Dear all. I would like to start a discussion thread regarding one of the, from my point of view, weaknesses of QlikView: formatted reporting. The aim of this discussion is to share experiences, solutions for common problems, best practices,...
From my understanding, the only way to generate formatted reports is enclosing previously generated qlikview objects (charts, tables, etc.) in pdf or ppt. The main problem is that these objects are designed for analysis and not for reporting. To work this problem around, we usually create a new (and hiden) tab, with the same objects but incorporing some changes in order to adapt them for a print-prepared report... Nevertheless, the result is not as good as using reporting specific tools such us Crystal Reports, Oracle Publisher and so on...
Actually, we use the report-section functionalities in QV. From my understanding, the main problem is you can only use/enclose previously generated objects in this "report-section". And these "previously generated" objects (charts, tables, etc.) are designed for analysis within QV interface and not to be used in "reports to be printed".
To clarify this situation, lets take QV tables as an example. Within QV interface, pivot tables work fine, but if you print a table, you may need more formatting options such us:
- Merging colum headers
- Subtotal / Total rows behind rows to be totalized and left alligned
- ...
I mean: specific objects to be included in reports to be printed are needed.
Apart from the analysis-part we create objects, which are specially designed (actually cloned from existing objects and then reworked) in order to be included in reports (typically from a hidden sheet). Might be a possible solution for you as well.
I fully agree with your view of making reports in Qlik. It requires a lot of additional work without giving the needed control - so it might be better to do reports with a reporting tool and do analysis with Qlik.
e.g. - create dynamic growing textboxes with current selections - print multiple diagrams when getting scrollbars on the screen - only single level of banding
Just the tons of functions usually available with a reporting tool are missing.
I miss some of the typical reporting functions. We usually workaround this issue cloning and adapting objects,a Peter said. QlikView is absolutelly great for analysis, but I think next QV releases should include better reporting functions.
Does anyone know of any reporting-specific tool, similar to Crystal Reports, integrated to QlikView?
I also struggle with the Qlikview reporting functionality as a production worthy format. It can be extremely frustrating working in the small "preview" mode. Text scales so a single page with multiple tables has several font sizes. Hard to make a report you can sit on your bosses desk.
I have been working on QlikView projects for years. The issue of how to take advantage of QlikView's analytic power in corporate reporting is one which I have faced in many if not all QlikView projects. Users love the speed and flexibility in terms of analysis, but don't find corresponding ease of use when it comes to reporting.
It seems that you are looking for a reporting tool for QlikView which:
- doesn't modify the underlying QlikView document
- doesn't require you to duplicate, modify or maintain objects you've already created
- lets you re-use the report templates you develop
- doesn't require the use or maintenance of macros
- lets you apply advanced formatting
- is not expensive in terms of license cost and training
Because of this, we have developed NPrinting; a tool which lets you port data from QlikView into Excel templates which are then populated with data dynamically. It requires a bit of work up front to prepare the templates, but they are easy to maintain and share, and output is in Excel format which means you can use all of Excel's formatting tools. The time it takes to create an Excel template is about the same amount of time it takes to create a QlikView report but maintaining and modifying reports is far faster in NPrinting.
There is a free version available for download (link below).
Reports can be sent by e-mail in .pdf or .xls formats using our scheduling tool (NScheduler) which will be available later in March.
