Once you have loaded the data into Qlik Sense, it is time to create the visualizations in the graphical user interface. A basic set of sheets and visualizations should normally be supplied by the application developer, and additional ones can be created by the users themselves.
Perform the following steps to create a sheet:
Perform the following steps to add visualizations:
The Assets panel shows object types, but if you look carefully, you will see that there are three tabs at its top: one for object types, one for fields, and one for the predefined library entities. So, if you click on the middle icon, you will see a list of fields that can be used as dimensions or as measures.
You can now drag and drop fields onto the bar chart, thereby creating the dimension and the measure.
A dimension is a field with discrete values, for example customer, product, or month. A chart will create one number per dimensional value; hence, a bar chart will create one bar per distinct value in the chosen field.
A measure is usually a number, for example, sum of sales or number of orders, and this will constitute the height of the bars.
When you drag a field onto the empty bar chart, Qlik Sense will ask you what you want to do with this field. You can add it (as a dimension), or you can use it inside an aggregation function (Sum()
, Count()
, or Min()
) to form a measure.
When you have added both dimension and measure, the bar chart will appear as shown in the next screenshot. To the right, you will have the properties of the bar chart, where you can set its properties: the sort order, the colors, and so on. You can also define the dimension and the measure directly in the chart properties.
Clicking on the Save button in Qlik Sense Desktop will save the application as a file with the extension .qvf
in the application folder (C:Users<user>DocumentsQlikSenseApps
). The file contains both data and script and it can be imported to other Qlik Sense installations. However, you may need to adjust the script so that it runs from the new location.
In the server version of Qlik Sense, you don't have a Save button. The changes are saved automatically.
A new exciting feature in Qlik Sense is storytelling. Storytelling is basically a presentation mode where you can first prepare a presentation—like a slide show—and then present it. Storytelling is also an excellent way to present an application and create its overview.
When you create an application, you can of course also create a story that can be used by anyone who uses the application. However, we believe that the more common use case is that stories will be created not by the application developer, but rather by contributors—power users who choose to add elements to the application. Hence, storytelling is described in Chapter 6, Contributing to Data Discovery.