Qlik Sense Analyzer Capacity license usage monitoring and comparison

[Andre_Sostizzo]

Analyzer capacity license is a consumption-based licensing model introduced in Qlik Sense February 2019 which allows a pool of user to consume apps by unit of time (unit is 6 minutes) without the need of having a license assigned to a user (named user).

[Andre_Sostizzo]

When a user from the pool logs in the hub and opens an app he/she will consume 1 unit after 6 minutes and extra unit will be consumed thereafter in increments. For example: If the user stays in for 15 minutes, 3 units will be consumed (18 minutes) as a unit started is marked as a unit consumed.
No consumption is registered if the user is logged in but idle (not opening apps, sheets,...).

When all analyzer units have been consumed, no users from the pool can access Qlik Sense, until the monthly reset occurs. To avoid lockout, coverage can be added to the subscription. Coverage is a function that allows to buy minutes packages automatically when consumed, it can either be unlimited or with a defined ceiling. For more information see Page 2 under License Metrics Qlik Sense and Qlik Analytics Platform.

Here is an example of license with 1000 minutes of Analyzer Capacity: More information under Analyzer Capacity License 

Here is an example in Qlik Sense Enterprise on Cloud Services (QSEoCS): Some documentation is available under "Analyzer capacity (minutes)" in License / User Allocation

Important:
An access to the Internet is required to use this type of license.
You must have a Signed License Key (SLK) to replace the serial number (old license). More information under Licensing Qlik Sense for Analyzer Capacity

Differences between licensing types:

Reference:

Analyzer capacity license and comparison with other licenses allocations and how to check usage 

[Thomas_Hopp]

just adding a statement to the thread here (which I posted to another thread as well).

We are still on track for May and what we are planning to deliver is a new set of API's which will allow you to gather all the data needed to answer all these questions about who is using Analyzer Capacity and which Apps, etc. And at the same time where we are planning to deliver this via the API's, we are working on an App to expose this data. Later on we do have it planned to include this more into the natural user experience of an admin, which would mean more embedded into the product.

I'll keep you guys updated about the status.

Best regards,

Thomas

[amdcadena]

I am really disappointed with the Capacity license. The fact of not knowing how much the user consumes does not allow us to manage and scale it. I requested more packages of minutes for 2 months until Qlik is delivered the monitoring that was expected but only annual purchases are allowed. Unfortunately it was not the type of behavior that I expected from Qlik for a license sold without the minimum resources necessary for its management.

[stevedark]

Hi,

That's great to hear that we may be getting some better visibility of who is using what on SaaS soon - this is desperately needed information.

The part of the puzzle that was most concerning for me with regards to monitoring on SaaS was not being able to tell how the analyzer capacity usage was stacking up against available minutes. The management console shows usage against total, but you then have to work out yourself how that sits against expectations for the time of the month. Also, you have to keep going and checking, and we needed something that would alert us.

As a stop-gap to more being provided by Qlik, I have put together a simple application for checking this, and sending an email when usage exceeds the run-rate of minutes for the time of month.

The app can be downloaded from here:
https://community.qlik.com/t5/Documents/Qlik-Sense-App-Monitor-Capacity-Licences-on-Qlik-Cloud-and/t...

And a full tutorial on how it has been put together is here:
https://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/sense-capacity-licence-notify/

Finally, a quick word of warning on capacity licencing. I noticed that if a analyzer capacity user adds a chart to their hub from within an app, every time that app refreshes a six minute slice is consumed as the charts on the hub are refreshed. Surely this can not be correct functionality, @Thomas_Hopp ?

Hope people find this useful.

Steve

[amdcadena]

Sorry to ask but I didn´t understand this point of the tutorial:
"Now we need to connect to the REST connection. This will check your
placeholder is present, but do nothing else at this point:

// Connect to the REST connectorLIB CONNECT TO 'GenericGET';

Note that if you have created your REST connection in a managed space, you
will want to prefix the name with the space name, e.g.
‘MySpace:GenericGET’;.







*Could you please explain better how to do this?Do I have to create the
rest connection in my own space?I am a developer with a professional
licence.ThanksAmbrosio Cadena*

[amdcadena]

It helps and nice to monitor it.

[stevedark]

Hi @amdcadena ,

Great to see you have got the app working, and that you are making good use of your analyzer capacity! With the month starting on a weekend, if you have predominantly weekday usage, your users may be consuming minutes a little too quickly this month. 🙂

If you are creating the app in your own personal space then there is no need to worry about the prefix on the connection name. If you publish the app to a managed space, so others can see it, you need to ensure that the two connect strings still point to to valid connections. To do this create copies of the connection in a managed space and prefix the connection name with the space. If you create the connection in the same space as the app then you can omit the space name, but you seem to need a colon at the start, for example:

LIB CONNECT TO 'Monitoring:GenericGET';

or

LIB CONNECT TO ':GenericGET';

From a security point of view, it may be best to keep all your connections in a managed space that users do not have access to - but if all your users are using analyzer / analyzer capacity licences then this is less of a worry.

Thanks for using the app.

Steve

[robert99]

Hi

Hope this information is available soon. My client really needs urgently.

Thanks 

[stevedark]

Hi @robert99 

What specifically is urgently needed that is not covered by the capacity monitor app that I have shared?

I've another script which pulls the logins from the audit table and attaches the licence type that users currently hold. Happy to share this if you DM me. It doesn't tell you how many capacity slices were taken by each user (as you say, I hope this is added to the API soon) but you can see who was active at the time that capacity was taken.

The one that I have found you really need to watch is users without their own licences adding charts to the hub, as these consume capacity minutes without the user even being logged in. Hopefully this will also be fixed at some point.

Steve

[robert99]

Hi Steve

Thanks for your reply

I need to have a look at your capacity monitor. But what I'm looking at doing is converting QSB to QSE. And using the shared license for low use users

I can find out who logs into QSB but not how many minutes they consume

Regards Robert

[stevedark]

Hi @robert99 

I am planning to do some more testing and documentation of these scripts, but am happy to share them as is for you here: https://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/SaaSSessions.zip

As well as a load script, which does an incremental load of login events, there is a config file which will allow the script to be used with my Instant Sense Application, details of which can be found here:
https://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/instant-qlik-sense-app/

You can obviously build your own front end over it as well. The blog post on the capacity monitor has details on how to set up the API calls.

Note that it will only show you login events, not times that an application has been accessed, so it is not accurate for working out who should get a licence and who should go onto capacity licencing. It should give an indication though (someone who has logged on more is likely to have used more).

It only goes a certain way back in history. There is a separate API which I believe has more historical information, but none of the clients I have set this up for as yet have old information that they are too worried about getting to. Hopefully the last month or so of usage in your tenant will be useful enough.

It sounds like you may be looking at this already - but hopefully the script may still be useful.

Cheers,

Steve