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daveatkins
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III

way to access a list of all QlikView documents, categories, and distribution groups?

I would like to create a reference to help our IT support team resolve issues related to access. The use case is that an end user will say "I need access to Click View" and the support team needs to be able to determine which application they are talking about in order to help them obtain the appropriate access. Access is managed by AD Security groups. So, ideally, what I want to see is a list of all published documents, by category, with their associated distribution lists. Even if the support desk can't access the QVW, I could export it and manage it periodically if I could get this meta data into a QlikView I create.

7 Replies
Peter_Cammaert
Partner - Champion III
Partner - Champion III

In your case, there are two possible paths to follow:

  1. Read the Document, Task & Distribution information in the QVPR. Advantage: someone already did it for you. Disadvantage: this is what is configured to happen, not what has already happened.
  2. Read the task execution results in the DistributionService folder. Lots of xmls = lots of work. And i'm not sure whether this has already been done before

Also note that access to documents often isn't managed just by way of distribution lists. Licenses and Section Access entries may also play a part in this deduction. But maybe not (yet) in your environment...

Best,

Peter

daveatkins
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III
Author

thanks; now I remember using that QVPR app before for something similar. Maybe I can set up our nprinting to email me a simplified report or something

Peter_Cammaert
Partner - Champion III
Partner - Champion III

I think your initial idea of creating a QlikView document (for administrator use only) is a better match. The associative logic offers you a method of selecting a document and/or existing users, and let QlikView figure out what must be done to add another user with the same access rights.

Your choice.

daveatkins
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III
Author

the key piece...how do I find out what groups are being distributed to for each document? Right now, I would go on the QMC and look up the refresh task to see what the group is for a given app. I would look at the access point to search for apps and view them by category.

Peter_Cammaert
Partner - Champion III
Partner - Champion III

IMHO categories have nothing to do with access or security. They're just a nice touch to group documents in the AccessPoint.

AD groups to which documents are being distributed can be lifted from the QVPR. See the Recipient Name field on the Distribution tab in Rob's QVPR Analyser.

BTW QlikView has no idea about how AD Groups work. They just grant access to a lot more people than a single user account.

daveatkins
Partner - Creator III
Partner - Creator III
Author

We also use AD groups for section access. It gets complicated. It would be nice if I could create a self-service portal to overlay the whole access point. What happens now is users call a general support line and it often takes a while for everyone to figure out how to get assistance since our organization supports hundreds of applications (other than Qlik) for almost 40,000 users. We added QlikSense into the mix now too and there is another non-reporting application called "Clickview"...

Peter_Cammaert
Partner - Champion III
Partner - Champion III

That's an entirely different issue than the one in your original post, and I'm not entirely sure that we can solve this in this or another community discussion.

But let me just share with you the following reflections:

  • a QlikView installation is a pretty much self-contained environment. I'm not saying that you can isolate it completely from other IT services (because that wouldn't be true), but it's pretty easy to lay support and maintenance in the hands of a few QlikView specialists with system management experience. Read on for further techniques.
  • Organizing access management entirely on AD and groups may be appealing at first but brings a lot of problems with it. In almost every enterprise environment I was involved in, I switched to access management that is based entirely on Section Access and a custom database. In those cases, distribution is done to "All Authenticated Users" and access is governed by whether a user is present in the SA database or not.
  • Even license assignment can be managed using a custom database, although you cannot mix multiple license types and assign them dynamically. But the technique offers a lot of flexibility, is resilient to the point that QlikView licensing can break down and you are still able to restore operations in no time (comparatively), aznd is way easier to manage if you create a few necessary tools.

The big advantage was that in large enterprises, stuff like distribution and acces management is pulled away from general IT services and being managed by people who understand the architecture and how it operates. As a result, requests for granting/denying access to documents are serviced much quicker than via a support ticket that first has to travel to a support department at the other side of the globe.

Of course, your mileage will vary.