Application documentation

[#1]

Hi

Documention is a pain in the a** really but it's a necessity. End user documentation and technical documentation.
Instead of having Word-documents that won't get updated I'm thinking it would be a great idea to have the documentation within the application itself.
And then export that application documentation to xml and build an application about all your QV applications?

If this is done in a standard way it should be possible to see application dependencies, files and fields used and so on. This relates to my previous post (Re-use of logic).

Have any of you thought the same thing? I'd be glad to hear you input on this.

/Fredrik

[pover]

Fredik,

We've thought the same especially after a few customers complained and asked to documention similar to what SAP or Oracle delivers. We've even been asked to document the impact each field could have for each report (object) in QlikView. So we are in the process of developing something while hoping that someday this will be taken care of by QlikView natively or by some extension.

Regards.

[johnw]

I don't think any of our QlikViews have any external documentation.

This isn't exactly what you're after, but all of our necessary documentation is included as part of the application. We always have an "about" tab describing the application in very general terms, where the data comes from, the reload schedule, and who to contact if there are problems or you want to request changes. Some applications have a definitions tab where you can select field names and other terms used in the application and see their definition. One of these applications even loads the configuration out of the business system to automatically describe how data is established, and to therefore automatically update the "documentation" any time the configuration is changed.

We would like but do not have what you describe - a QlikView that maps the interdependencies between all of the QlikViews. I want to see which fields from which QVDs are used in which applications, or something along those lines. But this would need to be automatic and complete, and not require me to write anything extra about what fields the application uses. I could swear I've seen an example of this before, but I haven't been able to find it now that I care more about it.

Anyway, here's an example of putting text with arrows in the chart to explain functionality that may not be obvious at first glance, but needs only a minimum of explanation.

And here's that application that loads the configuration out of the business system. Both the text definition and the code are sourced from the business system itself, so they can never be out of sync with the way the fields are actually being calculated.

And here's a typical About tab.

[#4]

Here is my start on creating a QV document to show the data flow into a dashboard. I started using a traditional documentation tool like visio, but realized it would be much more useful to have it as part of an application. The ability of QV to keep tabs on the flow will make this very useful.

It's almost a proof of concept. Need to spend some more time on it.

[#5]

Thanks all for you input

Cisco, your application looks interesting. I really hope that you'll share it with us once you've finished it. I think there will be a whole lot of people interested in this kind of solution.

I'll continue making some efforts of my own and if I manage to make anything useful I'll share it to the community.

/Fredrik

[cheburashka]

Hello Fredrik,

I've been working on a documentation template. I've written a blogpost about it.

QvM - Documentation

In short to create the documentation for one app I use a checklist and an excel template. The excel template is also a source file for the app.

If you are looking for data lineage documentation I can recommend NodeGraph‌.

I hope you find it useful.

Have fun Qlik'n, Koen

‌

QlikViewModules.com

[Onufry]

Hello @cheburashka 

do you still have that template or blog post about it?