This article provides information on how to get started with the ServiceNow connector in Qlik Application Automation.
The connector for ServiceNow is making use of Basic Authentication. To connect you will also need the name of your instance.

Authentication and Authorization

When you connect to ServiceNow in Qlik Application Automation you will be presented with the following screen.
You can obtain the instance name from the URL that you use to access ServiceNow. You can use your username / password of your account provided it has enough privileges for what you aim to do. It is recommended to create a service account for integrations and limit it's roles to what is necessary.

Working with the ServiceNow blocks

Most of the blocks for the ServiceNow connector make use of the Table API of ServiceNow.
ServiceNow documentation for the Table API can be found at: https://developer.servicenow.com/dev.do#!/reference/api/rome/rest/c_TableAPI

The following data types have easy to use blocks for all CRUD operations:
• Incident
• Change Task
• Problem
• Change Request

Furthermore it is possible to work with user objects, listing journal items, audit lines, obtaining and adding attachments.
When modifying or deleting objects from the Table API, make sure to be using the "sys_id" field of objects as the identifier.

Custom API blocks

With the blocks "get table content by id", "create table content", "delete table content", "update table content", "list table content", it is possible to work with every object through the use of the Table API. These blocks also allow you to look up the name of a table with the "do lookup" functionality. As this lookup obtains information from the sys_db_object table in ServiceNow, it's possible that this lookup does not work due to your permissions.

There is also a "Raw API Request" available. This block allows providing your own sub path starting from the Base URL of ServiceNow, HTTP method and optionally a JSON body.
This can be used to contact other API groups than the Table API of ServiceNow as well as custom scripted API's.

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

This article explains how the Qlik Reporting connector in Qlik Application Automation can be used to generate a bursted report that delivers recipient-specific data.

For more information on the Qlik Reporting connector, see this Reporting tutorial.

This article offers two examples where the recipient list and field for reduction are captured in an XLS file or a straight table in an app. Qlik Application Automation allows you to connect to a variety of data sources, including databases, cloud storage locations, and more. This allows you to store your recipient lists in the appropriate location and apply the concepts found in the examples below to create your reporting automation. By configuring the Start block's run mode, the reporting automations can be scheduled or driven from other business processes.

Contents

• Using a straight table as a distribution list
• Using an Excel File as a distribution list

Using a straight table as a distribution list

In this example, the email addresses of the recipients are stored in a straight table. Add a private sheet to your app and add a straight table to it. This table should contain the recipients' email address, name, and a value to reduce the app on. We won't go over the step-by-step creation of this automation since it's available as a template in the template picker under the name "Send a burst report to email recipients from a straight table".

Instead, a few key blocks of this template are discussed below.

1. List Values Of Field. This block will return a list of all values of the specified field. The selected field should directly map to the recipient scope of data to be delivered. For each value, a report will be generated and distributed to the recipients who have that value assigned in the distribution list. We'll call this value the scope of the report, an example field could be Region to build a report for each different region and delivery to regional employees.
   
   
2. The Create Report block and attached blocks will then be executed for each unique value of the field. Tip: you can dynamically name your reports by mapping the current field's value to the Report name parameter of the Create Report block:
   
   
   
   
3. Add any sheets to the report by using the Add Sheet to Report block. Use the block Add Selection To Sheet to add selections. Add at least a selection for the current scope of the report. Also, apply a selection to the app using the Select Field Value block. This will reduce the straight table that contains the distribution list to the current scope.
   
   
4. Now, use the block Get Straight Table Data and configure it to retrieve the distribution list. The important step here is to append each email address from the distribution list to a string variable. Also, add a semicolon ';' to the field to separate the email addresses. 
   
   
   
   
5. The scope from the distribution list should be used to add a sheet to the report and apply a selection for the current recipient. For example, if the recipients are sales reps, this could be used to provide an overview of each recipient's individual sales.
   
   
   
   
6. Use the Generate Report block to finalize the report. Map this block's output to the attachment parameter of the Send Mail block. Map the string of email addresses to the To input field of the Send Mail block.
   
   
   
   
7. Then make sure to execute the block Unlock Selections to allow the selections to be overwritten for the next report scope. Also, empty the email addresses from the string variable to make sure they aren't persisted for the next scope.
   
   

Helpful tips

1. The Output block can be used to keep track of the automation's progress by showing the current scope.
2. When building the report automation, you can test the email output by sending the report to yourself before using the distribution variable for operational execution.
3. It's also possible to use the Copy File block from the Cloud Storage connector to store a copy of the report on any file storage system like Dropbox or SFTP. 

Using an Excel File as a distribution list

In this example, the email addresses of the recipients are stored in an Excel file. This can be a simple file that contains one worksheet with headers on the first row (name, email & a value for reduction) and one record on each subsequent row. 

1. The first step is to gather the Excel file's item id. This can be retrieved from the URL when the file is open in a browser window or by executing the List Items In Root Folder Of Drive block. Execute this block in a test run to fetch these records.
   
   
   
   
2. The results from the test run can now be used in other blocks, click the Item Id input field of the List Rows WIth Headers block and select the id key from the right item in the output returned by the List Items In Root Folder Of Drive block. 
   
   
   
   
3.  Further configure the  List Rows With Header block by specifying the worksheet name and the dimensions of the data (header row included). Below is an example of the excel file shown at the beginning of this section.
   
   
   
   
4. The other steps of the automation are similar to the first part of this article so they won't be repeated here. Optionally, values from the Excel file can be used for reducing the report with the block Add Selection To Report. 
   
   

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Sometimes it might be necessary to deallocate licenses using the Qlik Command Line Interface, for instance in case of licenses allocated to users no longer in the system.

Environment

• Qlik Cloud 

Resolution

1. Download and configure the Qlik-cli 
   
   
2. run "qlik license assignment ls" in the Powershell  or UNIX shell to see currently assigned licenses. You will get something like this:
   
   

   [                     
     {
       "created": "2023-04-03T11:24:05.101Z",
       "excess": false,
       "name": “Enzo Bearzot”,
       "subject": "auth0|12345678”,
       "type": "professional",
       "userId": “userid1”
     },
     {
       "created": "2022-08-17T11:50:04.647Z",
       "excess": false,
       "name": “Vittorio Pozzo”,
       "subject": "auth0|910111213”,
       "type": “analyzer”,
       "userId": “userid2”
     },
     {
       "created": "2022-08-17T11:50:04.647Z",
       "excess": false,
       "name": “Ferruccio Valcareggi”,
       "subject": "auth0|14151617”,
       "type": "professional",
       "userId": “userid3”
     },
     {
       "created": "2022-06-07T11:36:15.704Z",
       "excess": false,
       "subject": “18192021”,
       "type": “professional”
     },
     {
       "created": "2022-06-03T13:50:14.105Z",
       "excess": false,
       "subject": “22232425”,
       "type": "analyzer"
     },
   ]
   ​

    

3. identify any user that should not have a license assigned. There is a higher probability that you'll find them among the users who have no "name:" and "userid:" fields
   
   
4. for each of this user contruct the string
   
   

   The syntax below is for Unix shells. For usage in Windows Powershell add a "backslash" before each "doublequote" sign. '[{"subject"... will have to become '[{\"subject\"...

   
   
   
   

   '[{"subject":"USERSUBJECT","type":"ASSIGNEDLICENSE"}]'
   
   For instance, in the case of the final user in the list above it will be  '[{"subject":"22232425","type":"analyzer"}]'
   
   
   

5.  feed the string into this command:

   qlik license assignment delete --delete STRING
   
   With the example above you will run:
   qlik license assignment delete --delete '[{"subject":"22232425","type":"analyzer"}]'
   
   

6. Run the command and wait for the result.
   A "200" will confirm that the removal worked
   
   
   

   % qlik license assignment delete --delete '[{"subject":"22232425","type":"analyzer"}]'
   [                    
     {
       "status": 200,
       "subject": "22232425",
       "type": "analyzer"
     }
   ]
   

    

7. Check the "Home" section of the management console to confirm that the allocation was removed

    

Related Content

This article gives an overview of the available blocks in the Qlik Platform Operations connector in Qlik Application Automation.

The purpose of the Qlik Platform Operations connector is to simplify the deployment and management of multiple tenants within Qlik Cloud. To learn more about the multitenant model in Qlik Cloud, please review the following series of tutorials.

This connector consists of:

• Authentication to Qlik Cloud using OAuth2.
• Support for deploying tenants with a multitenant-enabled Qlik Cloud license, using the Create tenant block.
• Support for managing apps, spaces, automations, groups, identity providers, licenses, and users within the deployed tenants.
• Metadata support, using, for example, the Update tenant auto license assign settings block.

To authenticate, you will need to provide your OAuth2 client ID and client secret. If you have a multitenant license, enter a regional OAuth client (generated via My Qlik) or a tenant OAuth client (generated from within a tenant). Note that only regional OAuth clients can create new Qlik Cloud tenants. In order to use your own tenant, you need to create an OAuth m2m client (trusted) in the management console on your tenant. For more information, please check this article.

Most blocks require a specified tenant as the target. A tenant is uniquely identified by name and the region that it is deployed to. For example, for mytenant.eu.qlikcloud.com, enter mytenant.eu. You can use the Get Tenant Name and Region block to obtain the tenant from a full URL.

Let's now go over a basic example of how to deploy a tenant, create an automation inside the deployed tenant and run it using the Qlik Platform Operations:

1. Create a new automation.
2. From the Block library menu on the left side of the screen, select the Qlik Platform Operations connector.
3. Use the Search for blocks input to search for the Create tenant block.
4. Drag and drop the block into the automation and link it to the start block.
   
   
   
   
5. On the Block configuration menu on the right side of the screen, use the input fields to add the information about the tenant: the Qlik Cloud region (for example,  sg for Singapore) and the signed license key:
   
   
   
6. Use the Search for blocks input to search for the Create Automation block, drag and drop it into the automation and link it to the Create tenant block. Before creating an automation, we need to update the license of the newly created tenant using the Update tenant auto license assign settings block. You can use the Get tenant name and Region block to get the tenant name from the full URL.
   
   
   
   
7. On the Block configuration menu on the right side of the screen, use the input fields to fill in the information about the automation. In the tenant field, use the example output from the previous block to add the ID.
8. Repeat the same steps for the Run automation and Get Automation Run blocks.
   
   
   
   
9. Run the automation. This will deploy a new tenant within your Qlik Cloud License in the Singapore region, create an automation inside this tenant, run it, and return the result.

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

With Qlik Application Automation, you can get data out of Qlik Cloud and distributing it to different users in formatted Excel. The workflow can be automated by leveraging the connectors for Office 365, specifically Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Excel. 

Here I share two example Qlik Application Automation workspaces that you can use and modify to suit your requirements. 

Content:

• Considerations
• Example 1: Scheduled Reports
• Example 2: On-Demand Reports
• Environment

Video:

Considerations

• This example is built on distributing a SharePoint link. It is also possible to use attachments with the Mail block (see Creating a Qlik Reporting Service report).
• Qlik Application Automation has a limit of 100,000 rows when getting data out of a Qlik Sense straight table object.
• The On-Demand example uses an extension in QSE SaaS to send data to the Automation. An update to the Qlik Sense Button object is expected soon, which will provide a native way to pass selections to an Automation.

Example 1: Scheduled Reports

1. Download the 'Scheduled Report.json' file attached to this document.
2. Create a new Automation in QSE SaaS, give it a name, and then upload the workspace you just downloaded by right clicking in the editor canvas, and selecting 'Upload workspace'.
3. Select the 'Create Binary File (Personal One Drive)' block, select 'Connection' in the block configurator to the right, and then create your connection to Microsoft SharePoint.
4. Select the 'Get Straight Table Data' block. Under 'Inputs' in the block configurator, lookup your the App Id, Sheet Id, and Object Id for the relevant QSE SaaS table you wish to output.
5. Select the 'Create Excel Table With Headers' block, select 'Connection' in the block configurator, and then create your connection to Microsoft Excel.
6. Select the 'Send Mail' block. Under 'Inputs' in the block configurator update the 'To' to reflect the addresses you wish to deliver to.
7. With the 'Send Mail' block still selected, select 'Connection' in the block configurator and add your Sender details.
8. To test, Save and then Run the Automation
9. If you receive any warnings or errors, navigate to the relevant blocks and ensure your Connection is selected in the block configurator. 
10. Select the 'Start' block. Under 'Inputs' in the block configurator, change Run Mode to Scheduled and define your required schedule. 

Example 2: On-Demand Reports

Note - These instructions assume you have already created connections as required in Example 1.

1. Download the 'On-Demand Report v3.json' file attached to this document.
2. Download and install the 'qlik-blends' extension. See: 
   https://github.com/rileymd88/qlik-blends/files/6378232/qlik-blends.zip
3. Create a new Automation in QSE SaaS, give it a name, and then upload the workspace you just downloaded by right-clicking in the editor canvas, and selecting 'Upload workspace'.
4. Ensure your Connections are selected in the block configurator for each of the following blocks, 'Create Binary File (Personal One Drive)', 'Create Excel Table With Headers', 'Add Rows To Excel Worksheet Table (Batch)', 'Create Sharing Link', and 'Send Mail'.  Save the Automation.
5. Select the 'Start' block and ensure Run Mode is set to Triggered. Make note of the of URL and Execution Token shown in the POST example. 
6. Open your chosen QSE SaaS application, and Edit the Sheet where you wish to add a Button to trigger an On-Demand report. 
7. Under 'Custom Objects' look for 'qlik-blends' from the Extensions menu and drag this into your Sheet.
8. Under the 'Blend' properties to the right, add-in your POST webhook URL and Token as noted in Step 5.
9. We will now add three measures to the 'qlik-blends' object. It is important you add them in the order described.  Add the first measure, using the following function in the expression editor: GetCurrentSelections()
10. Add the second measure, using the following function DocumentName()
11. The final measure will be the Object ID of the table you wish to use. To find the Object ID, select 'Done Editing'.  Then right click on the table, select 'Share', select 'Embed', then look for the Object ID under the preview. Copy this value, go back into Editing mode and paste this as your third measure value. 
12. With the 'qlik-blends' object selected, under Form select 'Add items'. For 'Item type' select Text. Under default value you can choose to add a default email address. For 'Label' and 'Reference'  type 'Email'. It is critical that Reference is updated to 'Email'.  Turn 'Required input' on. 
13. You can change the Appearance properties to suit your preferences, such as updating the Button label and message, enabling Dialog, and changing the Color under Theme.
14. Back in the Automation, under the Start Block. Set  'Run asynchronously' = yes to allow multiple requests to run at the same time (This will also increase the max run time from 1min to 60min)
15. Once happy, test the On-Demand report by entering an email and clicking the button.

This On-Demand Report Automation can be used across multiple apps and tables.  Simply copy the extension object between apps & sheets, and update the Object ID (Measure 3) for each instance. 

Environment

• Qlik Application Automation 
• Qlik Cloud 
• Microsoft Office 365

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

This article gives an overview of storing reports in the cloud use case. It also explains a basic example of a template configured for this scenario.

An automation is attached, which can be imported in your Qlik Cloud Tenant. See How to import and export automations.

For this example, we will use the Qlik Reporting connector and Microsoft SharePoint as the cloud storage tool.

For this approach, you will need a Qlik Sense app configured in your tenant that has public sheets available, a field with unique values for which the reports will be generated, and a Microsoft SharePoint destination path to store your reports.

To support this use case, we created a basic template featured below. This template example is also available as an attachment.

This template will loop over all unique field values in the specified app. For each value, it will generate a report of all public sheets with a selection based on the specific value. Each generated report will then be saved as a PDF file in SharePoint.

Of course, this is just a basic implementation. This template can be upgraded to suit other scenarios. Let's go over a few examples:

• You can select a different destination connector for the cloud storage in the Copy File block;
• You can replace the could storage block with the Send Mail block from the Mail connector to send the report as an attachment. 
• You can send an alert to a messaging system such as Microsoft Teams or Slack.
• You can change the sheets mode to custom in the Create Report block and use the Add sheet to report block to further customize your reports.

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

The problem occurs on buttons containing multiple actions. It can happen that these actions are not performed in the order set in the button. The result is then different from the expected one.
The issue is more common when the actions contain different selections or a "Clear selections" on a field. Sometimes, the selections seem not to be applied or it may be necessary to click twice on the button to get the desired result.

Environment

• Qlik Cloud

Cause 

The actions may seem to be applied incorrectly because the expressions that are used for the actions in the button are all evaluated at the time the user presses the button. The actions are then applied sequentially, however with the evaluated expressions.
Evaluating the actions at the same time may lead to different results than evaluating them sequentially, especially if these actions include selections.

Resolution

This is considered the designed behavior at the moment, in fact there are technical limitations preventing to apply actions sequentially. Moreover, some implementations are currently based on this behavior.
For these reasons this is considered a feature request instead of a defect.
A possible improvement would be to have an additional option where one can configure the actions flow in the button. A post has been added in our ideation program in the community.

Internal Investigation ID

QB-20651

This article gives an overview of the available blocks in the Google Sheets connector in Qlik Application Automation. It will also go over some basic examples of creating a new spreadsheet, adding new sheets to it, adding some information to the sheet as well as removing information from it.

You will find the mentioned example attached to this article in JSON format so you can upload it to your workspace and get started with it easily.

This connector supports operations to manage spreadsheets, adding/removing sheets from spreadsheets, manipulating sheet data, and a few other support operations.

Authentication for this connector is based on the oAuth2 Protocol. 

Let's start with the example prepared:

1. Create an automation;
2. From the left menu, select the Google Sheets connector;
3. Drag and drop the "Create Spreadsheet" block and fill in a title for the spreadsheet we will be adding
4. Let's go ahead and drag and drop the "Add Sheet to Spreadsheet" block and fill in the input parameters. (input parameter for the spreadsheet id can be filled manually by clicking the input and using the do lookup function for adding a new sheet to an existing spreadsheet or filled in from the output of the block before this one like shown in the picture)
   
   
   
   
5. Next step in our example was to append a couple of rows and columns to our newly added spreadsheet in one go by using the 'Append Rows to Sheet' block:
   
   
   For text values you can encase them between double quotes and for number you can simply send them as they are. The end result should look like the following picture in you document: 
   
   
   
6. Now in order to get the data from the spreadsheet we've used the block  'Get data from sheet with Headers' and the resulting output from that block will be a list object ( if there were multiple lines ) with the headers used as keys of the object and the values taken from the following lines.
7. Lastly we used the 'delete rows' block in order to delete 1 line from our sheet. Just as you can see on the block description, you are not allowed to delete all rows in a sheet.
   
   
   
   
8. In the presented JSON example, you will notice a disabled 'Delete Spreadsheet' block as well. That block is only available for accounts whose administrator has allowed the app beforehand in their G Suite administration panel, so not every user might have access to that blocks functionality. If you want to delete a spreadsheet and don't have the possibility from our Google Sheet connector, manually deleting the spreadsheets from your account is the only way to do it.

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Currently, in Qlik Application Automation it is not possible to export more than 100,000 cells using the Get Straight Table Data block.

Content:

• Full Automation
• Steps to set up the variables
• Automation structure

To overcome this limit, the workaround is to export records in batches from the Qlik Sense straight table to the cloud storage platform of your choice. The prerequisite is to have a unique numerical field in your dataset. If you don't have the unique field in your dataset, you can add it using RowNo() function in the load script as shown below. This counts the rows in the dataset.

In this example, we will export data from the Qlik Sense straight table to Dropbox as a CSV file.

You can also find an exported version of this automation and application attached to this article. More information on importing automation can be found here.

Full Automation

Automation Part 1

Automation Part 2

Automation Part 3

Steps to set up the variables

1. vAppId: Variable used to define your app ID.
2. vSheetId: Variable used to define your sheet ID.
3. vTableId: Variable used to define your straight table ID.
4. vFieldName: Variable used to define the field name on which the straight table data should be filtered based on the selection applied using the Select Field Value By Query block.

Automation structure

1. Add the Create Measure block to the automation and configure the Measure Expression parameter by providing an expression that calculates the number of rows in the dataset. In this example, I have added RowNo( ) as a unique field to the dataset, so the expression used is count([RowNo( )]).
2. Add the Get Measure block to get the number of rows in the dataset.
3. Store the number of rows obtained from the previous step in the vNRecords variable.
4. Delete the measure created using the Delete Measure block.
5. Add the vNLoops variable to calculate the number of loops that can be used to export straight table data in batches. Please note the formula used in the variable. Edit it to suit your needs. Change the 10000 value as you want but keep in mind that too many records could exceed the Get Straight Table Data block's 100,000 cells limit.
   
   
   
   
6. The Custom Code block creates a list with items 1 to n where n is the number of loops calculated in the previous step.
7. Add Create File on Dropbox block to create a new CSV file in Dropbox. You can select any other cloud storage connector, just remember to configure the relevant value in the Path parameter. The Qlik Sense straight table data will be exported to this file.
8. Add the Select Field Values By Query block to apply selection to the unique identifier created in the dataset to fetch only one record from the Get Straight Table Data block.
9. Add Write Line To File on Dropbox block to add straight table keys as column headers to the CSV file.
10. Add Loop block to loop over the list created using the Custom Code block.
11. Add Condition block to check if it's iterating over the 1st item, if yes set vRecordsStart variable value to 1, else set vRecordsStart variable value to vRecordsEnd variable. The vRecordsEnd variable represents the last record that needs to be fetched from the straight table during each iteration. Please note the formula used in the variable. The value under the Value 1 parameter in the Multiply formula should match the value provided in the Divide formula of the vNLoops variable.
    
    
    
    
12. Add the Select Field Values By Query block to apply selection to the unique identifier created in the dataset to fetch the records between vRecordsStart and vRecordsEnd variables from the Get Straight Table Data block.
13. Add Write Line To File on Dropbox block within the Get Straight Table Data block which writes each straight table data into the CSV file. Configure it to use the output from the Get Straight Table Data block as the Data parameter.
14. Add Save And Close File on Dropbox block and configure the file parameter to use the CSV file we have created.

Environment

• Qlik Cloud
• Qlik Application Automation 

SAP Cluster Tables has missing data in the Target during CDC process.

Environment

• Qlik Replicate 2023.5

Resolution

Apply the latest Service Release for Replicate 2023.5 SP03

https://files.qlik.com/url/QR_2023_5_PR03

Workaround:

The Task you can do an Advance Run option using start from Timestamp, starting the Task when the data loss is found in the Target as long as the transaction logs are available.

Advanced Run Options set the Date to the UTC time of the Replicate Server at the time of the data loss

Cause

Product Defect ID: RECOB-7506

Related Content 

https://help.qlik.com/en-US/replicate/May2023/Content/Replicate/Main/SAP%20Native/native_AR_SAP.htm

Qlik Application Automation includes a connector block for Microsoft Teams. You have multiple Microsoft Teams templates available when creating a new Automation, which will guide you through the process. 

This article highlights the blocks applicable when sending messages.

Example Automation:

For additional information on requirements and message possibilities, see How to get started with Microsoft Teams in Qlik Application Automation.

Available Blocks

The Microsoft Teams Connector will list a number of different blocks for you to choose from.

The following are used to send chat messages to existing chats, or you can send messages to new chats:

• Create chat: Used to create a new chat. The block takes a topic and chat members as input. The topic is only applicable for group chats (chats with more than two members). A chat between two members is called a one-on-one chat. Only one one-on-one chat can exist between two chat members, so should one already exist, the existing chat id will be returned. The members that are added to this block must include the user who initiates the create request.
• Get Chat: Enables you to get a chat object, excluding messages, by providing a chat ID. The response includes chat members. The chat ID can be retrieved using the List Chats block.
• List Chats: Enables you to retrieve all the chats that you are a part of. It is possible to include a query phrase that is case sensitive to filter the result based on topic. This is only applicable for chats of the type group and meeting. Since one-on-one chats don't have a title, this would be ignored. It is also possible to include filtering of chats based on type: group, meeting or oneOnOne. 
• Send message to existing chat: Enables you to send a message to an existing chat by specifying the chat ID.
• Send message to new chat: Enables you to send a chat message to a chat that previously didn't exist. For group chats you may include a topic.

Environment

Qlik Application Automation 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Qlik Cloud some or all application automations are disabled or inaccessible for some users recently. This was working before. Then access became in accessible or disabled for some or all users.

Environment

• Qlik Cloud (QCS)

Resolution

• Open the Qlik Cloud QMC and to 'Users' > 'Permissions'
• Observer the column 'auto assign'
• Enable if turned 'off' to re-enable automations in the tenant
• Have your administrator add you to the security group that has access to the auto-assign role

Cause

• The auto assign permission has been turned off by your Tenant Admin (enabled by default)
• The auto assigned permission is enabled however the affected users are not a member of the group that has been assigned to this role.

Related Content

• Permissions for automation creators
• Assigning security roles to groups
• Assigning security roles to everyone in the tenant

The Qlik Application Automation team recently released a new connector called Inphinity that allows you to read data from your Forms, or write data back to your Forms. You may have felt a bit like Dorothy in Oz seeing it in a list of other connectors and you just want to get home. 

But don't click those heels together so fast, this connector gives you some really powerful capabilities when combined with Inphinity Forms for Qlik Sense. How powerful you ask? How about the ability to record insights, take automated action(s) based on the values, and then report back the activity? 

Now that seems like some wizardly cool kind of activity right there. So let's get started walking down that yellow brick road together. 

Environment

Qlik Cloud 
Qlik Application Automation July connectors update (and later)

Connecting to your Inphinity Forms

When you click on the Inphinity Connector you will see that you have 2 options Read Form Data or Save Data to Form. 

Like nearly every connector type, either of those blocks is going to require you to establish a connection to your Inphinity Form. Something that identifies what/where it is you want your Qlik Application Automation block to talk to. Give your connection a snazzy connection name, or just a demo-worthy name like Inphinity. Then you will need to input your domain. {As of the writing of this post Inphinity only provides forms.inphinity.app but they may be providing regional domains in the future so this QAA connector allows for that.} 

Next, you will need two (2) values regarding the specific form you wish to read from or write to. The form_instance_id will be displayed in the list of forms in your "Inphinity Forms SaaS" console. The api_token can be obtained by clicking the Setting link and then generating the API TOKEN

Reading from your Form

The Read Form Data block allows you to read all of the data that users have input for the form. To do that simply leave the Body blank. 

That is a great option if you implement some type of stand-alone automation. But if you are implementing your automation to take action on a row-by-row basis as your end users are working on the form, then you will want to input the JSON body information. In the image below, notice that I have the base JSON information {"0" : "{key}"} and that I'm using the Row value from an Input block. 

Where would that Input come from? Well, I can simply type in the information, or since I am having this Qlik Application Automation triggered by the Inphinity Form itself, I can simply append &row=$(key) to the URL in my Forms Rest settings. Be sure and take note that "row" is simply the label I gave my Input. But $(key) is the indicator to Inphinity that when calling my Qlik Application Automation it should send the "key" for the specific row that was just saved. Thus if the end user inputs multiple changes, it would call the automation multiple times. 

If you Read Form Data with a key you will simply get an object with 1 row of data returned with columns for each value in the form. Since "rows" in Qlik Application Automation are zero (0) based, I can simply implement the following to assign the "Analyst Notes" value of the record to a variable. 

If you Read Form Data without a key, you will obviously get as many rows as you have data in the form. In that case, the best plan is to set up a Loop so that you can iterate through each row. 

Now, you can simply choose "Analyst Notes" from the Loop Item to assign the value to a variable, or use it directly elsewhere as you prefer. 

Note that _key is comprised of as many dimensions as you define for your Inphinity Form. If you only have one (1) then you can simply refer to the _key as you would any of the other measures, or input values your form has. In this case, it is 3 fields, since you may have similar situations, which Inphinity then concatenates with two pipe symbols "||" between each of the values.  Pulling the individual values can be achieved by first "exploding" the concatenated key into a list using the Qlik Application Automation function "explode" with the "||" as the delimiter. 

 This will lead to the following text:

If you used an Output block to view your "exploded" list, you would see something like this:

Now you can refer to the entry in our list, for the column you wish from that concatenated key. So if you want the first column, the VendorID portion of the key, you can do so like this:

The Vendor Name portion would be: { $.KeyValues[0][1] }

And the Vendor Criticality portion would be: { $.KeyValues[0][2] }

Take Action

The point of this new Qlik Application Connector is to offer you the ability to read from your form data ...

and take ACTION with it. 

Whether you prefer to assign the values you read to variables as was done above, or whether you prefer to simply pass the data that you read directly to another task, the goal is to do something with it. Maybe you want to apply a field selection based on the key, and generate a report to some big cheese along with the Analyst Notes. Maybe it's to send an email that includes the data from the insights. Maybe it's to create a Service Now incident based on the insights and data values. In my case, I pass all of the data along as Input to a UiPath Connector to have it create a Service Now incident regardless of data values, and if the Vendor Criticality is high enough, create an SAP Ariba workflow as well. 

Saving Data to Forms

Actions have consequences. Ok, so that statement refers to human actions. Better said in our case, automated actions have returned values. Whether it's just "Success." Or whether in my case it is the Service Now Incident Number and possibly the SAP Ariba confirmation number for the case.  There will be information available to us. 

When you think about it the ability to capture data in Qlik Sense regarding discovered insights and take any automated actions is neat. But recording them so that everyone knows what happened as a result really sets the use case apart. Right?

That's where the Save Data To Form block comes in handy. The command accepts a simple JSON object with the values we want to write back to the form. As you can see we will need to pass the "_key" back so that Inphinity will know which record to save the data to. So we can pass it back the same value we used to Read Form Data from, the simple Input Row. You can also rewrite the information you already have in the form like the Analyst Notes. Or you can create additional fields of information based on whatever Qlik Application Automation action(s) you took. You could pass back a "Email generated to John Doe and sent on the 29'th of August at 1:27 PM." Or as you can see I want to pass the SAP Ariba Confirmation and Service Now Incident numbers back to the form. 

Whatever it is, that you will write back to the form, simply add the field name and value pairs to the JSON block and you will be in business. 

Wizardry

Unlike the Wizard of Oz where there was just a man behind a green curtain, the combination of Qlik Application Automation and Inphinity Forms is true wizardry. What you have to see for yourself, as you will never believe these screenshots is the fact that when you write anything back to your Inphinity Form, any screens that are visualizing the Form will be automatically updated in real-time. 

SERIOUSLY!!!!! 

Check out this 1-minute video where I demonstrate the entire process in split screen so that you can see the input, the activity and the real-time feedback.

Because seeing is believing. 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

Inside Qlik Application Automation, the Amazon S3 functionality is split into 2 connectors. The native Cloud Storage connector and the specific Amazon S3 connector. To create, update and delete files, it’s highly recommended to use the native Cloud Storage connector. To get the information and metadata of regions & buckets, use the Amazon S3 connector.

Example of automation using the Amazon S3 connector to output a paginated list of regions and buckets in each region (not covered in this article).

Environment:

Qlik Application Automation 

This article focuses on the available blocks in the native Cloud Storage connector in Qlik Application Automation to work with files stored in S3 buckets.

It will provide some examples of basic operations such as listing files in a bucket, opening a file, reading from an existing file, creating a new file in a bucket, and writing lines to an existing file.

The Cloud Storage connector supports additional building blocks to copy files, move files and check if a file already exists in a bucket, which can certainly help with additional use cases. The Amazon S3 connection, however, supports advanced use cases such as generating a URL that grants temporary access to an S3 object, or downloading a file from a public URL and uploading this to Amazon S3.

Let’s get started. Authentication for this connector is based on tokens or keys.

Log in to the AWS console with an IAM user to generate the access key id and secret access key required to authenticate.

Now let's go over the basic use cases and the supporting building blocks in the Cloud Storage connector to work with Amazon S3:

1. How to list files from an existing S3 bucket
   1. Create an Automation.
   2. From the left menu, select the Cloud Storage connector.
      
      
      
      
   3. Search for the List Files block from the available list of blocks.
      
      
      
      
   4. Drag and drop the block into the automation and connect it after the Start block.
      
      
      
      
   5. The ‘Path’ parameter of this block allows to list the contents of a specific directory from a Dropbox account. In this example, ‘./’ indicates the root directory of your bucket.
   6. Drag and drop the ‘Output’ block into the automation and connect it to the ‘List Files on Amazon S3’ block.
      
      
      
      
   7. Run the automation (if not saved previously, a 'Save automation' popup will appear). This will output a paginated list of files available in the root directory of a S3 bucket.
      
      
2. How to open an existing file and read from it
   1. The first two steps are similar as described before
   2. Now use the ‘Open File’ block from the list
   3. Drag and drop the block into the automation, link it to the Start block and fill in the required parameters, ie. Path, Region and Bucket. You can use ‘do look up’ to search across your S3 account. Add the file directory, filename and file extension under ‘Path’, e.g. ./4bxH6V4ac9zoAxZU.csv
      
      
      
   4. Drag and drop the ‘Read Data From File’ and link it to the previous block. Use the output from the previous block as input.
      
      
      
      
   5. Drag and drop the ‘Output’ block into the automation before running the automation. This will output a paginated table with the data stored in the file.
      
      
      
      
      
      
3. How to create a new file (if it doesn’t exist and delete if it does) in the S3 bucket, write lines of data, save and close the opened file
   1. The first two steps are similar as in the two previous use cases
   2. Now select the ‘Check If File Exists’, drag and drop it into the automation and link it to the Start block.
      
      
      
   3. The previous block will return ‘True’ if the file exists, and ‘False’ if it doesn’t. Now search for the ‘Condition’ block to drag and drop it into the automation. Link it to the previous block and add the following condition:
      
      
      
      
   4. First let’s focus on the ‘YES’ part of the condition. Search the ‘Delete File’ block and drag and drop it into the automation. This will delete the specified file inside the S3 bucket if it already exists.
   5. Hide the ‘NO’ part of the condition and continue building this automation at the loose end of the ‘Condition’ block (this part executes regardless of the result of evaluating the condition). First search the ‘Create File’ block, add it to the canvas and connect it to the previous block.
   6. Next, search the ‘Write Line to File’ block and connect it to the ‘Create File on Amazon S3’ block. Fill in the required input parameters. Select CSV as ‘Mode’ and specify the ‘Column names’ (i.e. headers) of the file.
      
      
      
      
   7. This example shows how to define ‘Column names’ manually but, obviously, this operation can also be automated using the Get Keys formula and reading files stored in S3 buckets, lists or objects defined as variable. Same applies to the ‘Data’ input parameter, one single line of data has been added manually in this example, but we could have read data from other data sources (e.g. tables, flat files, etc.) or loop through a list of items, and write each item as a line in the CSV file. It requires additional data transformations though. Check the ‘Csv’ function from the ‘Other Functions’ link.
   8. Finally, search the ‘Save and Close’ block, and link it to the ‘Write Line to File on Amazon S3’ block. Optionally, add the ‘Output’ block into the automation which will show the path where the file has been saved and closed on the S3 bucket in Amazon.
      
      
      
      
   9. Optionally, you can add the following building blocks as a continuation of your automation to check the content of the newly created file in the S3 bucket. If the file has been successfully created and written, then this will output its content as rows, otherwise it’ll output ‘File Not Found’.
      
      

Attached example file: create_and_write_files_amazon_s3.json

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

This article provides a step-by-step guide on building a write back solution with only native Qlik components and automations. 

Content:

• Environment
• Write back use cases
• 1. Ticket creation
• 2. Data annotation
• 3. Update records
• Tutorial: ticket creation
• 1. Configuring the button in the app
• 2. Configuring the automation
• Configuring the toast notification
• Reloads
• Limitations

Disclaimer for reporting use cases: this solution could produce inconsistent results in reports produced with automations; when using the button to pass through selections, the intended report composition and associated data reduction for the report may not be achieved. This is due to the fact that the session state of Qlik Application Automation cannot be transferred to the report composition definition that is passed to the Qlik Reporting Service.

Environment

• Qlik Sense app
• Qlik Application Automation
• A business tool that's used as the data source (we'll use HubSpot in this example)

Write back use cases

When analyzing results in a Qlik Sense app, it could happen you spot a mistake in your data or something that seems odd. To address this, you may want someone from your team to investigate this or you may want to update data in your source systems directly without leaving Qlik. Or maybe your data is just fine but you want to add a new record from within Qlik without having to open your business application. These scenarios fit in the following use cases:

1. Ticket creation: create a ticket to ensure a data review or update task will get followed up by your data team
2. Data annotation: add a comment or tag to one or more records in your source data 
3. Data change: add new records or update existing ones
   
   

1. Ticket creation

This is the least intrusive form of writing back that delegates the change to someone in your data team. The idea is that you create a ticket in a task management system like Jira or ServiceNow. Someone from your team will then pick up the ticket, investigate your comment, and review the data. The difference with sending an alert or email is that the ticketing system guarantees that the request is tracked.

2. Data annotation

Another option to communicate changes is to write a comment or a tag for one or more records directly to the source system. This could be a comment on a deal record in your CRM or it could be stored in a separate database table if you're loading data from a database.

3. Update records

The final use case allows for updating records directly from within the sheet. Make sure you know who has access to the button before setting this up since this will allow users to change records directly.

Tutorial: ticket creation

All the above use cases can be realized in the same way: by configuring a native Qlik Sense button in your sheet to run an automation. Before you start this tutorial, make sure you already have an app and a new, empty automation. The tutorial has 2 parts:

1. Configuring the button in the app
2. Configuring the automation

1. Configuring the button in the app

To configure the app, we'll use the following native Qlik Sense components:

• Button: Used to trigger the automation.
• Variable input: Used to allow users to specify parameters to use in the automation (for example, a variable to store a comment).
• Container: Used to group the variable inputs and the button for a better user experience.
• Table: Used to easily select records for the data annotation or ticket creation use case.

Steps:

1. Open your app and add the Container component to a sheet that already contains a Table with records. Then add (a) Button to the Container component. To configure the button, click the (b) Container and go to (c) Edit properties on the button. Feel free to give the button a proper label, in this tutorial, we'll use "Create Jira ticket". 
   

   
   

2. Configure the button under the 'Actions and navigation' tab by adding a new action and setting it to 'Execute automation' and configure the automation parameter to use the empty automation you created earlier. You can only configure an automation that you own. It is not possible to configure someone else's automation. Tip: you can use the 'View this automation' link to open the automation editor in a new tab.
   

   
   

3. Check the "Include selections" option. This way, on each click, the button will create a temporary bookmark and send its ID to the automation. The temporary bookmark contains the selections that were active when the button was clicked and also the variable state which contains any values the user has supplied for variables through the Variable Input components.
   
   

   

4. Check the "Run mode: triggered" option as well. This will allow everyone who has access to the sheet to run the automation by clicking the button. If you don't select this checkbox, the automation will be executed over an API call, and only users with permission to run the automation will be able to run it through the button. Currently, only the automation owner has this permission.
   
   
   
   

5. Enable the "Show notifications" toggle, this will send a toast notification back to the user in the sheet after the automation completes. Feel free to increase the duration.

6. Add new variables to your app. Do not use load script variables for this; instead, create the variable through the Edit Sheet page. Create the following variables, only give them a name, and you can leave the other fields blank.
   
   1. title_for_jira
   2. comment_for_jira
   3. assignee_for_jira
      
      
7. Add a Variable Input component for each variable to the Container component that already has the Button from earlier. Re-arrange the components in the Container so the Button is last. Set the 'Show as' parameter for the Variable input for the ticket title and comment to the 'Input box'. For the ticket assignee, set it to 'Drop down'.
   
   Note: you'll find the Variable Input under the 'Custom objects' category.
   
   

   

8. To configure the dropdown, you'll need the user IDs of the possible assignees for the Jira ticket. One way of getting those is to use the List Users block in the Jira connector in an automation. Once you have the IDs, configure the dropdown 'Values' parameter by adding alternative values. The Value should be the user's ID and the Label should be the user's name.
   
   

    

9. Your sheet should now look like this:
   
   

   Tip: using a Container component will allow your variable inputs & button to scale better for smaller screens. 
   
   
   
   

2. Configuring the automation

1. Click the 'Copy input block' button in the Button's configuration section. This will copy a preconfigured Inputs block and Apply Bookmark block to your clipboard to get you started with the automation. Next, click the 'View this automation' link to open the automation editor in a new tab.
   

   
   

2. Right-click in the automation canvas and select 'Paste Block(s)'. Connect the new blocks to the Start block. The Apply Bookmark block will ensure that any selections applied by the user, together with the variables state (whatever the user configured for the variables before clicking the button), are available in the automation session.
   
   

   

3. Add a List Current Selections block, and configure it to use the App parameter provided through the Inputs block. This block will return all records the user selected (because they're sent over through the temporary bookmark).
   

   
   

4. Add the Get Expression block for each variable. Configure it to use the App parameter provided through the Inputs block. Use the following format for the expression, =variablename. For example: =title_for_jira. Do the same for the comment and assignee variables.
   
   

   

5. If you haven't already, this is a good point to make a selection, configure the Variable Inputs and click the button from within the app and make sure that each block is returning the correct selections/variable values. Doing this will make it easier to configure the other blocks.
   
   
6. Add a Create Issue block from the Jira connector and configure the following parameters by using the do lookup functionality. Project, Issue Type & Priority. These will be hard-coded for each new issue.
   
   Tip: use a staging or test project in Jira while building the automation.
   
   
7. Map the expression value for the Summary parameter to the output of the Get Expression Value block that's retrieving the ticket title. Do the same for the assignee and set the Comment variable as the ticket's description.
   
   

   
   
   

8. The deal IDs should be added as a comma-separated list to the issue's Description:
   
   1. Click the description input field and select the output from the List Current Selections block. Click the (a) values list and chose the 'Select first item from list' option on the next screen:
      

      
      

      
      
      

   2. Upon automation run, this will resolve to the first text value selected for the field hs_object_id (which corresponds to the deal ID from HubSpot). To update this to a comma-separated list of IDs, the mapping must first be changed to output a list of all values for hs_object_id. To do this, toggle the formula parsing:

      

   3. Change the final 0 in the formula to an asterisk '*', and turn the formula parsing back on.
      
      
      
      
   4. Click the mapping and choose 'Add formula' from the context menu. Then, search for the Implode formula. This formula will turn a list into a comma-separated list. Configure it to use a comma as a separator:
      
      
      
      
      
      
   5. Do a new test run by selecting multiple deals in your sheet and then clicking the button, this should create a new ticket in Jira with the deal IDs as a comma-separated list.
      

      
      
      
      

9. Add an Update Run Title block to the end of the automation. This will show a toast notification to the user who clicked the button after the automation is completed. Learn more about configuring this and who can see the notification in the next part of this article: "Configuring the toast notification".
   

   
   

   The resulting toast notification in the Qlik Sense app:
   
   

   

Bonus: add a link to the toast notification

Instead of showing a plain message in the toast notification, it's also possible to include a link to point the user to a certain resource. This can be done by configuring the Update Run Title block with the following snippet:

{"message":"Ticket created", "url": "https://<link to jira ticket>"}

Configuring the toast notification

Depending on the button's configuration and the automation run mode, use either the Update Run Title block or the Output block to show the toast notification.

See the below table for each option:

The run mode in the button can be configured by toggling the 'Include Selections' option in the button's settings: 

The run mode in the automation can be configured here in the Start block:

Reloads

After writing back to your source systems, you'll want to do a reload to see your changes reflected in the app. Be mindful of the impact of doing these reloads. If multiple people are using this button at the same time, you don't want to do a reload for each update. 

Problems: 

1. Reload concurrency: the same app can not be reloaded in parallel. If multiple people are using the button at the same time, it won't be possible to do reloads for every click on the button.

Improvements:

1. Partial reloads: use partial reloads to only load new data into the app. This way the reload takes less time.
2. Separate reloads: do not use the automation triggered by the button for reloads. Instead, use a separate process for this. For example:
   1. An additional button on the app that triggers reloads.
   2. A scheduled reload.
   3. Another automation with a "List Incremental" block that runs on a schedule and reads changes from the source. It will trigger a reload only if new records are available in the source. Note: not every connector in automations has an incremental block.

Limitations

1. Public access in triggered mode: when the button is set to run the automation in triggered mode, everyone who can access the sheet and click the button will be able to execute the automation.
2. No impersonation: when the automation runs, it will use the automation owner's Qlik account for the Qlik Cloud & Qlik Reporting connectors. It's not possible to impersonate the user who clicked the button. This means that any form of section access is not applied to the user who clicked the button. 
3. No parallel runs: the automation can not run in parallel. New runs get queued with a maximum queue size of 200 runs.
4. Execution token is visible: when the button is set to run the automation in triggered mode, clicking the button exposes the automation's Execution Token from the network traffic in the developer console. This token can only be used to trigger that automation and has no use for other automations or other APIs. Generating a new token can be done by copying the automation.
5. Toast notification timeout: the button will wait on the automation for a maximum of 10 minutes to return the toast notification. If the automation takes longer, it will still run to completion, but no toast notification will be shown.
6. General limits: more information on limitations can be found here: 
   
   1. Button limits
   2. Automation limits

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

In this article, we will share step by step process on how to copy straight table data having quotes to Excel using "Add rows to table (Batch)" in Qlik Application Automation.

Full Automation

The attached JSON file can be directly imported into a new workspace.

Step-by-step description

1. Start your automation with the Create Workbook Session block from the Microsoft Excel connector.
   
   Use the session id returned by this block in all subsequent blocks with a Session Id input field. The session id field can be found by navigating to the settings of Microsoft Excel blocks as shown in the below screenshot. 
   
   

   When using a Microsoft Excel workbook session in automation, the session must be closed at the end of the automation by adding a Close Workbook Session block.

   Workbook Session ID
   

    

2. Use the Get Straight Table Data block from the Qlik Cloud Services connector to get data from the straight table for a specific app we want to sync to the Microsoft Excel worksheet.
   
   

   The limit of 100 000 records that can be retrieved through the Get Straight Table Data block.

3. The response from the Get Straight Table Data block will be as shown in the below screenshot.
   
   The keys will act as headers, and the values will act as rows corresponding to the keys in the Microsoft Excel table.
   
   Response from Qlik Sense straight table
   
   
4. Use Loop block to loop over all items from the straight table.
   
   
5. Initialize a variable called 'row' of type List and use another Loop block to loop over all the keys from the straight table.
   
   
6. Within the loop, add this 'row' variable of type List to retrieve each column value for the associated key from the straight table as an item of this list variable, resulting in a single row containing values for all the keys in each iteration. The data will be in the format ["1","Text\"1\""]. Because this is a list variable, the quotations in the data are automatically escaped.
   
   
7. We must first compute the Array of Lists before inserting it into the Add Row To Table(Batch) block. [["1","Text"1""], [["2","Text2"]] will be the format.
   
   
8. Add arrayOflist (variable block of type string). Because the data from the previous stages is an array, use the JSON formula to convert it to a JSON string and append a comma at the end. The data obtained will be in the format ["1","Text\"1\""],["2","Text2"] .
   
   
9. Use Add Row To Table(Batch) block from the Microsoft Excel connector to add rows to the table in batch.  From the data obtained from the previous stage, Trim the comma at the end and add opening and closing braces.
   
   
10. Make sure to close the workbook session by adding the Close Workbook Session block from the Microsoft Excel connector at the end of the automation.

Issue reported:

• All tenants automations have been disabled
• Not allowed to re-enable
• Attempts to enable gives error: "Failed to update automations"

Environment

• Qlik Cloud 

Resolution

• Open the Cloud Management console as tenant admin
• Navigate to user role permissions
• Insert a user (or group) under 'Auto Assigned' user role permission

Cause 

The associated user or group was removed in an attempt to change security preferences. Minimum best practice is to ensure that the tenant admin keeps this permission.