Enhancing: The GINQO Master Item Manager

[maxwell_marchand]

Trouble maintaining your Master Items in Qlik Sense? Look no further, GINQO's Master Item Manager has been further improved. Master Items can be difficult to maintain as you create more of them, which is risky for your development. To solve this issue we have enhanced the GINQO Master Item Manager to help you work even more effectively with Master Items. 

An improved UI as well as better error handling and Drill-down support makes this a great option for your development. Additionally all Dimensions/Measures are now tagged by the Extension, making it even easier to maintain and manage them.

Try our Master Item Manager extension (https://github.com/GINQO/Master-Item-Manager). Comments and Feedback are always welcome. Additionally, let us know if you would like to contribute to the open-source community.

What is it?

• The GINQO Master Item Manager (MIM) is a simple utility tool meant for synchronizing your Master Items from an Excel file.  That Excel file can then be used to define the Master Items across multiple applications.
• The MIM can also be useful for exporting Master Items into an Excel file for review/validation.
• After adding Master Items to a template file, you are able to reuse them among other Sense apps
• From a table object,  you can decide which Master Items you want to be added to your Qlik Sense applications.
• Using Qlik's associative engine, Master Items can be organized into your application by means of tags, name, descriptions, etc.

Why was it built?

• The Qlik Governed Metrics Service (https://developer.qlik.com/garden/57655702febb2ca54e7149d2
• has not been further developed and is not working for the latest Qlik Sense releases
• It requires installation of additional software and might not meet the security requirements in your environment
• Master Items are slow to create but are frequently reused
• Some customers use the same data sources, meaning same metrics
• Customers have requested this feature to manage Master Items themselves
• Occasionally you might create duplicate Master Items and be unaware of it.

Who is it for?

• Developers who are reusing Master Items across multiple applications
• Customers who want more control over their QS environment

[Dave-Wood]

This is a great tool! A lot simpler to set up and use than some of the others I have seen. The export functionality is great as quite often the need for this tool will come after an application is developed. A couple of things I noticed in testing was that it doesn't seem to fully export drill dimensions it will just export the first field in the drill. Also where there are multiple tags it will only export the first one. It will import them correctly though which is great. Tags are important as this could be very complimentary to the Insight Bot product which relies on multiple tags on master items and it would be easier to manage this outside multiple individual apps...anyway... great work.

[kinahan7]

Is this or will it ever be a certified extension?

[sergeyko]

Hi @maxwell_marchand ,

Just wanted to say thank you for the great tool. Exactly what I was looking for to enable reusing master items across applications.

I am just getting started and syncing master items to add them to the app after adding new dimensions/measures to the centralized list does not look like a big deal but it may become a challenge after connecting multiple apps. Would there be a way to automatically sync new master items after they show up in the source spreadsheet (e.g. on daily data reload, add new items to the lists of master dimensions and measures)?

[kinahan7]

Is it possible to set the master measure "Number formatting" to "Measure expression" using MIM?

[JaviPalurien83]

Hi @maxwell_marchand ,

Is it possible to automate the export of the master items to an excel file?

It would be very useful to be able to leave that exported file in a shared directory for other users to use and load in their applications without having to do it manually like now.

Greetings.

[Danijel]

@maxwell_marchand 

Thank you for the helpful extension.

I am currently testing it on Qlik Sense Feb 2021 Patch 6.

Master dimensions can be exported. When I edit this export and load in script, whether csv or xlsx, the extension cannot sync them. Nothing happens.

Am I making a mistake or does the extension not work on this version?

Thanks and greetings

[marcginqo]

Hi  @Danijel 

Would it be possible to send the exported and changed files please.

Also provide some additional information like the script you use for loading it into the app which is used for the Master Item Manager.

Marc

[Dalton_Ruer]

I am LOVING this. 

1. Are you working on a way to synch the VALUE COLORS property for dimensions that have pre-defined value colors by chance? 

2. Just adding this for those that may not think about it. The load script that loads up the Dimensions and Measures values can come from ANYWHERE and could use a WHERE clause you wouldn't need an individual XLS for each and every application. You could follow the same concept as the unsupported  Goverened Metrics service where you load from a master table with all dimensions and all measures and simply say "Where App name = abc" type thing or like it did where you identified business type terms. 

Again, love how simple this is. 

[marcginqo]

@Dalton_Ruer ,

Thanks for the comments and the feedback. Let us get back to you on this.

Marc