Making Sense of Section Access in Qlik Sense

[Dalton_Ruer]

I recently spent a lot of time digging through materials trying to prepare for a webinar I did today on Section Access in Qlik Sense.

What I found was that while there are a gajillion posts on Section Access in QlikView I found very little detail about Section Access in Qlik Sense. So I whined and belly ached and moaned and pointed fingers and ... just kidding I created some. The attached 13 page document contains what I think is a really good primer on how to implement Section Access in Qlik Sense.

It covers:

How to implement Row Level Security

What an * really does

Explains the difference between USER and ADMIN as an access type

How to handle Section Access via a file or a database instead of just INLINE

How to implement Column Level Security so you can hide PII and PHI

How to implement a combination of Row and Column Level security for when you need Bob to have access to most of the details for Department 42 and Department 44 but he should only see the PII for the employees in Department 42.

Yeah it's that comprehensive. But feel free to comment and add anything that you feel others might need to know. Or describe other use cases and share the code you used.

Disclaimer: I spent about 40 hours researching which included a lot of trial and believe me ... error. So I apologize in advance for the fact that the document isn't "pretty." I simply ran out of time.

Didn't get an engraved invitation to the webinar that I did where I walk through everything in the document and wish to watch it ... you can catch it on demand at:

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=reg20.jsp&referrer=&eventid=128282...

[mosherterry]

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the webinar yesterday and it was fantastic as usual.  Additionally, I think your document does a fantastic job of walking through Qlik Sense Section Access in a way that can actually be understood.  I don't think it would be a bad idea for the Qlik team to use some of your examples in the "official" documentation that is available on the website as the current examples shown for Dynamic Data Reduction are a bit difficult to digest without more thorough explanation.  Keep up the great work!

[flipside]

Excellent document, Dalton. I was asked to implement section access into QlikSense just this week, so great timing for me. I'll give it a good read once the lure of Christmas wine has waned.

Incidentally, PHI and PII had me stumped for a bit. Google tells me it is what most of us Brits would call PID (Personal Identifiable Data) or just Personal Data.

flipside

[Dalton_Ruer]

So glad I was able to help you as I know it's important whatever it's called. I think they've made the acronyms hard for us to keep the data even more secretive.

[#5]

I finally get why my * was not producing the expected results!  Thank you for putting this together.  You did a great job of explaining the code using relatable and easy to follow examples. 

[lbuijsma]

Hi Dalton,

I wished I had found your document before spending the 40 hours of frustration. Anybody who is planning to use Section Access, please carefully read the document. It works and it works fine.

Request to Qlik: please, please, please add this document to your help manual! It is a powerful addition and saves the users a lot of terrible headaches.

[Dalton_Ruer]

Thank you Leon. That's very kind of you. So glad you were able to find it and it helped.

[cluscombe]

holy crap this an amazing document.  Been trying to figure out where to start with Section Access for weeks and its finally starting to makes sense.  Any chance the QVFs referenced in the webinar are available for download?

[vmuppala]

Wonderful document , it was very helpful.

Can we use multiple columns in the section access ? For example

country -> state -> district

Example

ACCESS  USERID  PASSWORD  COUNTRY  STATE  DISTRICT

I tried using the above for a user to restrict him to a specific district and it was not working as intended.

Any suggesstions ?

[mayankraoka]

Excellent document!!Worth reading it.

[prutis66]

@dalton the section works on Alphanumeric it need not be only Alpha.