Mats Severin brings the lowdown on what’s new in the Qlik Cloud June 2022 release…
Refresh dataset metadata in Catalog
A new refresh option in the catalog indicates when dataset metadata has changed from the last known state. This allows users to choose when to refresh the derived metadata, and know how up-to-date the metadata are. When a change of a dataset is detected, the refresh icon is green. If no changes are detected and metadata is up-to-date, the refresh icon will appear grey.
Improved filtering in Catalog
Users can now order their search in the Catalog to show the most Recently used content first. This new sort option allows you to access the content you use most frequently.
Connection-based datasets in Catalog
Catalog can now register data that is stored in relational databases such as Oracle, SQL Server and Snowflake. Data admins can add, manage, select, and distribute these additional content types, increasing the reusability, visibility and governance of the data. It also simplifies data usage as data consumers no longer need to directly connect with and browse through these data sources. Instead, they can browse for this type of data within the catalog in Qlik Cloud.
Improved enterprise access control
You can now share apps with users who are not members of a shared or managed space. Sharing an app to a non-member gives the selected user access to only that resource in the space. This improvement will reduce administration, simplify management of the space and facilitate collaboration with more users and groups. To share an app, click on an app’s More Actions menu, select Share and then add the user.
App performance evaluation now includes public sheet performance
Performance evaluation improvements now present public sheet performance measurements as part of the evaluation. App developers can now see which sheets are holding back the initial load time of an app as well as subsequent loads when sheet content should typically be cached. There is also an option to drill down to the top 5 slowest objects per sheet.
Furthermore, enhancements have been made when measuring un-cached response times for objects in isolation. Improved isolation reduces inter-object caching for better fairness when comparing and ranking objects based on response times.
Viewing notes related to charts
Users can now see other notes related to a specific chart simply by right-clicking on the chart and select the option Notes > Find notes related to this chart. If another note contains a snapshot of the chart, it will show in a list of related notes. This will improve collaboration as users can quickly identify and access other notes related to the same charts.
New connectors and templates in Application Automation
Application Automation has added two new connectors and updated an existing connector, as well as adding four new templates.
Connectors
- Qlik Enterprise Manager (new) — Build an automation to connect with Qlik Enterprise Manager, the management interface for Qlik Data Integration that helps you design, execute, and monitor Qlik Replicate and Qlik Compose tasks across large business landscapes.
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage (new) — New native cloud storage blocks provide connections to the Microsoft Azure Blob Storage platform. Blobs are encrypted storage solutions that Microsoft offers to store unstructured data.
- Qlik Cloud Services (updated) — New blocks have been added under the tag Automations. Use the new blocks to run a health check on automation usage in your organisation, report on connector usage in a tenant, and automation management across your tenant. These blocks do not include webhooks.
Templates
Three new Alerting templates and one new Amazon S3 template.
- Alert app owners about apps without reloads in the past X days — App owners receive a list of apps that have not been reloaded in a specified number of days, or apps that have been created but not reloaded.
- Alert app owners about apps that have not been accessed in the last 28 days — App owners receive a list of apps that have not been opened in the last 28 days.
- Alert app owners and tenant admins about orphaned data connections — Data connection owners receive a notification about orphaned data connections when the associated space has been deleted. Tenant admins receive notifications about data connections that have been orphaned because the data connection owner has been deleted.
- Store a straight table as a CSV file on Amazon S3, stores a straight table from a Qlik Sense app to a CSV file on Amazon S3.
Updates to the Application Automation canvas
New improvements in the Application Automation canvas provide improved navigation by better zoom control and the ability to pan the automation instead of horizontal or vertical scrolling. Furthermore, enhancements to the design of blocks, the block library, and the block configuration pane has been made. Also, a new toolbar at the top of the canvas provides quick access to change automation settings, reposition and zoom, undo and redo, save, run, and view the output.
Qlik Cloud Reporting and PDF improvements
Improvements to subscriptions, reports, and PDF downloads allow you to further customise, define, and enhance report outputs. Improvements include:
• Support for custom themes in PDFs.
• Improved look and feel with margin minimums and higher resolution PDFs.
• Fixed-size delivery for PDF report outputs.
Office 365 SharePoint Metadata Connector supports new tables in Data Manager
The Office 365 SharePoint Metadata connector has been updated to support access to Microsoft SharePoint lists and views. The following new tables can now be loaded in the Data manager:
• View
• ItemsFromList
Assign a Server-Side Encryption (SSE) header value to Amazon S3 connector
The Amazon S3 connector now has an additional option to assign an SSE header value during authentication. This can be used with the STORE command only.
Hybrid Data Delivery: Land data to Google Cloud BigQuery
The Hybrid Data Delivery Service now lets you land SaaS application data from cloud data sources directly to Google Cloud BigQuery.
Update: Important change to JWT authorisation capabilities with tenants
Customers with existing JWT (JSON Web Token) configurations now have until July 19, 2022, to update their JWT token creation code with two new attributes. These attributes were introduced to enhance the security and use of JWTs sent to Qlik Cloud tenants with configured JWT identity provider configurations. After July 18, 2022, those using JWT login methods without these additional attributes will be denied access.
New connectors for Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS – Government (US)
Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS – Government (US) users have additional Microsoft data sources to access government services. US Government data sources are named according to the environment they connect to and include the following connectors:
- Azure Storage GCC High
- Office 365 SharePoint GCC High
- OneDrive GCC High
- Azure Storage Metadata GCC High
- Office 365 SharePoint Metadata GCC High
- OneDrive Metadata GCC High
- Outlook 365 GCC High
Reflection of Qlik Cloud June 2022
Qlik is building on the strong release month of May with an even longer list of updates in June. This month has primarily seen a focus on improvements to the Data Catalog and connectivity across multiple areas of the platform. Not to forget Application Automation which keeps rolling out new connectors and user templates.
To start with the Data Catalog, which is the main user interface for structuring all types of content in Qlik Cloud, a few new features have been introduced including the new refresh metadata option for datasets and a new sort option when filtering content.
Another new feature in the Data Catalog, connection-based datasets, will make it possible to display available datasets directly from relational data sources, including SQL server, Oracle and Snowflake, and make these browsable from the Catalog rather than needing to go into the data connection itself to preview and look for data. Despite looking similarly to other dataset items in the Catalog, connection-based datasets are connections to the data source, and could be seen as a reference to the data rather than a loaded and stored dataset.
Connectivity improvements have been made across different areas of the platform. From improvements to the SharePoint Metadata connector in Data Manager and more authentication options in the Amazon S3 connector, to the ability to land external SaaS data into Google Cloud BigQuery using the Hybrid Data Delivery service. Speaking of connectivity, Application Automation now has new connectors to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage and Qlik’s very own Qlik Enterprise Manager.
Lastly, worth highlighting is the new option to grant access to a specific app for a non-member of a space, rather than adding them as a member with access to all apps in the entire space. This will greatly simplify management of space and app access.
Topic: Data analytics
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