicz
Partner Ambassador/MVP
Partner Ambassador/MVP

Hi,

few questions you need to consider:

  • do you want to allow users to create their own reports in NPrinting (meaning build a templates?). That will require multiple individual licenses for NPrinting 16 designer which also raises a question: is it worth doing in 16 as it soon will be not supported!!!
  • second question is: if your end users will build they own templates they will have to be aware how QlikApp is build - I do not think it is a good idea to let people build their own templates without knowing a full data!

I reckon you should consider following scenario:

  1. Introduce NPrinting 17
  2. Introduce dedicated QlikView app for NPrinting
  3. Introduce OnDemand reporting which will support triggering on demand as well as section access (BUT TEMPLATES SHOULD BE BUILD BY EDUCATED DEVELOPERS!!!) otherwise you will have mess there.

What i do not understand is why you would like to work on separate apps when building NPrinting reports? I see benefit of it only in data volume and it may be vary beneficial in that aspect.

Other problems with NPrinting 16 is that you cannot have multiple projects running at the same time on server. NPrinting 16 is not multi threaded so it will be extremely slow and multiple developers can design their apps at the same time, but automated execution will be queued anyway when projects will be placed!

I guess you do not have publisher, right?

regards

Lech

cheers Lech, When applicable please mark the correct/appropriate replies as "solution" (you can mark up to 3 "solutions". Please LIKE threads if the provided solution is helpful to the problem.
pamaxeed
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III
Author

Hi Lech,

first of all thanks for ur answer.

To ur points:

- Every user should see only the own data this is why the multiple apps and the loop and reduce proposed solution. Section Access via NT Windows Authentication is not working with NPrinting so we have to go for other solution.

- Nprinting 17 was not recommended by Qlik to us as the product is still not mature

- About self service by business user creating templates etc. was not recommended by us but the client insisted so he is aware about the risk.

Regards,

Patric

Lech_Miszkiewicz
Partner Ambassador/MVP
Partner Ambassador/MVP

my comments on your points:

- Every user should see only the own data this is why the multiple apps and the loop and reduce proposed solution. Section Access via NT Windows Authentication is not working with NPrinting so we have to go for other solution.

  • Comment: If you would have NPrinting 17 ondemand then secction access applied on QVW document is essentially forwarded as a selection to NPrinting so each individual user triggering report from QV document would see only data managed by section access. This however does not consider developers - only end users
    • On top of that you have control over the roles you can assign in NPrinting admin console which is very helpful
    • As the last note i am thinking that using each developers section access credentials on connection would actually work as per your requirement.


- Nprinting 17 was not recommended by Qlik to us as the product is still not mature

  • Comment: It depends on what do you need it for. What kind of reports people will try to develop and how they would like to work with it. From my point of view it is time to slowly consider moving to June 2017 which i have found easy to work with and much better than 16. Multiple developments and multi threading  is huge benefit of it. Performance is also better i think.


- About self service by business user creating templates etc. was not recommended by us but the client insisted so he is aware about the risk.

  • Comment: In my opinion it will not work. NPrinting Developers MUST be educated,trained and experienced. Leaving development in inexperienced customers hands is not good practice - I should say it is BAD practice. You will face :
    • performance issues
    • huge stability issues
    • non-stop crashes and environment issues
    • not mentioning resources issues

That is my point of view.

I usually ask what is a customer requirement, how they want to use tool etc... but my question is usually how they will use it - not how they will develop in it.

Developing reports in NPrinting is probably more difficult than developing in QlikView and you need to be experienced in both. If those customer developers will have this knowledge they would not ask you for recommendations i guess.

Please reconsider NPrinting 17 as it may solve most of your bullet-points!

cheers

Lech

cheers Lech, When applicable please mark the correct/appropriate replies as "solution" (you can mark up to 3 "solutions". Please LIKE threads if the provided solution is helpful to the problem.
pamaxeed
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III
Author

Thanks again.

As for the training we already had several sessions with them. I completely agree with ur points about it which I also mentioned as possible risk. I think we will take in consideration ur inputs. Thanks!