On Demand reporting for Qlik Sense

[Giuseppe_Panella]

Qlik NPrinting APIs (version 17.4 and above) can be used to capture user selections in Qlik Sense and apply them to generate Qlik NPrinting reports On Demand.

You can find an extension on the Qlik Branch portal that use these APIs to simplify the On Demand report generation and that can be downloaded here:

http://branch.qlik.com/#!/project/58be6fc151be1c2744fb32a0

Take a look at this video that explains how to use the extension and what you can do with it

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

All great - now down to FUN stuff:

• How is section Access Maintained when using this extension?
  • If i trigger a report which is located in differenet app then the one which is currently opened and i should not even have an access to it - what happens? I was able to mock such behaviour which makes whole extension from security perspective unusable
• What happens if I trigger a report which i should not have an access to - same as above? How do you control list of reports you should see? You should only see reports in which you apear as a recipient on Publish Task recipient list (you should only see QlikSense reports!)
• Currently it allows you to trigger QlikView reports - I know that it may be a good thing from one side, but from the other one it means that we loosing control what people can see as they can do almost everything by themselfs in QLikSense which means:
  • the can create an extension/trigger button for NPrinting report
  • link it to any app (QlikView or QlikSense)
  • and trigger any report which has API or OnDemand selected in it
  • ALL ABOVE is not SAFE and will generate a lot of issues!
• Last - why it is an extension and not embeded thing?. Does Qlik provide support for this extension? Since you are encouraging to use it i believe this is Qlik's statement!

If it is not an official Qlik product and it is not supported by Qlik then i think it is completly useless and unreliable!!! As a Qlik Partner we cannot encourage clients to use it as one day it may stop working and Qlik will say it is not their problem - end of story!

I am looking forward to hear your opinion on it in regards to bullet points above.

Cheers

Lech

[Giuseppe_Panella]

Hi Lech,

Thanks for your message, because this is something really important to highlight. As everyone knows, Qlik the extension are not official Qlik products and are not supported by Qlik. So, people that are interested in using this extension already know that is at own risk.

The purpose of the video is to show how Qlik NPrinting APIs make easier the development of external applications. In this case, how they are used to create a Qlik Sense On Demand report.

So, the idea is not to offer an enterprise-ready product for Qlik Sense, otherwise this solution would have been implemented internally in Qlik Sense or Qlik NPrinting, but is to show a possibility for the end user to use their own data and the Qlik products in a different way.

All your questions are valid but I am not the right person that can answer to your question, maybe rpc‌ can help on this.

Cheers,

Giuseppe

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Thanks Giuseppe for an answer.

The only problem i see here is that customers are seeking for an OnDemand solution for Qlik Sense. They are reading community and coming back to us (partners) with questions that "they have seen a solution on Community provided by Qlik". This makes a conversation very difficult as on one end you have a customer who "is always right" and you want to provide as good service as possible and on another end you know that currently available solution is "somebodys sandbox/playground" - which is not reliable, should not be implemented as a production solution and definitely cannot be supported!

Then we have bunch of other questions and statements (in regards to Qlik Sense, Extensions and NPrinting) from customers for example:

• "...we are paying maintanace - why Qlik does not embed this feature in their product? - it cannot be that hard if some random developer came up with solution and put it on Qlik Branch..."
• "...people are turning their backs on Qlik as they cannot trust it anymore - they see it more as a flashy toy - not a stable product you can use in company...amount of support cases due to stability issues raised from 5% to 70%.."
• "...another example was like this: So Qlik is like this nice, very shiny car... looks great, has an engine, wheels and it drives...but it does not have airbags, lights, horn, a/c, stereo, seats, stearing wheel, windows, gearbox.. and if you want anything  you need to go to another store and buy those extras without guarantee!!! (Branch/Extensions)..."  And to be honest i agree 100% with this statement!

I know that some above statements are little bit exaggerated, but I also relise that i do not have as much trust in Qlik product as i used to have, and I lost 90% of my confidence when trying to deliver solutions to customer with Qlik Sense and NPrinting.

It is a shame - I see how many people changed their minds about Qlik products and everyone who i met has the same opinion (lost trust, confidence, frustration)!

This is just my feedback - and i am guite loyal Qlik user! I think it is worth considering as those customers are the one we work for

[simonnailer]

We have just run into the exact issues you have highlighted regarding supportability of extensions.  We are an enterprise user currently exploring how we can use N Printig to meet some of our reporting requirements.  We were using the On Demand report generation and were not aware that it was an extension installed by our internal IT admin team, until it stopped working and were told that they couldn’t help us because it is an unsupported extension.

I am just glad that we found out before spending too much time developing reports that relied on the on demand reporting. This will limit what we can do with Qlik going forward and I am keen to see this feature incorporated into the core product.  Any idea if/when this is planned to be incorporated into QS?

[pablolabbe]

The on-demand API support running reports with multiple connections ?

[simonnailer]

We are using an extension from Qlik branch that provides a button to trigger an on-demand report from within an app.  I assume that the extension uses an N Print API support but not sure of the details as the extension was added by our internal IT admin team.

I did find that the Qlik Statement of Direction 2018 mentions the addition of "...native on demand reporting for Qlik Sense", which I am hoping means that this will be rolled into the core product this year.

https://www.qlik.com/us/-/media/files/qlik/pdf/qlik-statement-of-direction-2018-en.pdf

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Hi,

Qlik NPrinting APIs can run a task as when you press the Run Now button. After starting it will be Qlik NPrinting who creates and distribute all reports in the task. So all kind of reports you can create via UI can also be created via APIs.

Best Regards,

Ruggero

---------------------------------------------

When applicable please mark the appropriate replies as CORRECT. This will help community members and Qlik Employees know which discussions have already been addressed and have a possible known solution. Please mark threads as HELPFUL if the provided solution is helpful to the problem, but does not necessarily solve the indicated problem. You can mark multiple threads as HELPFUL if you feel additional info is useful to others.

[Greg_Williams]

URL not working.

[simonnailer]

Looks like there is an updated version of the 2018 statement of direction published at:

https://www.qlik.com/us/qlik-statement-of-direction?_ga=2.204067600.1679878913.1539637067-2047559579...

The mention of "...native on demand reporting for Qlik Sense" seems to have been removed and replaced with a more general statement "We are also planning more integrated reporting capabilities in Qlik Sense"