Word Document Display and Download Through Qlik Sense

[Ursa_Rex]

Hi everyone,

I would like to be able to display/store a word document in qlik. So for example I would like to make a table, that contains the document name, date uploaded and either the document icon/link that allows me to download the document.

Is this even possible in Qlik sense?

[stevedark]

Hi @Ursa_Rex 

Your best bet would be to have some kind of document management system to host the documents and then link to them within Sense. If you use SharePoint, for example, you should be able to use the SharePoint metadata connector to download a list of documents. From this you should be able to get the URL that points to the document and then have a link in a table which allows you to download it.

If you can't put documents on Cloud storage, then the next best bet will be having them hosted on a web site, either online or using a web server inside your network. The downside of this is that you might only be able to secure the documents online by having an obscure path online, or there is extra setup to have an intranet site. You would also need to maintain the index of documents separate to the documents themselves. You would still be able to have links in a table to the documents to download.

The third option is to upload the documents into the Sense document repository. These repositories are generally for data or image files, but they can contain other files also. These files will then have a URL, though it is a bit obscure how to get to them, and different for Client-Managed and Cloud. I would only go this route as a last resort.

Please advise which flavour of Sense you are using and which method you want to use and I can then give further pointers, if needed.

Cheers,

Steve

[Ursa_Rex]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply. I am not sure what you are referencing when talking about the flavor, but I do know we have version 14.129.6. Is this helpful or do you need more info?

My apologies for the edit, I missed the other part of your response. At this point in time using the document management system would probably work the best I believe. Can I please ask for more information regarding that method?

[stevedark]

@Ursa_Rex, that version number means that you have Client Managed Sense, that runs within your own environment, rather than Qlik Cloud.

If you go to the Load Script Editor in your app and then click Create Connection and then search for MetaData that will show you what document storage connectors you have available. You will need to pick one of these to use. They each work slightly differently, so let me know which you go for and I can hopefully help further.

Steve

[Ursa_Rex]

We do have the sharepoint connection. So let's focus on that primarily, if it does not work I will check what else we have available. Once again thank you for the help.

[stevedark · Accepted solution]

You will need to create a SharePoint MetaData connection, authenticate this using a user that can access the document repository, and then set up a load to pull down a list of documents from that location.

In order to do this you will first need to do a ListFiles for the site and repository where the documents reside.

You only need to grab the Name and LinkingUrl fields from here, but you can get more columns if you want extra metadata (such as filesize, date, etc.).

Once you have that loaded, create a table with Name as a dimension. You then need to set the representation to Link, set the setting to Add URL and add in the Link URL of =LinkingUrl.

There's a lot you could do to make it fancier, such as looping folders and the like, but that should get you started and in the right direction.

Hope that helps.

Steve

[Ursa_Rex]

Hi Steve,

Thank you so much for the help. Got this up and running this morning and it works perfectly.

[stevedark]

That's great to hear! Thank you for confirming.

Steve