Q&A with Qlik: Qlik Cloud Migration - May

[Troy_Raney]

Environment

• QlikView
• Qlik Cloud
• Qlik Sense Enterprise

Transcript

Welcome to Q&A with Qlik. Today we're going to be talking about Qlik Cloud Migration. My name is Troy Raney. I help put together webinars and videos like this. We've got a great panel for you today. Sav, could you quickly tell us a little bit about yourself?
Absolutely, Troy. So I'm Sav Rakkar. I lead the Move to Cloud program within Qlik's Customer Success Organization. So I work across cross-functionally between teams such as product and R&D, and we focus on launching the tooling and the approach and all the best practice around moving our customers to Qlik Cloud
Fantastic. Adam?
Hi, I'm Adam Jacobs. I'm a Customer Success Technical Specialist on our Move to Cloud team. So my focus is helping customers assess their readiness to move to cloud and discussing basic migration strategies around that.
Fantastic. Thanks.
Everybody online, if you haven't seen it yet, we recently did a Techspert Talks session demonstrating, well, Adam went through and demonstrated the QlikView Converter tool
And that recording can be found on Qlik Community. I'll just quickly send everybody a link to that. And when you registered, you had an opportunity to submit some questions ahead of time. So we've got a list of those. We'll get started.
And first question:
Having some issues running the migration tool with service account that uses Windows Login rather than single sign-on. Any recommendations?
Yeah, so if you're using Windows, Windows user, that's the supported configuration. So if you're having trouble getting it to work, then what I recommend is opening a ticket with support. The good news is with
Our migration tools, they are officially supported by Qlik, so opening a ticket will get you someone to work on your work on your issue.
That's a great tip.
And that seemed like a very specific question, so good answer.
Next question
What should still be done manually to ensure a good migration?
I'm assuming I mean after using the tool.
I could take this one, Troy. So there's a couple of things that the converter tool, if you're talking QlikView to Qlik Sense at least, and the Qlik Analytics migration tool, it can provide an Excel report that has, you know, a summary of anything that's been flagged during the conversion or the migration itself
And it will typically show what needs attention, where and why.
To plan for any of that manual work, it's advised post-migration, once you've run the tools, to go through those report findings, and you can… you can go through those and see the kind of, the kind of things that you need to focus on. I would say outside of the tool.
There's always preliminary prerequisite steps that we'd advise customers to do. Typically, starting with assessing your apps and whether that's QlikView or Qlik Sense, you always want to clean up the house that you're looking to move from before you move
And that's a great analogy that I always tend to use. So, looking through the applications, things that you don't use anymore, applications that don't need to be migrated, that can be retired completely. Doing that will always help making the migration more of a success.
Great, thank you.
Our next question.
During a phased migration from QlikView to Qlik Cloud, what is the recommended approach to handle, refresh, and deliver existing QVW applications until they are fully converted to Qlik Sense or QVF?
I could take that one. So first thing is when you're thinking about how are we going to handle a migration, one of the things I would always refer people to is referencing the section of our help for planning your migration to Qlik Cloud
Beyond that, though, there are really two main approaches that I've seen customers use. One is as they are going through the process of migration, they continue to have their users just
Work from QlikView, client managed still, until they are ready to ultimately say that everything's… everything's migrated appropriately, and now we're ready to have everyone go into Qlik Cloud. Or what they do is they do this interim step where they will use the QlikView Publisher
To actually serve up QlikView apps in cloud. So those apps can be consumed in Qlik Cloud to get users familiar with the Qlik Cloud interface, even though those apps are still QlikView apps still require some on-premise
Infrastructure. It's a decent interim step there. Ultimately, it's up to the customer on how they want to handle that aspect of things, but those are the two main main ways to go through that.
Fantastic, thanks.
Good advice.
Next question, what are the limitations documented with the QlikView Migration tool? We need help planning an impact assessment.
Yeah, so
With the, with the Qlik Cloud migration tool, the limitations are documented in help.click.com, just not all in one single article. It is as you go through the health docs, you will see various sections and notes around limitations for
Any of the, any of the areas, so I, certainly ask you to refer to that tangentially, there is there is a link for the QlikView to Qlik Sense migration, no limitations there, since
You know, it's a little bit more of a… I don't want to say heavy lift, but a different type of lift with converting QlikView to Qlik Sense. So those limitations are listed in a
In a help link. And I think, Troy, you may be able to post that into the chat for everyone, I believe.
Yeah, there we go
Great.
Alright.
Next question
What is the difference between the QlikView Converter tool and the QlikView Migration Tool? It's a good question that came up in our recording.
QlikView, the difference between the QlikView Converter tool and the Qlik Cloud Migration tool
ClickView Converter tool is primarily focused on converting QlikView front end into Qlik sense, which is the most difficult part of a QlikView migration is converting all those visualizations from QlikView into Qlik Sense
That's what that handles, that's what it was purpose-built for. Qlik Cloud Migration Tool was mainly made for Qlik Sense, and migrating Qlik Sense applications, as well as Qlik Sense users, Qlik Sense data connections, streams, even
you know, adjusting for people still owning their personal
Sheets and Qlik Sense, etc. Now, in the future, near future, hopefully, what we plan on doing is having the, QlikView Converter tool actually embedded directly into the Qlik Analytics migration tool
So that people can use, use one tool when doing large-scale conversions, though most likely they'll still use the lightweight QlikView to Qlik Sense converter tool for
Determining various settings that they want to set their apps for, more of a… kind of a developer tool, essentially, rather than the full migration that we plan to have in QAMT. But as of today, that's the main difference. One's for QlikView front end, one's for more of a full migration of Qlik Sense at the moment
Perfect.
Next question
In QlikView, variables and text objects and show conditions, for instance, worked without dollar expansion
But Qlik Sense requires them to use a specific dollar parentheses syntax.
This has broken on several attempts for them. Is there a setting that is missing in the tool or bulk update method to fix these variables without manually editing every project?
So, at the moment.
This is an example of just some minor differences in how strict Qlik Sense is over QlikView on certain things
So, yes, Qlik Sense is more strict on how variables are referenced than QlikView is
We can look further into this on our end, but I believe that the unfortunate answer is that there isn't a, there isn't something referenceable from the metadata in a PRJ folder to make that change
The syntax is going to be a little too vague to make that change. Therefore, it's just one of those things when converting QlikView to Qlik Sense
That is gonna just have to be done manually. As I think we talked about in the recording, there's… I've yet to see a QlikView app that is converted to Qlik Sense that is % ready to go just by running it through the migration tool
The converter tool, I should say. There always is going to have to be some manual intervention to fix visualizations, fix
Fixed layout
Things like that, and this, unfortunately, is just probably one of those things that is just gonna have to be manually fixed.
Yeah, and I'll just I'll add to that. So as Adam said, this is something that'll be manually fixed. You can start doing it in QlikView today because I think this was an engine upgrade that happened. And if you're on one of the latest versions of QlikViewWe'll find the version number and try to post it in the chat if I can get the answer in this webinar. And you can do those changes on QlikView, in QlikView today, and it will continue to work as it does, right? So all you're doing is future-proofing it so that you do less changes in Qlik Sense or Qlik Cloud
post the conversion
Yeah.
Good point.
And that's probably going to be the easier approach because it will be easier to identify things. Something goes from working to working rather than migrating into Qlik Cloud first. It doesn't work, and you have to go through and try to fix it there. It's just a little bit easier to do the fix
Ahead of time, if you can
Yep.
That makes sense.
Next question
I have this environment, QlikView 10 without maintenance
How can I migrate?
to specific
Yeah, so
what I would recommend is, since the converter is just a lightweight. exe file, run that converter just on a desktop that does not have QlikView installed
So what you would do is you would… any QVWs that you're looking to convert, move those over into that desktop, run the converter tool and that will work because
And the converter tool is using the latest version of QlikView desktop to reference making these adjustments. What we've seen is that generally
You want to try to be on QlikView 12.4 or later if you want to run this tool directly within a QlikView environment
Anything earlier than that, it could still work. It's just it's not been as heavily tested. Things might not work as intended in that manner. Therefore, it
My recommendation would be, you know, put it on its own, on a desktop that does not have QlikView and just execute things from there.
That's a cool idea.
Nice. Next question
How does this tool convert tabs where all the visualizations are minimized?
And QlikView users are expected to select the visualization they want to see. We use the auto minimize to close one and open the other.
That's a great question, actually. So there is a migration path that we've defined in the converter tool for this. As you can imagine, QlikView had quite unique ways of interacting with visualizations and chart objects. So the mapping and the pattern over to Qlik Sense, the way to do that and the way that the tool works is it actually converts these using buttons
To show and hide those visualization objects. So what would normally have been minimized and then reduced to almost a very small, thin object now can just become more of an interactive show and hide experience for the user, with a button, and that is auto-converted through the conversion tool.
So, as of now, with Qlik Sense and Qlik Cloud, the latest version of our product in Qlik Cloud, all of the innovations that are happening, Qlik Sense can handle different layers within a single sheet, just like QlikView did. And the converter tool is clever enough with a lot of
Clever stuff in there to figure that out, and it will auto create that if it identifies minimization of charts and any other layering that is existing within QlikView, it will auto auto convert that to the appropriate method and way of doing it in Qlik Sense
That's very cool that someone's already thought of that. And these are great questions.
Next question.
This is very useful. Oh, the always very useful always once selected value function for dimension and QlikView. Is that kept with the converter tool?
Yeah, that's a great question. So the always one value selected, that feature is available in Qlik Sense as well as QlikView, obviously.
So that's the good news. The not-so-good news is that there's no
Part in the PRJ file, folder that gets created that references what value was always one value selected.
So you will have to, after converting
go into the app and reapply that always one value selected
Good news again, though, is it's very easy to do that. That is a that would not take you very long at all. Just a couple clicks and you have your one value selected
option again.
Great. And that's pretty much how the converter tool works, which you demonstrated that it breaks the QlikView file down into PRJ files
So if it's not there, then
Yep.
It's a challenge. Okay.
Next question.
Is NPrinting supported in Qlik Sense? If not
What is the go-forward solution to replace NPrinting in Sense?
Right, so NPrinting works with Qlik Sense Client Managed. So if you are just moving from QlikView to Qlik Sense Client Managed, you will be able to use NPrinting
As far as I know, you will have to recreate those reports. There's no real easy way to just change from a QlikView NPrinting report to a Qlik Sense NPrinting report.
In Qlik Cloud, it's a little different. There is what's called the Reporting Services in Qlik Cloud. So Reporting Services in Qlik Cloud replaces NPrinting. It's available out of the box. It's not an extra thing to install or anything like that
When moving from, again, when moving from QlikView to Qlik Cloud, those NPrinting reports are… you're gonna probably have to recreate those. There's not really a conversion path for converting QlikView and printing reports up to Qlik Sense
Reporting Services. But the Reporting Services are available for the same type of output that Qlik NPrinting had.
Next question
Is there a limit to the number of sheets and or objects for conversion?
If there is, we have not hit that limit, as far as I know. So we've converted, I know on the on the recording we did an app that only had 10 sheets less than 200 objects, but we've converted apps with
You know, with dozens of sheets and thousands of objects. So, so far we have not hit a limitation that we know of. If you do run into a limitation, please let us know. But have not seen that yet.
Very nice.
Next question
What's the minimum version of QlikView compatible with a conversion tool? You kind of addressed this already, but
Yeah, we did. So, again, it's QlikView 12.4 is the recommended that or later if you're going to run the converter tool on the same environment as QlikView. But again, the workaround is not necessarily to have to upgrade QlikView if you don't want to
It is just operate the converter tool on a machine that does not have QlikView installed
Great.
Is there a next question, is there a size limit for the apps that are being converted?
So this is slightly different than the sheets and objects limitation. The limitation is not on the converter tool side. The limitation is always going to be on the Qlik Cloud side because there are limits on the size of applications allowed
In Qlik Cloud, and there are, there are SKUs, there are options for larger apps, but you have to be cognizant that
The size of the ClickView app
means that while you can convert the app over into Qlik Cloud, it will do that successfully. You may not be able to reload it from a binary reload in the QVW. The QVW may not be able to be uploaded. So in those instances, it's either make sure that all of the data connections are ready to go
And then reload that in cloud itself. Or work on a trimmed down version of the QVW so that you can reload partial data
Using the converter tool to be able to be able to do your conversion and make sure everything works. But the limitation on the size is not the converter tool's limitation. It is a Qlik Cloud limitation
That's great.
Yep
A next question
What happens with hidden columns from QlikView and Qlik Sense? Can those be converted as well?
Yeah, so those should convert with the tool. That is something that is a very common behavior in QlikView, and we accounted for as many common behaviors as we could possibly think of when creating this tool
If, for some reason you notice a different behavior that it's not converting, I would say that may be a support case that you may want to open there because this should be a functionality that does convert with the QlikView Converter tool.
Great.
And last
Questions so far
Will this bring over geoanalytic maps
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, so GeoAnalytics is technically an extension in Qlik Sense Client Managed, which means that because it's an extension of Qlik Sense Client Managed, it's designed to work in Qlik Sense Client Managed. And when we acquired the GeoAnalytics
The company behind Geo Analytics, Divio is so long ago now. But when we acquired them, we built it into the tool. And so
that was our own supported extension that worked, and then what we used is the technology behind that
to make our own native maps function like the geo analytics maps
So, if you're still using the geo analytics extension for for those maps, those will not convert.
Those are going to have to be I would recommend converting those ahead of time before migrating.
If they already are the native maps in Qlik Sense, then you'll have no problems. Tangentially, worth mentioning, there is an entire section in our migration help docs around converting the scripts for geo analytics into what's called geo operations in Qlik Cloud
Hmm.
Yeah.
So it's worth referencing those if you're using scripts to do things like, you know, travel areas, binning, you know those those different functions that geo analytics could do, those now are geo operations
Check out that help doc to understand what you need to do to convert those. It's not something that's going to be possible to convert in the
and click analytics migration tool, the… it's just
too complex of a script change, but we do guide you through the steps you'll want to take
In order to, in order to make those conversions.
Great.
And the last question so far
What is the recommended sequence for bringing over older QV objects to Qlik Sense? Is it use a converter tool and then the migration tool? Should we go from QlikView
To sense, to then cloud, what would be the recommended approach?
As long as it's a native QlikView object, then the converter tool should handle it.
You'll… if… if it can't, you will get a report that says, for some reason it couldn't handle that object, but even if it being an older version of QlikView that shouldn't necessarily matter for the app itself, for the visualizations itself. Those should still be should still be handled as long as it's a native
QlikView object. As we mentioned on the recording previously, the
Anything that's third-party extension, we're not going to attempt to convert. But anything that's native should convert.
Fantastic.
Yeah. And just to follow on that, Troy, I think I mentioned it as well, all of the innovations and the latest and greatest kind of visualizations and front end look and feel and charts and objects, that's in Qlik Cloud. The conversion tool has been made to convert
to the latest
Of our product. And given that that is in Qlik Cloud today, but it will also be the latest version of Qlik Sense. So, if you're not running Qlik Sense on-premise, client-managed as the latest version, some of those capabilities and features will not be there
Right? So if your plan is to migrate and convert, sorry, QlikView to Qlik Sense to remain on-premise, then there may be some limitations and gaps, given the version of Qlik Sense that you're running, right? And that's why the preferred option and route would be to Qlik Cloud directly
Because there will be a guarantee of all the objects and charts types and migration patterns that we've developed the conversion tool for that will exist in Qlik Cloud as of today.
Right. And I'll just
remind people to check out the recording because you do highlight a lot of the advantages of moving to Qlik Cloud now, future proofing, getting access, new features like
Qlik Answers, and all the AI tools that are out there, so it's definitely a great thing for people that are still on QlikView. Well, that's all the questions we've had so far today. I appreciate everybody for joining and all the great questions that were submitted.
Thank you all for attending. I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.