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Recent Blog Posts
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Performance and Scalability - New course offering!
Performance and Scalability – New Instructor-Led CourseThis technical course that gives students the information, tools, techniques and exercises to b... Show MorePerformance and Scalability – New Instructor-Led Course
This technical course that gives students the information, tools, techniques and exercises to become knowledgeable in the
planning, analyzing, designing and testing of an optimal QlikView platform.
This includes topics dealing with:
- Application design and architecture
- Hardware configurations and environment
- Usage, load testing, and analysis
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Are you QlikView Power User?
Take a QlikView Skills Assessment today to find out if you have all the knowledge you need to effectively design, develop, administer and manage QlikV... Show MoreTake a QlikView Skills Assessment today to find out if you have all the knowledge you need to effectively design, develop, administer and manage QlikView.
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QlikView in the Enterprise - New free self-service course!
QlikView in the Enterprise is a 45-minute, eLearning course which covers considerations for an IT department to implement QlikView as a self-service b... Show MoreQlikView in the Enterprise is a 45-minute, eLearning course which covers considerations for an IT department to implement QlikView as a self-service business discovery platform – both from an infrastructure and process point of view. It also covers the role of IT and the services available to support the implementation. Watch it now!
For all of our free eLearning courses, go to our Free Training website.
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Q2 2014 - QlikView Technical Library module available!
The Q2 2014 QlikView Technical Library modules are now available!This quarterly release includes three videos on the following topics:Introduction to ... Show MoreThe Q2 2014 QlikView Technical Library modules are now available!
This quarterly release includes three videos on the following topics:
- Introduction to Set Analysis
- Basic Set Analysis Syntax
- More Set Analysis Syntax
For access or more information:
- Customers: View Data Sheet
- Partners: Access Videos
- Employees: Access Videos
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Colors, States and State vectors
The color coding – Green, White, and Gray – is the hallmark of QlikView. These are the colors that convey information to the user about which field va... Show MoreThe color coding – Green, White, and Gray – is the hallmark of QlikView. These are the colors that convey information to the user about which field vales are selected, which are possible and which are not possible.
These are the states.
If you think about it for a while, you will realize that there are two different states for each field value: One is the input state; the selection that the user has made – whether the field value is selected or not; and the other is the output state: whether the field value is possible or not, given the logical inference of the selection.
Two statuses, each with two possibilities. This makes four combinations: Selected possible, Selected excluded, optional and excluded. Hence: There are not just three states – there are four.
“Selected excluded?” you may ask. “How can a value be selected and excluded at the same time?”
It’s simple. It can first be selected, and then excluded by a selection in another field. An example: Let’s say that you have a sales application and you select Jan, Feb and Mar to get the sales for the first quarter. Then you make a second selection – a product that incidentally was sold just in March. This second selection will then of course exclude Jan and Feb from the possible Month values. Jan and Feb will be selected excluded.
The field states are stored in vectors; binary arrays that have the same number of bits as the symbol tables excluding NULL values; the same number of bits as the number of distinct values of a field. There is in fact also a third field state vector that keeps track of alternative field values: the field values that would be possible, had there not been a selection in the same field.
The blue color is sometimes used in QlikView to show whether a field is locked or not. But note that this is not a state – it is a flag for the entire field, and has thus nothing to do with the individual field values.
Finally, there are state vectors for the binary data tables also - vectors that keep track of which records in the data that are possible and which are excluded.
All these vectors are referred to as the state space. The vectors are updated at every selection and used every time QlikView evaluates which symbols to show in an object and which record to include in the calculation. One state space per user and alternate state is created.
This way, the state space vectors keep track of which data is relevant right now – they “remember” the user selection.
PS. All of the above is of course true for both QlikView and Qlik Sense. Both use the same engine.
If you want to read more about QlikView internals, see
Symbol Tables and Bit-Stuffed Pointers
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3 Color utilities that makes my life easier
We have been talking a lot about color recently. Chuck showed us how to manage colors and alpha transparencies to increase visual perception in our d... Show MoreWe have been talking a lot about color recently. Chuck showed us how to manage colors and alpha transparencies to increase visual perception in our dashboards making it clear for business users to consume charts. A few days before, Apeksha shared some good tips about color usage in QlikView apps. If you are looking for more insight about color and interpretations I strongly recommend you to read Apeksha’s Technical Brief.
Choosing the right colors.
Colors are present in our apps not only in the charts but also in the backgrounds, tab row, captions, and so forth. It’s key to find a color palette that works and that lets business users consume information quickly and in an efficient way.
There are lots of content and good examples on the internet about color palettes; sites like kuler.adobe.com can provide you with some nice color combinations for your next project.
Some of the most popular color combinations are in colorbrewer2.org. Created by Cynthia Brewer, Mark Harrower and The Pennsylvania State University. It was originally designed for cartographers but it’s a standard in academia for any type of data visualization. (http://colorbrewer2.org/)
I created a QV app (see below) with these colors palettes to facilitate their adoption by our community. Feel free to use, improve and distribute it.
Testing your colors
As discussed earlier in this blog, around 7-8% of world’s population has some short of different color perception. To create great looking QlikView apps you should be conscious that some people out there do not see colors as you do.
To avoid that potential risk that could ruin your app, you could use one of the pre-designed color blind safe palettes and/or you could test your app using a tool that lets you emulate a color blind environment.
Color Oracle is a free color blindness simulator for Window, Mac and Linux. It takes the guesswork out of designing for color blindness by showing you, in real time, what people with common color vision impairments will see. http://www.colororacle.org/
Reading colors
Common tasks are time consuming and when it comes to color it’s very common to find yourself trying to reuse corporative colors. It is probably safe to assume that we all have a color picker tool installed in our machines, but in case you do not... My personal favorite is ColorPix.It’s a standard Color picker tool but it has some features I find it very useful when working with QlikView. I use ColorPix mouse accelerators a lot, that let me copy the RGB value by clicking on the displayed number, then I just need to type RGB( Ctrl+C ) into calculated base color expression box to include the color in my app.
These are 3 small utilities that make my life much easier but, what about you? Are you using any other tool to help you with your QlikView development? Share it with us in the comments!
Enjoy Qliking!
AMZ
Extra: Safe color palettes QV app
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Human Mind and Design
Design in almost every field needs careful consideration of human behavior in order to best fit to human needs. Likewise in the digital world design n... Show MoreDesign in almost every field needs careful consideration of human behavior in order to best fit to human needs. Likewise in the digital world design needs careful consideration of human psychology and behavior. Cognitive psychology forms a big part in the study of user experience design. It helps to know how the human mind works (perception, memory & learning) in order to design interfaces that do not hamper the natural human processes and instead help in making the digital interactions as easy as possible.
It is imperative to any digital interface to apply design principals and best practices based on usability research. As such QlikView applications also need careful design consideration for them to be seamless or else small usability issues can form big hurdles.
Take for instance the information icon shown below.
What would you gather from this icon? I would think that the icon is a button to get more information and is inactive because of its grey color and very little contrast between the background and text. In most scenarios something that is inactive or non-clickable is shown to be greyed out. But in reality, this icon is active and clickable. So there is a break in the mental model due to an action that is opposite of what the user expects. These are small things to consider but they make a huge impact on the user experience.
The document User-Experience-Guidelines for QlikView shows many such examples, guidelines and best practices to be considered with respect to usability based on principles from cognitive psychology, all of which can be applied to the design of QlikView applications.
In the QlikView world, showing data the right way and making the application usable is important but enhancing the whole experience is the key to a great product. In the words of usability expert Don Norman “It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people’s lives”.
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Color Codes
Colors are a very important and critical part of our lives. They not only give meaning to objects but also trigger feeling and emotions within us, inf... Show MoreColors are a very important and critical part of our lives. They not only give meaning to objects but also trigger feeling and emotions within us, influence perspective and affect our psychological being. The study of colors is very complex and a lot has been written and talked about the role and use of colors in various aspects of life.
As QlikView application designers, we don’t have to study in depth the meaning and theories of colors but it is of utmost importance for us to be aware of the usability norms, best practices and social and cultural implication of colors to use them in a conscious and respectful way in our designs and data visualizations. It is very easy to fall in traps of using excessive color variations or inapt color schemes since we have such a wide range to choose from which leads us to falling for temptations of using colors as per our personal likes and dislikes.
A few tips and tricks about how to use colors judiciously can not only help tremendously from falling into these traps that impair usability and deceive the user but also allows datasets to be layered in order to tell eloquent stories. The following guides can be applied to our data visualization for QlikView applications.
1. Use minimal amount of colors in your designs and data visualization. Every application has a focal point or something to highlight. Overly colorful designs can tend to hide the focal point, giving an overall vibrancy to the design and hindering the user from focusing on important points in the data.
2. Using Shades and tints of the same color while showing quantitative information instead of different hues of colors is preferable, like in the pie chart shown below.
However, it is okay to use different color in the same chart when color is used as an indicator of information as long as the colors are limited to 3-5 and color choice is such that they don’t create visual noise. The example below shows how color is used as an indicator of information.
3. Avoid pure gradient rainbow color scales to show data. Because there is no inherent order in the scale, they all appear to come from different families.
4. Keep the colorblind audience in mind when choosing color schemes. Since a large portion of our audience might be colorblind, it is unaffordable to use colors which are not colorblind safe. Color Oracle(http://colororacle.org/index.html) is a good evaluation tool for colorblindness.
5. In places where Red, Green, Yellow have to be used together, introduce other attributes such as icons so that color is not the only differentiating factor. These colors appear similar to colorblind people.
6. When using Red and green together, choose a green which is closer to blue in hue, this way tthe 2 colors can be differentiated easily by the colorblind users.
Apart from the above basic usability guidelines, there are other things to consider while choosing color schemes for designs. Choice of colors is very subjective, however, this not only because of personal preference but can also due to deep rooted cultural and social connotations associated to colors that are imbedded within us. Colors hold different meanings in each culture and we should be conscious of those meaning when presenting to a global audience or a specific country. This way misinterpretations and offensive use of colors can be avoided.
An elaborate insight on colors, their use and interpretations can be found in this Technical Brief.
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4 Pieces of (basic) Design Advice
The Demos & Best Practices team are often asked to look at applications built by third parties and give feedback. This feedback covers technical QlikV... Show MoreThe Demos & Best Practices team are often asked to look at applications built by third parties and give feedback. This feedback covers technical QlikView recommendations as well as design & usability best practices. Being on the outside looking in our team tends to approach these apps in ways their developers usually haven't considered. Very often these apps are being built by developers who have been so focused on making sure the data is correct they haven't stopped to consider the user experience until they are almost finished.
With that in mind the following are a four pieces of design advice that we tend to give fairly often.
Boxes boxes everywhere.
Many developers leave borders, shadows, and caption backgrounds on their charts and list boxes. These are some of the first things the Demos & Best Practices team remove when we are overhauling an app. When every object is fenced in it makes the entire app look very boxy where all of the objects are their own little entities isolated from the other charts. Even if you aren't convinced by this reasoning the question we would pose is "how are these borders, shadows, etc. helping the app?"
No 3D charts … ever.
Like something out of Mommie Dearest you shouldn't use 3D charts. Ever. Aside from the fact that they are "aesthetically unappealing" they make reading the data difficult. In a 3D vertical bar chart does the bar terminate at the front/bottom of the top plane, the middle of the top plane, or the back/top of the plane? How are shadows in a line chart helping you to analyze your business? Is a 3D pie chart tilted into perspective easier to understand than a standard pie chart? There are ways to be creative and add some visual fun into your design (backgrounds, slight shadows dividing up the space of an app, a few icons, etc) but 3D charts isn't one of them.
Include a Dashboard page
Under the pressure to develop an app that works many developers focus on creating a variety of ways to analyze the data but forget to have a page that summarizes the data. Include a Dashboard page that gives the summary of the app. If the app is about sales include the major sales figures as well as reference sales goals and whether or not those goals were met. Who were the top five sales people? Who were the lowest five? Give a list of your top selling items as well as your worst selling ones. If it is a medical application give some high level numbers about the number of patients, doctors, hospital staff and if they are up or down from this time last year/quarter/month etc. What is the average wait time to see a doctor? How many procedures have been ordered lately and what are they costing? There are unlimited possibilities of what you could include but the idea is to give your users an overall summary of the status of things before they go into a deep dive and analyze the numbers.
Be Consistent
If you have reoccurring objects that are on many pages keep them in the same location on each page. Use the same colors and font sizes for like minded labels, captions, and text. Design all of your pages to the same width. When things jump around it creates dissonance and users have to adjust and learn how to navigate each page. This process takes time & cognitive effort and is detracting from the time & effort they should be dedicating to using your application. Pick a style and stick to it.
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Monte Carlo Methods
In some situations in Business Intelligence you need to make simulations, sometimes referred to as "Monte Carlo methods". These are algorithms that us... Show MoreIn some situations in Business Intelligence you need to make simulations, sometimes referred to as "Monte Carlo methods". These are algorithms that use repeated random number sampling to obtain approximate numerical results. In other words – using a random number as input many times, the methods calculate probabilities just like actually playing and logging your results in a real casino situation: hence the name.
These methods are used mainly to model phenomena with significant uncertainty in inputs, e.g. the calculation of risks, the prices of stock options, etc.
QlikView is very well suited for Monte Carlo simulations.
The basic idea is to generate data in the QlikView script using the random number generator Rand() in combination with a Load … Autogenerate, which generates a number of records without using an explicit input table.
To describe your simulation model properly, you need to do some programming in the QlikView script. Sometimes a lot. However, this is straightforward if you are used to writing formulae and programming code, e.g. Visual Basic scripts.
The Rand() function creates a uniformly distributed random number in the interval [0,1], which probably isn’t good enough for your needs: You most likely need to generate numbers that are distributed according to some specific probability density function. Luckily, it is in many cases not difficult to convert the result of Rand() to a random number with a different distribution.
The method used for this is called Inverse Transform Sampling: Basically, you take the cumulative probability function of the distribution, invert it, and use the Rand() function as input. See figure below.
The most common probability distributions already exist in QlikView as inverse cumulative functions; Normal T, F and Chi-squared. Additional functions can be created with some math knowledge. The following definitions can be used for the most common distributions:
- Normal distribution: NormInv( Rand(), m, s )
- Log-Normal distribution: Exp( NormInv( Rand(), m, s ))
- Student's T-distribution: TInv( Rand(), d )
- F-distribution: FInv( Rand(), d1, d2 )
- Chi-squared distribution: ChiInv( Rand(), d )
- Exponential distribution: -m * Log( Rand() )
- Cauchy distribution: Tan( Pi() * (Rand()-0.5) )
Finally, an example that shows the principles around Monte Carlo methods: You want to estimate π (pi) using a Monte Carlo method. Then you could generate an arbitrary position x,y where both x and y are between 0 and 1, and calculate the distance to the origin. The script would e.g. be:
Load *,
Sqrt(x*x + y*y) as r;
Load
Rand() as x,
Rand() as y,
RecNo() as ID
Autogenerate 1000;
The ratio between the number of instances that are within one unit of distance from the origin and the total number of instances should be π/4. Hence π can be estimated through 4*Count( If(r<=1, ID)) / Count(ID).
Bottom line: Should you need to make Monte Carlo simulations – don’t hesitate to use QlikView. You will be able to do quite a lot.
See also the Tech Brief on how to generate data.
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It’s Natural to Want to Be Heard! Call for Speakers for the Qlik Conference 2014...
Submit your abstract for consideration todayWe are pleased to announce that the Qlik Conference 2014 will be held from Monday, November 17 through Thu... Show MoreSubmit your abstract for consideration today
We are pleased to announce that the Qlik Conference 2014 will be held from Monday, November 17 through Thursday, November 20, 2014 at the beautiful Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Florida. This event will provide a wide range of options that will ensure that all attendees maximize their time and investment. The conference will include keynote speakers, Qlik subject matter expert presentations, a Partner Showcase and multiple opportunities to network and have some fun with old and new friends. It will also feature session tracks that highlight our customers’ experience, expertise and success with QlikView.
Our Call for Speakers is now open and we urge you to engage. Your peers are interested to know what you have discovered and how you are solving business problems with QlikView. We are leaving the topics up to you, but here are some ideas for your consideration:
- Use cases by industry including healthcare, life sciences, financial services, manufacturing, high tech, and retail.
- Details on how you are making business decisions leveraging data and analytics in your company
- Technical talks regarding deployment strategies, growth strategies, and application and development
- How you are creating a culture in your organization of asking questions and making decisions around data
- Industry leading dashboard design
- Communicating with your executives using data stories
- Any talk track that you think your peers will appreciate and learn from
We will be accepting submissions on a rolling basis. For best chance of selection, we encourage you to submit early. The call will close on May 16 and selection decisions will be communicated by May 23. The submission form will allow you to submit your session abstract and screenshots of sample dashboards. Special consideration will be given to those submissions that include real-world examples of QlikView in use.
Customers who are selected to speak at the Qlik Conference 2014 will receive a complimentary conference pass. Only one complimentary pass will be provided per session.
Submit your abstract today for consideration.
Questions?
For all questions on customer speaker submission, please email: Donna.Edwards@qlik.com
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QlikView Expressor RESTful API Extension
Starting with version 3.9.1 of QlikView Expressor we released a new capability that allowed developers to extend, share and package custom functionali... Show MoreStarting with version 3.9.1 of QlikView Expressor we released a new capability that allowed developers to extend, share and package custom functionality using the QlikView Expressor Extensions SDK. The Extensions SDK is a facility that creates new QlikView Expressor artifacts such as operators, connections, schemas and more. Extensions can range from connectivity and transformation to Dataflow coordination and orchestration. Under the covers, the appropriate and desired operations would need to be coded using QlikView Expressor Datascript, but as you can see from some of the samples these can vary in degrees of complexity.
Prior to the release of the Extensions SDK - extending QlikView Expressor required Datascript within Expression Rules, Custom Read / Write Operators as well as reusable QlikView Expressor Datascript modules. This continues to work well, but is not as structured or portable. With the Extensions SDK, extensions can be packaged and shipped to other environments to be installed with the QlikView Expressor Extensions Manager; allowing easily installation and sharing of the new custom functionality without having to maintain or use any Datascript.
Attached to this post I am providing a packaged developmental extension ( that currently supports a RESTful API response in the form of JSON. The extension could be enhanced to to support other result formats such as CSV and XML.
Watch this companion video to learn how to use it and see it in action.
Note in order to use this, you should be familiar with RESTful APIs and there methods of querying and retrieving the results response/
An introduction to the QlikView Expressor Extensions SDK along with detailed information, tutorials and samples are available at the references listed below:
- QlikView Expressor RESTful API Read Extension - workspace, more samples and source code
- Introduction to the Extensions SDK
- Geocoding by IP Address using a QlikView Expressor Extension
Michael Tarallo
Senior Product Marketing Manager
QlikView and QlikView Expressor
Follow me - @mtarallo
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Enhancing the User Experience Using Conditional Expressions - Part II
In my last blog I explained how, using conditional expressions, a developer could enhance the experience of a user. And based on some feedback, I hav... Show MoreIn my last blog I explained how, using conditional expressions, a developer could enhance the experience of a user. And based on some feedback, I have decided to continue the discussion of conditional expressions. In this blog, I want to discuss another area within QlikView where a developer can use conditional expressions to his/her advantage.
Using Conditional Expressions to Show/Hide Sheets
There are times when, as developers, we need to tailor the user experience based on a device (i.e. Desktop vs Mobile). In the GPS – Store Finder app on demo.qlik.com, we do just that. Based on the values of conditional expressions on the sheet properties, we can give the user a more desired experience.
The version of the app on the demo site uses a mobiledetect extension that checks to see through which device type the user is accessing the application. It then sets a variable (vStyle) to either Mobile or Desktop.
The app also uses non-traditional navigation by hiding the Tabrow.
Setting the conditional show sheet expression to only show when the variable vStyle=’Mobile’ hides the sheets designed for the Desktop and allows the user to experience the Mobile version of the app.
Mobile Version
This is set up to fit nicely on a mobile phone with a vertical scroll and larger fonts to assist in better navigation.
Conversely, setting the conditional show sheet expression to only show when the variable vStyle=’Desktop’ hides the sheet designed for Mobile and allows the user to experience the Desktop version of the app.
Desktop version
Designed with a more traditional approach with the list boxes on the left and the viewing area set within the 1024x768 screen resolution.
By taking advantage of the conditional expression for a sheet, we were able to customize the user experience and, in essence, create one application to handle multiple client types. Another example of the use of conditional expressions to show/hide sheets based in device is the Insurance Demo which can also be found on demo.qlik.com.
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A Historical Odyssey: The Doctors’ Special
Already when we were selling QlikView 3, we had received a fairly advanced customer demand from pharmaceutical companies. We solved it. And here’s how... Show MoreAlready when we were selling QlikView 3, we had received a fairly advanced customer demand from pharmaceutical companies. We solved it. And here’s how we did it. But first some background:
In the pharmaceutical industry, the sales reps are not the ones that sell the products. Instead, they visit physicians and demonstrate one or several products. Days, weeks or months later, the physician prescribe the demonstrated medicine to a patient, and the actual sale takes place when the patient buys the drug at a pharmacy.
The demand on QlikView was to show pharmacy sales data, not only per physician, but also per physician visited once, twice, three times, etc. In other words, the physicians should be grouped by number of visits, and this number should be used as dimension in a QlikView chart. A nested aggregation.
For QlikView 4 we had a solution for this. Well, solution is perhaps not the right word… There was a kludgy, hidden feature with which you could use a count of a field as dimension. Internally it was called the Doctor Controls.
First you had to enable this feature in the list of hidden settings.
Then you could create your chart: Count(Visit) per Physician. After that, you needed to enable the “Display Result Count” in the chart:
The left graph shows graph as-is – without the “Display Result Count” enabled. It shows the distinct count of visits per physician, just as the dimension and expression of the chart are defined.
But, by turning on the “Display Result Count”, the chart transformed into the right graph: The displayed dimension was now the equivalent to an Aggr(Count(Visit),Physician) and the displayed expression was Count(Physician).
We solved a customer’s problem at the time, but this was not a good, long term solution. And it was nothing we wanted to support. Instead we wanted a general solution for nested aggregations. Six years later – after much thinking – Håkan (the Inventor) came up with the Aggr() function for QlikView 7. It is a general function for nested aggregations that made the Doctors’ Special redundant.
But like a relic from the past, the Doctor Controls setting can still today be found in the QlikView 11 list of hidden settings. It doesn’t affect anything - I hope.
Further reading on the Qlik history:
A Historical Odyssey: Quality - Learning - Interaction - Knowledge
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“Attractive things work better”
“Attractive things work better” says usability expert Don Norman in his article Emotion & Design. I fully agree with this statement since I have seen ... Show More
“Attractive things work better” says usability expert Don Norman in his article Emotion & Design. I fully agree with this statement since I have seen and experienced myself how something that is attractive can turn on a switch inside my brain by which I tend to overlook flaws and problems and re-prioritize what I want.
I use the iPhone analogy a lot but have you ever thought why the iPhone is so popular among people? It is not only because of its colorful and seamless interface but also because of the way the body of the phone is crafted that you feel like you want own it. And why do we want to own those expensive, sleek cars that don’t give a good mileage and also aren’t very economical? Because they make us feel good and attract people around us which makes us feel even better since it reflects something about our personality.
So we all know that attractive things are certainly more preferred than not so attractive things, but why would they work better? In many of the experiments that scientist have conducted to study the human psychology, they have all found that emotion has a huge role to play in how we perceive things and how we solve problems. Positive emotions broaden the thought processes and enhance creative thinking. So how does that make something easier to use? Simple, when people feel good about something it makes it easier for them to find solutions to the problems they encounter.
Considering the theory above, QlikView applications that we design should work the same way. The more attractive they are the more the customers will like them, will like to own them, and will like to use them. And the most important of all, they will be more tolerant to minor difficulties and issues. But that certainly doesn’t imply that it is okay to ignore the usability quotient. As I quote Don Norman “True beauty in a product has to be more than skin deep, more than a façade. To be truly beautiful, wondrous, and pleasurable, the product has to fulfill a useful function, work well, and be usable and understandable.”
To hear more on this topic you can watch this video.
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Qlik Community gets a new look!
You may have noticed that we updated the look of Qlik Community over the weekend. This was part of a larger digital presence overhaul to refresh and s... Show MoreYou may have noticed that we updated the look of Qlik Community over the weekend. This was part of a larger digital presence overhaul to refresh and synchronize our online brand. You will notice that Qlik Community is two words and we have included our logo on the persistent banner. There were no functionality updates so you should not experience any difference performance, loss of content, bookmarks etc.
We hope you like like this updated and fresher visual experience.
Best Regards, The Qlik Community Management Team
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Segmentation and custom dimension grouping
Custom dimension groupingPicture this situation: Your company has a long list of products in its catalog, and you want to compare sales per product. F... Show MoreCustom dimension grouping
Picture this situation: Your company has a long list of products in its catalog, and you want to compare sales per product. Further, the company has recently created a promotional pack with 4 products and you want to see this as one product in your QlikView app. As this is a limited time only situation there’s no need to create a permanent group in your system.
If you ever faced a situation as described above, you will probably already have found several approaches in our community. Most of them will imply a reload process to store the new groups in the backend.
This time Christof Schwarz has created a different method using a combination of the functions PICK () and MATCH () allowing the users to create and administer the grouping on the fly without reload the entire app.
You can find an example and an explanatory video at http://community.qlik.com/docs/DOC-6086
This way to group items is especially well conceived for those situations where users need that flexibly of creating and administering non-persistent groups on the fly, and letting them to check individual items within the group itself.
For those occasions where users’ needs to be able to store new groups to make them available for later analysis sessions and\or dealing with large data sets it still makes sense to go through a different approach that in most of the cases will involve a script process.
ABC Analysis
ABC analysis is also based in groups, but this time we'll be using three alternate states and Pareto-Select action to solve the ABC customer classification.
Christof’s ABC analysis approach comes with two significant features: It classifies the ABC relatively to the current selection and it stores those classes as is they were normal dimensions until the user recalculate ABC.
Check it out at http://community.qlik.com/docs/DOC-6088
This is a very simple and performant way to implement an A/B/C classification letting users to generate the ABC groups dynamically based on their business needs and to compare those values with other elements in the app.
Enjoy Qliking!
AMZ
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When being correct is not always correct
When you start getting into the Data Visualization field you quickly learn that there are good visualizations and there are bad visualizations. Most s... Show MoreWhen you start getting into the Data Visualization field you quickly learn that there are good visualizations and there are bad visualizations. Most scorned are probably the horrible pie chart and its cousin the donut chart. Should we follow Stephen Fews advice and save the pies for dessert or is there a time and place for sub-optimal visualizations?
With data visualization celebrities such as Edward Tufte and Stephen Few being very vocal in their crusade against bad visualizations the rest of the industry has started to follow suit. BI vendors have slowly adopted and almost everyone is promoting data visualization best practices now a days.
I'm not saying they are wrong, a bar chart or line chart for time series are always a better option than one or several pie charts when the core objective is to compare data points.
But is that always the core objective?
Sometimes we build QlikView apps for very large audiences, apps they might only use once in a while, apps that aren't critical for them to perform their job and sometimes we build apps that contain downright “boring” data. It’s still an important app; the users would more than likely gain additional insight from the data or the app would help them perform their job more efficiently.
Looking at myself I know there are probably several applications that Qlik has deployed internally that could help me in my job. They aren’t critical for me, I would probably only look at them once a quarter or less but still I don’t open them at all.
These would be apps with “boring” data, apps built according to every best practice in the book. Absolutely no pie/donut charts, muted downplayed color series from http://colorbrewer2.org/ and consisting to 99% of bar charts and data tables. They are in no shape or form bad apps, they are built around solid best practices, every data point is correct and every visualization carefully selected to achieve the maximum efficiency but still I can’t get myself to spend more than 15 seconds in them.
What they are lacking is attention.
Attention vs Accuracy
I want to make the case that sometimes it’s appropriate to sacrifice a certain degree of accuracy for attention. Sometimes you need some sex and sizzle to get your users to care at all.
For example, humans are naturally drawn to rounded objects versus squared yet our brains are not wired to quickly grasp the sizes of a pie chart. Despite the logical part of my brain telling me that the bar chart would be a more optimum medium to display the information my eyes are still drawn to the pie chart.
The Bar Chart makes it easier to compare the individual values against each other but for me the pie chart is more inviting.
This holds true for pie charts and it also is true for maps. In this day and age as soon as we have an address or a location in our data we are compelled to put it on a map. Why? Most of the time the geospatial dimension is totally irrelevant to our analysis but we still squeeze a map in every application that we can. Because maps engage the users - you can put almost any boring data set on a map and I would still explore it, I will most likely not gain the most knowledge out of the map BUT my interest has been sparked and I might explore the data and the app further.
So should we go wild and crazy, sprinkle every app with pie charts, donut charts, bubble charts or maps?
Absolutely not, while at the same time we need a certain degree of attention to get our users to take interest in the data; we also have a responsibility to represent the data in the most accurate way possible. But what good is the data if people won’t take any interest in it at all?
I say it’s okay to stray from the path of best practice as long as you are aware why you are doing it.
Michael Anthony has previously blogged about Progressive Disclosure which can be used to overcome the initial attention hurdle while the rest of the application can focus on delivering as accurate representation of the data as possible.
TL;DR Pie charts - bad. But sometimes good.
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Trust between services in a QlikView installation
When you use a platform that consists of several services such as QlikView, you need to build trust into the platform to make it secure. The trust wi... Show MoreWhen you use a platform that consists of several services such as QlikView, you need to build trust into the platform to make it secure. The trust will protect the platform from external threats pretending to be part of the QlikView installation to get access to information.
Every time you go from one trust zone to another you need to cross a trust boundary and that means that you need to authenticate. Examples of when you cross trust boundaries in QlikView include going from your computer trust zone to the application using the browser, using the browser to access the administrative interface, loading data from a data source into QlikView, and each time you need to authenticate.
In QlikView, there are two ways to create the internal trust zone between the QlikView Services:
- Windows Integrated Security: the services will authenticate to each other through the use of Windows built in Security.
- Certificate Security: each service needs to have a valid certificate from the QlikView installation to be allowed to communicate.
Both of these create trust between the services and hinder unauthorized computers from being able to interact with the QlikView Services, but there are situations where one is better than the other.
You need to protect the communication between the QlikView services from eavesdropping
In this case you should choose certificate trust because that also enables encryption of all traffic between services using SSL/TLS.You only use Windows infrastructure
Choose Windows Integrated Security as this will be where you have knowledge and it is easiest for you to setup.All QlikView services do not have access to the Active Directory or you don’t have an Active Directory
Use certificates these will function without a Windows Active Directory.It is also important to understand that you cannot mix how you create trust in QlikView; either you use Windows Integrated Security or you use Certificates.
When you have chosen the most appropriate way of creating trust, look through the technical requirements found in the Server reference manual before installing to make sure it fits your needs and environment.
To summarize, QlikView has two ways to create trust between services. Both have their benefits; however there are use cases when one is preferred over the other. Which have you used and what benefits have you seen? I would be interested in your comments and questions!
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Popular Data Visualization - Intuitive and Unintuitive
Bar charts, pie charts, Speedometer gauges, Traffic Light gauges – These are some of the visualization objects that come to the mind when one think’s ... Show MoreBar charts, pie charts, Speedometer gauges, Traffic Light gauges – These are some of the visualization objects that come to the mind when one think’s of designing a Dashboard to show KPIs. Some are used for their grandeur and others simply because they show the data very clearly.
Now, let’s take a step back and rethink on what is the main purpose of Visualization objects within the Dashboard. When there is a large amount of data, it becomes difficult to scan through it in the form of a table and recognize a pattern or select that data which is useful to make sense of situation. This is when visualization objects help the user understand the data clearly in a quick and easy way and enable recognition of the underlying patterns by giving out the big picture and pointing precisely to deviations, outliers and connections.. So, if we take some of the charts that we frequently use in our dashboards and analyze them for their intuitiveness, the answer might not always be positive.
Some visualization objects that have proven to be intuitive in showing the data clearly are sometimes embellished with ornate presentation techniques that compromise the ability of the data visualization to focus on the data itself, while other visualization objects commonly used are not intuitive at all in the first place.
The Speedometer Gauge is a classic example of a visualization object that is used very frequently in Dashboards, the use of which can be arguable. The speedometer Gauge is drawn as a metaphor in the BI industry from the dashboard of a car. In the dashboard of the car, the speedometer does absolute justice in showing the current state. The driver is only required to know the current situation at any given time. Thus, the speedometer solves the main purpose. In a Business Dashboard however, the user more than often times needs to know a whole lot of other things which support the current state like historical trends and other things for purpose of comparison. In which case, the speedometer gauge, which can show only one data point, fails to show the complete picture.
On the other hand, the most simple and extremely popular objects like bar charts and pie charts display the data in a highly intuitive way. They are easy to understand and can inform the user about the patterns and trends. However, if these intuitive charts are not presented well, they can hamper the user’s ability to quickly grasp information and sometimes even mislead the user.
As QlikView application Designers, we are always thinking of ways in which we can represent the data in the most simple and intuitive form for our users. As a result we sought to various resources for references and ideas and often times we come across snazzy looking displays, but it might be of great help to take a step back and analyze whether the representation of the data that we put across is easily understandable by the user or not.
A detailed description with examples of this excerpt can be found in the technical brief here.
