Filter override, App and User Scope

[Riccardo_1]

Hello,

We do use #Qlik nPrinting May 2021SR1#  with Qlik Sense.

I need to create a task where users will receive one e-mail with two excel documents

1) Excel document with only their own sales (Filter on field User)

2) Excel document with all sales where user has sales. Records from other user for this country must be included.

I thought I did find the right solution for our needs, but meanwhile I am not fully sure about this. To clarify my question, I have added the example data below

[Data]

Country, Customer ,  User ,  Sales

BE ,  Cust1 ,  User A ,  80

DE ,  Cust 2 ,  User A ,  100

DE ,  Cust 3,  User B ,  800

IT ,  Cust 4,  User C , 500

[/DATA]

I did create 4 filters:

Filter1:

Each user (User config) has "filt_Country_{UserName}" where I do set the country dimension where they are responsible for

Filter2:

Each user (user config) has "filt_User_{UserName}" where I do set the user dimension to their own name

Filter3:

Report one (Excel with only own sales) get filter on report level: "filt_Country_Clear" where I do set country dimension to Advanced Filter to clear all selections

Filter4:

Report two (Excel with Sales on Country) get filter "filt_User_Clear" where I do set user dimension to Advanced Filter to clear all selections

This seems to work, but for all reports in the same App (where filters are member of) I need to include the filter "filt_User_Clear" and “filt_Country_Clear", because else the user filter is handled for all these reports.

Questions:

1. Is this a good approach?
2. Is my assumption correct that the scope of a filter only applies to the selected App (and thus related reports) even though the filter is linked to the User. In other words the filter will only be applied if the User receives a Report that is part of the App and when a report is generated in an other App, the user filter is not triggerd

Any thoughts would be really helpfull.

Kind regards

[Lech_Miszkiewicz · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Your solution is one of few which should work ok. Yes - you are right that filters are working with specified connections, hence also with specific apps only. Filters rules are described here: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/nprinting/May2021/Content/NPrinting/ReportsDevelopment/Static-dynamic-fi...

Other solutions:

It depends on how your report needs to look like. If it is just single table then alternative would be to create object in Qlik Sense with set analysis ignoring user filter and/or country filters depending on your needs. It needs to be looked individually and judged by how whole template is required. 

Another solution could be using separate connection for each report so filters would only be applied for each connection individually.

At the end solution you choose should probably weigh on performance, report generation time and required maintenance. Which one you prefer it is up to you.

cheers

[Riccardo_1]

Hello Lech_Miszkiewicz,

Thank you for your time and thoughts! Your suggestions does help to make a more conscious choice about what to solve where. Never thought about the filters on connection and use several connection in one task. Perhaps this one is better the maintain. It is a bit of a balancing act between desired functionality and maintainability.

Thanks for sharing. Much appreciated.

It would be really helpfull if it would be possible in nPrinting to use some predefined fields from the user settings in the filters as predefined-variable. For example, if we have Username property we can refer from filters as {User:UserName}. This way we only need to create one filter which will work for all users. Do you know if something like this is on the roadmap?

Kind regards,

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi @Riccardo_1 

Roadmap?? I doubt it. I don't know if there is anything on the roadmap at all. For last 4 releases there were mainly bugs fixes and the only added features were:

• extended public api functionality for apps and connections endpoints
• support for merged cells in columns and cells

All other improvements were related to product stability and ongoing support so I thing such major change is not going to be implemented. 

Few months ago I went through list of around 120 very sensible ideas for NPrinting and since then I didnt see them being picked up, planned or in development. I only recently saw one by one being declined. It is hard to believe if there will be any further development given that such simple improvement as this one was also declined: https://community.qlik.com/t5/Suggest-an-Idea/NPrinting-Store-Qlik-Sense-connections/idc-p/1893189#M... and to be really fair - all APIs are there - it would be probably just couple of development days, but naah.

[Riccardo_1]

Hi Lech_Miszkiewicz,

You have adjusted my expectations well.

I hope this is not a Qlik policy long term. This would really be a shame for such a wonderful product.

I have read the request in your link. It was rejected without explanation. 

We just started with nPrinting, but I am really worried if the product is only going to be maintained or focus is temporary somewhere else. Is there an official statement about this from Qlik? It is probably cloud what strikes the tone.

I now doubt whether we are making the right choices. Oh dear...

If  the official statement is only maintain it would be lovely to bring it as open source solution to community. 

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi @Riccardo_1 

NPrinting is quite well developed so there is not much we actually need. There were certain decisions made when designing this product that make some of the requested features apparently impossible to implement and for many other requested features there are existing workarounds. If you have commited to on premise solutions the good thing is that what you have is already very robust and in my opinion you have the best tool on the market, but planning solutions and having in mind all limitations and/or recommended approaches when designing reports is critical to take the right path. That is why it is important that you have someone with Nprinting experience onboard if you are building complex solutions or have large deployment. It will save you time, frustrations and disappointments. 

My view on the current situation with releases  is that NPrinting has already had its days and will only be maintained/supported as everything else whats Qlik goes cloud including dedicated cloud reporting suite which at the moment is as limited as NPrinting 17.0 was,  when it was in beta stage 😂 (you may not find this funny if you dont know the early nprinting days).

What Qlik says about it (about whats next with NPrinitng) - they stay quite lip-tight. There was not much of NPrinting in 2022 statements I heard from Qlik, other that mentioning that NPrinting is still there. No particular features were mentioned nor improvements.   

Regarding your hopes that Qlik will make it open source - i reckon it is just wishful thinking. Maintaining product is still a lot more profitable then running it open source as you as a customer will be still paying maintenance fee, right? So I guess you can connect dots together from here 🙂

cheers

[Riccardo_1]

Hi @Lech_Miszkiewicz 

You give food for thought. Thank you for that!

I do indeed see endless possibilities with nPrinting. I do hope that it will all remain manageable as time goes by.
We still have plenty to discover. Although it feels strange to invest a lot of time to learn a product on which the supplier itself no longer focuses in terms of innovation.

But this is probably a mindset 😉

Thanks again for your help and sharing this information.

Kind regards

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi @Riccardo_1 

I guess we drifted off the topic here and it is my fault - sorry. Lets try to stay on the actual question here.

If you have any doubts or questions let us know and we will try to help and please try to avoid posting links to other websites not related to the topic (your translator link), ok?

thanks

Lech