Why does NPrinting not support buttons that have actions?

[MikeW]

The nprinting documentation says:

Please remove these items below from the QlikView document (.qvw) before using with NPrinting Connections....

• Buttons that contain 'actions' work as triggers

Why does it need to be removed if I have a button that opens an URL in a new window? It doesn't even get used in any part of the NPrinting report or impacts any part of the Qlikview document. 

Is NPrinting trying to click all the buttons without being asked? I'm not sure what it's doing to have such a requirement. 

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Do you have button object with action or text object (which can also look like button) with action?

To be frank I am not 100% sure what this requirement is for. In general you dont want to have anything in your qlik application what would would trigger by itself action, or change document state or navigate to other sheet.

@Ruggero_Piccoli do you know why do we have this requirement on the button object? Can there be a NPrinting behaviour which would use/trigger action from button?

thanks

Lech

[MikeW]

Yes, I have a Default Selections button that helps users reset their selections when they get lost.

It was never intended to be touched by nprinting. So I don't understand why I need to create separate QVW just to have it removed just to be able to run nprinting reports on it. 

So if I have something that nprinting can't touch and I don't want nprinting to touch, then it makes more sense for nprinting to just ignore it. To require us to create a new qvw with it removed seems like a strange requirement. There needs to be some more explanation from Qlik here to help us understand what nprinting is doing to require a complete removal of the object.

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Hi,

Qlik NPrinting cannot know what buttons with triggers do. There could be buttons with actions that do not impact with the reporting generation and other, for example, that do actions that impact on the final reports (for example a button that applies filters like your default selections one) or that require users interactions. A .QVW with buttons could work or not work, but Qlik NPrinting cannot know this, so there is the request to remove all buttons. Remember that we suggest to create .QVWs only for reporting. In this way you can keep the buttons in the QVWs for users and remove them in QVWs for reporting.

Qlik NPrinting does not press (or emulate the pressing) any button.

We experienced support cases in the past where reporting was not working due to button actions.

Best Regards,

Ruggero

[MikeW]

I still don't understand the rationale. In my example, there is no way for NPrinting to messing up the report by pressing the button. If NPrinting does not press the button, the reports would be correct. 

Please explain what is wrong with following logic?

1. If there are no charts that requires a button to trigger anything, then NPrinting should be able to produce the report without issues even if the button is present.
2. If there are charts that requires a button to trigger anything, and NPrinting does not provide a way to press the button, then the report will not work even if the button is removed.
3. So NPrinting does not support charts that require triggers to work. The existence of buttons containing triggers is irrelevant. 
4. The solution is to remove reliance on triggers from the charts, not the removal of buttons. 

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Hi,

Triggers are not supported because they could be necessary to filter the data, Qlik NPrinting doesn't execute them you there is the possibility that the generated reports are not correct. By not supporting triggers it is sure that only the Qlik NPrinting filters and section access are applied, so there is a control on the results.

A button could run a trigger that changes the data, Qlik NPrinting doesn't press any button and cannot know what there is behind every button, there could be a trigger that applies filters. So, to be sure that the data in the final report are correctly filtered, Qlik NPrinting cannot support triggers and buttons. 

Best Regards,

Ruggero

[MikeW]

So you are saying the requirement  to remove them is to prevent incorrect user assumptions about them being supported?

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Hi,

I'm telling that triggers and buttons, as per the official documentation, are NOT supported. 

You can use them at your own risk. Maybe they could work but we cannot assure that they work at 100% for the reasons I explained in my previous message. As consequence, if you will have any kind of problem, the first step to solve will be remove all unsupported entities.

I suggest to never use unsupported entities also when they seems to work. They could, for example, stop working at all in future releases.

I hope this clarify.

Best Regards,

Ruggero