Talk to Experts Tuesday - General Qlik Sense FAQ

[Jamie_Gregory]

This is the FAQ for the November 17th Talk to Experts Tuesday session on Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows, Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS and Qlik Sense Business.

For the recording and transcript, please see TTET - General Qlik Sense on November 17,  2020: Recording & Transcript.

Environments:

• Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows
• Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS
• Qlik Sense Business

How can I use web connector to connect multiple excel workbooks on SharePoint to Qlik Sense? I've tried and when I do only the data in the first workbook connected shows and the others appear as if they are connected but I don't see the data after loading the data.

This question is currently being investigated. Please check back later for an update.

I use a self-service portal to create my own reports in Qlik Sense. I was told internally that I can control who has access but I haven't seen the feature that allows this. If I can have someone show me that would be very much appreciated.

This gets a bit tricky to discuss because you’re dealing with access control and it really depends on how things have been configured. Also, what you mean by reports. If by reports you mean a sheet that you have created in another application, then you should be able to right click and share that sheet. However, that is sharing it with others that have access to the application. It doesn’t let you control who has access.

If you’re talking about an application you built, it depends on what platform you are using: Qlik Sense Business, Qlik Sense SaaS or Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows. Access to applications are controlled by either Streams or Spaces. If you’re on Windows, it’s controlled by Streams and it’s all done through the Qlik Management Console (QMC) and likely as an end user, you do not have access. You would need to talk to an Administrator about that. It may be different in Cloud as well. We would need to know some more information on what exactly you’re trying to share (an app, a sheet or visualization) and what system you’re on to be more specific.

You can also look at the Qlik Help. Click on Documentation and select your product then enter your search term.

What are the main differences between Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS and Qlik Sense Business?

This page, Using different editions of Qlik Sense, reviews some of the differences between the products/ Also there is the Qlik Pricing sheet that gives a matrix of the differences if you expand the Compare Product Features section. Primarily the differences are the app size limit in-memory, managed spaces, and the amount of shared spaces.

Qlik Sense Business is a bit more lightweight in that if you have a few users, you will want to go with that option. If you have more users, you will probably want to go with Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS. If you click on the Chat button you can talk to someone or contact Qlik Sales and they can help you figure out what kind of subscription will fit your needs.

Are there any particular differences in managing third party extension objects between the SaaS editions of Qlik Sense e.g.Qlik Sense Business and Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS?

Extensions are managed in the same manner between the two products. Within the Hub, go to your Profile > Administration > Extensions. Extensions can then be added or managed on this page. For more information on managing Extensions, please see Managing Extensions.  If there is a difference between Qlik Sense Business, the Help will generally have a call out that states the difference between the two.

One thing to keep in mind is the memory the extension consumes and the limits are different between the two products.

How can we optimize the performance of the Qlik Sense environments?

There is the Qlik Sense Admin Playbook that was put together by Qlik Consultants. This is about administering the system and that your environment is managed properly. When it comes to performance, it’s really about making sure your environment is managed and make sure users are not building large applications that your environment can sustain. For example, Review Expensive Objects will give you insights on objects with a longer load time. Then you can reach out to the developer and let them know that the object is consuming more resources than we can sustain. You can review your Node Health, your Tasks and see how many tasks you have, how frequently they run, how frequently they fail, etc.

This is a very important resource for Administrators. It also helps guide you to do things that Qlik Sense won’t prompt you to do like disable unused tasks and remove unused data connections. Of course there are also the built in applitcations that will help monitor everything like the Operations Monitor and now the Analyze App Metadata Analyzer.

Tips & Tricks for app efficiency

I would recommend looking at the Analyze App Metadata Analyzer. This is a great resource for looking in to synthetic keys, data islands, circular references, and RAM footprints of the app and tables. You can also search the Help site for ‘best practice’ and get hits on data modeling, managing data, optimizing app performance and visualizations.

In an environment in where I have QlikView Server + Qlik View Publisher and Qlik Sense Client-managed. I would like to know how can I trigger a task in QlikView Publisher from Qlik Sense?

This isn’t something that is native to either product. It’s possible to set up some sort of integration to do that, where you would either monitor for the task to enter as completed then use the API to trigger a task in QlikView. Since this isn’t native, you may be better off asking your Account Manager for assistance with implementing this.

Is it necessary to have at least 1 professional license in Qlik cloud environment like windows environment or is it possible to have only analyzer license? For only analyzer license, I mean that I develop app in windows environment (with professional license) but I install it on the cloud for customer (other license) that doesn't need to develop but only analyze them.

The Professional license allows you to create applications for the Analyzer users to consume. Even if you develop in a Windows environment, a Professional license is required and the same license is used to upload the application to the Cloud. It is not an option to purchase just Analyzer licenses, at least one Professional license must be purchased as well. In this instance, you would give yourself the Professional license to upload and configure the app and the customer would utilize the Analyzer license.

When you make a new data connection in QSE, the username of the person making the connection is automatically in the connection name. I always go to the QMC to change the connection name and remove the username. How can I avoid this step and why is a username always in the connection name? Is there a reason to keep the username in the connection?

The reason the name is because you generate a local connection for the app first. Once the app is published, you would change this so it gets a more general connection.

It also avoids conflict. You may not be able to see that there is another connection named “Test Connection 1”. If it exists and you can’t use it, you could get strange error message. So adding the user name avoids conflicts.

Can you authenticate Qlik Sense Desktop against SaaS editions of Qlik Sense?

Yes, you can. Simply log into your tenant and go to your Profile > Settings > Qlik Sense Desktop. You can download the latest version and once it’s installed, go back to the Qlik Sense Desktop section in the Settings and click the Authenticate button. It will then prompt to open the QlikSenseBrowser and will provide a link to the tenant for you to authenticate with. Simply sign in and Qlik Sense Desktop will launch. You do need a Professional license for this.

For more information, please see How to authenticate Qlik Sense Desktop against SaaS editions.

I'm looking for the feature called "Exploring" as available in June 2017 Release in Smart search. It showed all EXISTING visualisations using the search term. This were field names or names of visulalisations. "Insights" is not the same.

This question is currently being investigated. Please check back later for an update.

Since Qlik Sense Desktop is no longer free, we have tried to setup authentication against Qlik Sense Enterprise server but we continue to see this error: failed to authenticate against the selected server. Any tips to help trouble-shoot?

This error usually means there is a network connectivity problem. Common causes can be firewalls blocking the required ports, a network proxy interfering with the connection or a VPN not allowing the required connection.

For steps to troubleshoot, please see Unable to Login to Qlik Sense Desktop Due to Failed to Authenticate Against the Selected Server Erro...

Please also verify you’re using the latest version of Qlik Sense Desktop and that your user has a Professional license assigned.

Is there a Qlik Sense Cloud environment available for technology partners?

 Not to our knowledge but you may want to reach out to your Partner Manager to verify or let them know what you are looking for and see if they can help.

I have the variable Set vYear = Max([Year]). If I change the year in the App in the filter, the variable changes the year as well. How can I exclude the filters from setting this variable that I always get the max Year regardless of the selection?

Take a look at Set analysis and set expressions in the Qlik Help. The first example of {$<Year={2009}>} might work. If that is not what you are looking for, please try posting to the Qlik Community > Qlik Sense > App Development section. We have some great developers out on the Qlik Community that are always eager to help. You can also reach out to your Account Manager and they should be able to assist with getting you a development resource.

Where can I find most useful documentation for configure HW server windows capacity?

On the Qlik Community, there is a section for Scalability. The product team does tests on some hardware and there are some tools to test your own servers for stress loads. The first link some configurations they have tested and give some guidance on what you should use or what you should avoid for CPU and memory. Also, only putting more memory on your system may not be the efficient way and you might want to do a more specific setup to get the best performance.

The Qlik Sense Scalability Tools can do some load testing to simulate users going onto the system and opening apps to see how your engine performs.

Is there any possibility that you are going to adapt the streams on premise hub so it will be like the cloud-hub? It would be very much appreciated by us (and probably also by others)!

We would recommend searching for this on the Qlik Ideas Board or entering the request if nothing is found. Our Product Mangers look at these on a bi-weekly basis and if it’s something on the horizon, they will let you know. If it’s not already on the horizon, they will investigate if it is something that could be added or not.

I am receiving an installation error when I try to install Qlik Sense Enterprise. It is failing at the dispatcher. How do I troubleshoot this installation issue?

I would check the installation logs, which are found in the temporary folder of the user installing the software. Search %temp% in Windows Explorer and go up one level or go to C:/users/username/AppData/Local/Temp.

First look at the Service Dispatcher service. You may search for 1603 but that’s not always the best term to search for. If you search for ‘value 3’ and look up in the log and you should see where it ended. You can then search for the error you see there in the Support Knowledge Base. For some Dispatcher errors, it may be best to reach out to Qlik Support and create a case.

Searching for ‘value 3’ should work for other types of installation errors as well.

Is it possible to configure NGINX reverse proxy for user authentication?

It’s possible to configure a third party reverse proxy to cover many different things. You can set up your system to authenticate in different ways. By default, it passes authentication onto Windows and the Windows server itself performs the authenticate check. It’s possible to change that, however, specifically how you would do it with NGINX is not document. We would have to recommend reaching out to your Account Manager so they can set you up with a consultant or Professional Services to help with the configuration. You can also try searching on Qlik Community or asking in Qlik Community to see if anyone has done this in the past and can assist.

I have .NET Framework 4.8 installed on my server. Is this compatible with QSE? If not, what version do I need?

.NET Framework 4.7.2 is what you want at the moment. From the February 2020 release and on, 4.8 will be supported. I can’t say whether or not you’re going to run into problems with 4.8 installed currently. I know that you will need it, unless things change, with February 2020. If you don’t have it, the installer will install it for you, but if you already have it, the installation will take less time.

We will have a Qlik Support Updates Blog late January or early February letting everyone know when .NET Framework 4.8 is required for installation.

I do not have the ability to update my Qlik Sense Business subscription to Analyzer Capacity. If I must contact Sales to do this, do I need start all over again (e.g. download all apps and create a new tenant?) I’d prefer to avoid this if possible.

We do have the ability to upgrade now from Qlik Sense Business to Qlik Sense Enterprise. There are still a few limitations that should be sorted out in the coming months. Currently, it depends on how you purchased your initial subscription. If you purchased digitally, meaning with your credit card, then your only way to upgrade and keep the same subscription, is to do it digitally and go through the purchase process digitally which unfortunately does not include Analyzer Capacity licenses at this time. If you did it through Sales, you can contact your Account Manager and they should be able to assist with the upgrade to Analyzer Capacity licenses. This is to change in the future so if you purchased digitally, you may have to create a new subscription or you can hold off until the option is available.

What is the Insight Advisor Chat? How do I get access to it?

Insight Advisor Chat is our conversations analytics tool. It is the ‘Ask Insight Advisor’ button at the top of the Hub. You can ask the chat questions like “what are my sales for 2019?” and it will pull up the app that will have the answer. It alleviates the need to search through your apps and sheets and visualizations for answers and will pull them up for you. The Product Innovation blog is from our Marketing team and they write up a great informative blog for each release. It also includes videos, so you can see the Insight Advisor Chat in action.

I was told internally that Qlik Sense creates a "pseudo" table that can hold data that can be later used historically. Is that really the case? If it is, how do I access this feature and use it?

This question is currently being investigated. Please check back later for an update.