Schools’ Intelligence Overview

Learning Plus UK – MAT Dashboard

NewField IT Assessment Services

Quick Intelligence Downloadable Examples

We also upload our own material to YouTube. This video shows a few of the example documents we have made available through Qlik Community. Links to download all of these documents, and others, can be found on our list of downloadable examples.

You can see more of our videos, both created and favourited by us, on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/Quintelligence

Finally, here’s a video that has just appeared on YouTube, that we wish we had come up with…

Enjoy!

The post Quick Intelligence on YouTube appeared first on .

Our survey has been running for the month of September and it has just gone to show the amount of great video content there is out there based around the Qlik range of products. We’ve compiled all of the videos into a YouTube playlist, which you can view here.

The contributors who got the most votes (and whose channels I can certainly recommend) were Deepak Vadithala with QlikShare and Alan Farrell with Rusty Fish Bones. Well done both of you.

Voting for videos themselves were tight at the top, with a couple of tied places, but here are the…

Top Five QlikView Videos

First Sorted Value, Part 2

This video by Deepak is the one that took the crown in the survey. Being part two of a two part video tutorial it’s not surprising that part one also received a vote. This is also Deepak’s second mention in the Top 5 series as he also runs an excellent blog.

$Include and $Must_Include RFB 155

Alan Farrell is perhaps the most prolific QlikView video producer (189 videos to date), with each one being a short concise nugget of information – practically demonstrated. This one is no exception.

QlikView – Leaving The Mammoths of Yesterday Behind

This is a video that I came across and liked back when I was just getting started with QlikView. It seemed to sum up the forward thinking nature of the company and the fact it was an exciting technology to be involved with. It’s good to see I’m not the only one who appreciates it.

Creating A Master Calendar

Whilst I am not a big advocate of the master calendar if you want one this video shows you how to create it. This video has been created by Josh Good, a staffer at Qlik, who has also done a number of great Sense videos.

Qonnections – Set Analysis Discussion

This video was created by Barry Harmsen of QlikFix to promote their on-line QlikView training sessions (see https://q-on.bi/) this video gets the humour vote. Don’t expect to learn anything about Set Analysis from the video though.

So, there you have it. The fifth in our series of top fives celebrating the fifth birthday of Quick Intelligence. We hope you have enjoyed this series of posts as much as we have enjoyed compiling them.

Many thanks to everyone who took the time to vote in this survey. Finding the best of the Qlik video content would have been impossible without you.

Normal service will now be resumed on the Quick Intelligence blog, with some new tutorials to follow.

The post Top Five QlikView Videos appeared first on .

The Technology Transformation Network is a group that was set up for IT professionals to share their ideas on topics that affect the industries that they work in.  This is carried out through regular TTN events and via the video blog that you can view here: https://www.thettn.tv/headlines.aspx .  The group aims to raise awareness of current trends and also promotes best practices among its members.

I was asked to talk about QlikView and give my thoughts on what makes it unique, why so many companies are latching on to it but also why some larger organisations are reticent to trust their management information to the tool.  Here is the result:

Many thanks to Annapurna IT for giving me the opportunity to create this video with them.

The post QlikView On The Technology Transformation Network appeared first on .

If you have been able to attend the event over the past couple of years you will know what a good investment of your time it is to get there.  If you have not then I urge you to try and attend.  From past experience I would say you can expect QlikTech to be revealing a bit more of their product roadmap (this could be particularly interesting with .Next well into development), quality keynote speeches and real QlikView customers explaining how QlikView has made a difference in their business.

If I had to fault the previous events it would be that there has been no clear segregation of content for prospective users, current users and service providers like myself.  From where I sat I felt there was quite a bit of preaching to the converted, but on the flip side I am sure there were people there who were simply interested in seeing what QlikView could offer them who were lost in some of the technical detail that was being given out.   I don’t know if that is something that will be addressed this year, I certainly hope so though.

Quick Intelligence will be well represented there, so if you spot one of us around please do feel free to say hello.  Booking information can be found on the QlikTech website here: https://www.qlikview.com/uk/landing/bdwt-uk-2013

For now though, sit back and enjoy the short video from last year’s event:

The post QlikView Business Discovery London 2013 appeared first on .

The Problem

The problem that our client faced was that they were producing QlikView apps for their sales team to support them when talking to clients and prospects. Due to geographical factors, a reliable internet connection could not always be guaranteed. What they needed to do was to get subsets of their QlikView documents out to their sales people wherever they were – so they could then open them in QlikView Desktop.

The QlikTech stack allows for this with Publisher, but for smaller sites this is a considerable investment. It can also be achieved with batch script and Windows Scheduler (and the initial implementation for this client did just that) but this solution is not particularly robust or maintainable by someone without scripting experience.

The Solution

An elegant solution to this problem can be created using NPrinting and cloud technology, such as Google Drive.

1. Schedule and format reports with NPrinting

Within NPrinting a Reduce Task can be configured. As with Publisher this creates a QVW file for each recipient with a filter applied. Using the Enterprise version of NPrinting this can then be scheduled to run at a beat. When the reduce task runs NPrinting will create a new folder for each QVW that it creates.

2. Distribute reports with Google Drive

The company runs on Google Apps and therefore there was little resistance to pushing data to Drive. If you have the desktop version of Google Drive installed, and you point your output to within the folder structure of Drive, new folders will be created on your Drive in the Cloud. Drive can then be configured to share these folders with the relevant recipients.

3. Happy sales team

Now each of the users can log into their Drive and download the latest version of their app. Or, if they also have Google Drive Desktop installed, the app will automatically be downloaded for them the next time they have a connection.

Choosing to do this using NPrinting means we also have the option to distribute PDF, Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents in the same way. In this way the sales team could get a daily updated version of their PowerPoint deck with bang up to date information in it – without having to do anything other than open the PPT file.

How to Integrate NPrinting with Google Drive

1. Set up Google Drive

1. Go to https://drive.google.com
2. Click the Download Google Drive for your PC button.
3. Open googledrivesync.exe to automatically install and start Google Drive on your PC.
4. Enter your Google Account username and password in the window that opens. This will be the account associated with Google Drive for your PC.
5. Complete the installation package instructions.
6. Launch Google Drive for your PC from the Start menu. Any files or folders you put into your Google Drive Folder will automatically be synced with your Drive in the cloud. This is where you will output your folders from NPrinting.

2. Set up Sharing

1. Go to https://drive.google.com
2. Check the box next to the file or folder you’d like to share.
3. Click the Share icon.
4. Choose a visibility option. Select “Private” so that the folder is only shared with users you explicitly grant access to.
5. Type the email addresses of the person you want to share with in the text box below “Add people.”
   You can add a single person, a mailing list, or choose from your contacts.
6. Choose the access level from the drop-down menu next to each collaborator: “Can view” will allow your users to view all documents but not edit them.
   
7. Click Share & save.

3. Output NPrinting Reports into your Drive Folder

1. Create a new NPrinting document and set up your Connection
2. From the menu create a new Reduce Task
   
3. Output to your Google Drive folder setting NPrinting to have recipient sub-folders.
   
4. Click the recipients button to add a number of new recipients for reduced QlikViews. Set the folder and subfolder names accordingly.
   
5. For each of the recipients configure the filter based on fields within the connected QlikView document.
   
6. Select the task from under Reduce Tasks and click the Run button to send it out. The sub-set QVW files will be written to the appropriate folder.
   
7. To make this happen at regular intervals create a new Job and then a new Schedule to automate the process. Users will then receive fresh QlikView documents as often as you configure them to be sent.

See it in Action

As QlikTech say, “seeing is believing.” The video below shows the working solution in action:

This is just one example where combining QlikView with other technologies can allow you to produce even more inspired solutions. If you would like more information on NPrinting please see our NPrinting product page.

Quick Intelligence are NPrinting Partners

The post QlikView, NPrinting and Google Drive appeared first on .

Don’t Waste Space

The first thing to say here is that a Clear Current Selections button is totally redundant. That button is built right into the QlikView UI in Desktop and both Access Point versions. The same is true of Back, Bookmarks and (unless you have hidden your tabs) Next and Previous Tab buttons. Save yourself some space for some more analysis and don’t waste space with these buttons.

In my opinion shiny lozenges take far more space up than they need to and are visually distracting. You should not use these unless you really have to (i.e. your client or user insists).

Many objects can be Buttons

Anything that supports Actions can be a button. The lowly Text Area serves this purpose admirably, and if you have to use a gauge in your app, at least make it useful by making it clickable. A text box with no borders or shading provides a clickable line of text – like the ones that have served web pages so well for many years now.

With the use of dynamic colours you can have traffic light dashboard components that can also be useful for triggering actions (such as a dive to detail). Simple shading behind your text can make a useful toggle switch in your app.

Using Actions For Hiding Sheets

Here are some examples of text boxes performing the actions of buttons. These examples place values into variables, which are then used to do something dynamic in the app.

In most of the QlikView apps I produce I have some tabs for system data that is hidden from most users. To implement this I set a variable in the load script:

let vShowDev = 0;

On the front sheet there is then a text box that has dynamic text:

=if (vShowDev = 0, 'Show', 'Hide') & ' Development Tabs'

And finally there is an Action to set the value of the variable:

=if(vShowDev = 0, 1, 0)

The toggle on the screen looks inconspicuously like this:

All that is left then is to put the Conditional Show criteria on the correct sheets. The code for this is simply:

vShowDev = 1

Show Different Views Based On Variable Values

Another example of a show/hide toggle is where you want to swap between different charts or tables. Natively QlikView has the Auto-Minimise tick box and more recently the Container, but I am not a fan of using these. With a Conditional Show one object can be hidden and be replaced with a number of other objects.

To do a multi-way toggle I will set color variables up in the load script:

let vColHighlight = rgb(210, 255, 210);
let vColNoHighlight = rgb(255, 255, 255);

And default a display variable:

let vViewMode = 'Dashboard';

Text Areas are then required for each of the values you wish to set. Each text box simply has the legend of the view mode, and an Action to set the variable to the correct value:

The final step is to highlight which button is presently active. This is done by setting the Background Colour on each Text Object  to a dynamic colour with the following code:

if(vViewMode = 'Analysis', $(vColHighlight), $(vColNoHighlight))

With a bit of sizing and alignment the row of toggle buttons should look a bit like this:

Again, a simple Show Conditional expression is required on each chart to dictate under which heading it displays.   The code for this will be:

vViewMode = 'Analysis'

Other QlikView Button Examples

There are many, many more examples of where using Actions on Text Objects or Gauges can be useful. Selecting a field to analyse, changing some UI feature, linking it to an external site or anything else you can think of.

I have created an app with a few examples that you may want to use in your own applications. You can download this from the Shared QlikViews section of QlikCommunity, here: https://community.qlik.com/t5/Member-Articles/QlikView-App-At-The-Qlik-Of-A-Button/ta-p/1484152

And you can see the app in this YouTube video here:

The post QlikView Buttons – When, Why and How appeared first on .

The Best Report Tool?

The power and the beauty of QlikView lies in it’s associative engine and zero wait analytics capabilities.  It is in this that I think QlikView stands head and shoulders above other tools.  It is not entirely the case with the Report Writer though.

If you like spooling sheets of paper from your printers or sending hefty PDF attachments then it may be that you need to be looking for another tool.  If on the other hand you are already using the associative power of QlikView but need a hard copy of what you see on screen with better print resolution than a straight page print gives you, or you want to see all the rows from your table (not just what you can see without scrolling) then read on.

QlikView Report Overview

The basic premise of QlikView Reports is that you drag objects from your desktop app onto a page. To do this select Reports and then Edit Reports and follow the dialogues to add a report and edit it.  Position the window to one side of the screen so that you can drag objects from your app onto the report page.  Once saved and exited you can access your report from the Reports menu, at which point you will be presented with a standard print dialogue.  If your document is saved to Access Point, then the report can be called from there also.

This quick video shows the basics of creating reports.

More Advanced Features

There are also plenty of other features within QlikView Reports beyond what is shown in the video.

For example you can create a ‘band’ over a data item at both Report and Page level.  This means at a report level you can generate a set of pages for each Office (for example) and then have each page loop around another field, such as the Supplier.  Each report can have many pages added to it, and if you wanted each page could therefore have a different band on it.

Also useful is the multi-sheet setting on a page.  This should be checked if you want to include a table which will run over multiple pages.  Be careful placing tables in your report with a massive number of rows – on a single sheet page the text will print tiny and on a multi-sheet page lots of pages will be created – perhaps more than you expect.

You will also find most of the options you would expect to find in a report writer – such as headers and footers and the ability to go from portrait to landscape layout.  The way you place images in to headers and footers is a bit quirky and you will need a high-res version of any images as screen formatted images will print very small.  A bit of trial and error may be required here.

The Limitatons

One of the limitations of the tool is that at the point you print you can only have one set of selections in force (instead of different selections on each page – unless you use Set Analysis) and any Cycle groups will be in the state they are in on screen when you print.  This typically means you have to create clones of your on screen charts specifically for printing.  This approach does have the advantage though that you can adjust font sizes and settings (such as Show Sort Indicator and Show Selection Indicator) specifically for output to a page.  What I tend to do is create a Reports sheet in my app and on here have all text, charts and tables I want to include on Reports.  This sheet can then be hidden from users with a Calculation Condition.  Objects on this sheet can all be minimised as they will still appear normal on the page.

Once you start creating reports you will soon discover some of the frustrations with it.  Alignment and sizing is trickier than on screen.  Legends can mysteriously appear in a different place to where they do on the on screen counterpart of a chart (and even between print preview and printed page).  Also, objects can appear with different relative sizes to on the screen (a simple trick to resolving this is to multi select objects before dragging them to a report page).  Despite the limitations there is usually a way of achieving the desired results.

Conclusion

QlikView’s Reports are almost certainly the most maligned aspect of the product.  However, it may be the best route to get from your existing dashboard to something that prints reasonably well or is exported to a PDF.

We strongly recommend the use of a third party product like NPrinting for producing static output, but if your requirements are not too challenging you may find that the QlikView Report editor will fill your need.

The post QlikView Reports appeared first on .

So, how can this be avoided? Developing your own style and refining it takes months of using the tool.  There are however textbooks available (my personal recommendation being Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few) and dedicated blogs such as the ever excellent QVDesign Blog by Matthew Crowther.

This post however aims to give five key pointers to getting your design right.

Keep it Simple
One of the temptations when opening the QlikView box of toys is to get everything out and play.  I have seen awful examples of a developer ‘trying stuff out’ and then leaving it in a production app.  Classic misused features are Radar charts and animated dimensions – both are visually interesting but need to only be used in the right circumstances.  Even simple options, like 3D effects and multi-coloured bars can serve to hide meaning rather than amplify it.

Stick to a Theme
This point actually covers two bases.  First is ensuring that where possible there is as much consistency between objects and tabs as possible.  Use of the Linked Objects feature (added in QV10) helps in this, but consistency goes beyond this.  Use of QlikView theme files are also a must – ensure a theme is applied and also set as a default. This will ensure that the same fonts and colours are used throughout your app.  Theme files can be used for more than just skinning a whole document – but that is a topic for a future blog post.

Use the Right Object
This sounds obvious, but it is amazing how often I come across apps where this has been got wrong.  Apply the basic rules of data presentation and design here.  If you don’t know what these are then get a reference book or some training.  A classic mistake is the use of a line chart for non linear data. My favorite example though was use of gauges where the values did not fit in a specific range – the developer therefore calculated the upper bound as the current value plus n percent. This meant that as the selections changed the needle stayed static and just the small numbers around the edge changed value – classic!  No insight gained and much space wasted on the page.

Fast Change
A good way of providing a varied selections of visualisations, without blowing all of the screen space is to implement Fast Changes. For those who have not discovered these an icon in the caption bar allows a toggle of the chart type.  I tend to use these a lot for for showing raw values as well as a chart of those values.  Although this is a great feature, be wary. It is easy to slip into poor chart type choices by just selecting multiple types. Also you need to set all properties, such as font and alignment for each fast change type you select.  This leads nicely onto my final point….

Everything Matters
It is a phrase I have purloined from Panasonic adverts, but I think the sentiment is spot on and I use it a lot when talking about QlikView design.  As a developer or designer of QlikView apps you are crafting something that has to be both attractive and functional.  Users will likely spend large chunks of their working lives interacting with your offering – so you owe it to them to get it right.  I’ve already mentioned colours, alignment and font selection.  Other common slips are leaving redudant icons on caption bars (there is never, I believe, cause for maximize icons), work in progress objects left on the screen, misplaced or oversized objects causing excess scroll bars, sloppy data modelling or loading – the list goes on.  Some of these items I have covered in other blog posts, but all I will add here is to suggest you carefully consider each object you place in your app.  Everything Matters.

Design Best Practice Demonstration
This video demonstrates some of the techniques described above, showing how an amateur looking chart can be shown some TLC to get it looking more presentable.

You will no doubt develop your own style, that will not necessarily look anything like my own, but the key thing is that design is given the consideration it deserves.

The post QlikView Design appeared first on .

An Introduction to QlikView

Rather than a long description I have decided to put together a video by way of an introduction:

Whilst the document shown in the video does not have the polish on it that you might expect from a modern business intelligence tool I hope it serves to illustrate the basic functionality of the tool.

Previous posts and other videos on this site look at how data can be loaded into QlikView and then manipulated.  There are also live demonstrations of the product on the QlikView website, most notably and topically at this time the Global Games app.

If you want to take a look at the tool for yourself; the Personal Edition is freely downloadable from this link.

I use QlikView on a daily basis and am still frequently amazed by its functionality.  I hope that this post inspires those who have not tried it for themselves yet to give it a go.

The post What Is QlikView? appeared first on .

However, QlikView related videos are hardly a new thing, there are now a large number of videos on YouTube some created by QlikTech, others by enthusiasts and QlikView solution providers.

There are a number of tutorial videos that I have produced available on the Quick Intelligence web site.  I also maintain the Quintelligence YouTube channel – where I keep an eye out for the best QlikView related video content and bring it into one place.

Other channels worth subscribing to on YouTube include QlikTech’s own channel, which has videos related to their blog postings and various marketing efforts and also Erica Driver’s channel, which has more of the same.

The amount of video content out there seems to be growing.  This can only be a good thing providing more ways for people to discover what QlikView can do for them and for developers to find out how to deliver that.

The post Hey, Watch It! appeared first on .