The Qlik Sense SaaS October 2021 release is here and Mats Severin breaks down all the latest features…
Introducing Qlik Forts
Qlik Forts is a brand new hybrid solution that securely extends Qlik Sense SaaS capabilities to your data environment, whether that’s on-premises, in a private datacentre or a public cloud. Qlik Forts combines the convenience of SaaS with the flexibility of a hybrid deployment that supports local data regulatory requirements and investments in existing data infrastructure.
Qlik Forts are client-hosted virtual machines that are located together with the customer’s local data. The Qlik Cloud tenant is hosted by Qlik, the forts are hosted by the customer, but Qlik maintains both the tenant and the Forts. This allows organisations to overcome barriers of entry to the cloud, such as data sovereignty, data governance rules and migration costs, but still utilise the Qlik Sense SaaS capabilities. Qlik Cloud and Forts work together as a single supported solution across multiple clouds. Users get a seamless experience and a single point of entry, so access to cloud analytics can easily scale across the organisation, regardless of location. You can learn more about Forts in our recent blog post here.
Advanced Analytics Integration
Another new capability in Qlik Sense SaaS is the ability to connect to advanced analytics sources. The Advanced Analytics integration supports sending and receiving calculations from data science and machine learning platforms. Direct data exchange with third-party data engines delivers calculations with a few clicks, allowing you to evaluate the results in real-time. The Advanced Analytics integration includes standard connectivity to Amazon Sagemaker, Amazon Comprehend, Azure ML, DataRobot, and a general connector that allows you to connect to custom solutions and other machine learning platforms.
New support for landing data in Snowflake
Hybrid Data Delivery is a Qlik Cloud Data service that continuously loads and catalogues on-premises data to cloud destinations in near real-time for downstream analytics projects. The first step of the data service is to transfer the data to a landing area. Previously, only Amazon S3 buckets were supported. Now, Snowflake destinations on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are supported.
Last evaluation alert condition
Users can now create alerts that compare a measure or dimension to the previous evaluation. For example, you will only be alerted when a KPI changes relatively to the last time it was evaluated. This will eliminate the same alerts triggering for each reload when no change has occurred since the previous alert.
Comparing app performance evaluations
Performance evaluation lets you run evaluations as you develop an app and provides insights on which performance metrics to focus on when optimising app performance. The performance evaluation feature now includes the option to compare evaluation results between versions of an app. This new feature helps app developers compare changes and make informed decisions as they optimise app performance before publishing the app.
Layered label orientation in charts
The new layered label orientation for chart labels helps users to utilise space better and allows more room for the graph.
Show all value labels in line chart
The line graph data value labels have been enhanced with a new ‘All’ option, which forces the value labels to always remain visible. Additionally, the ‘Auto’ option, which automatically shows value labels based on the space available, has been improved to display more labels.
Chart in tooltip
Further customisation of tooltips is now available in the properties panel with the ability to embed a single master visualisation inside the tooltip. This allows users to visualise a chart overview in the tooltip which inherits the selected dimension value. Tooltips display when you hover over a visualisation.
New tables supported with the GitHub connector
The GitHub data connector now supports the tables: Statuses and StatusHistory.
New screen reader support
Qlik Sense now supports the NVDA screen reader for Microsoft Windows and Google Chrome. The NVDA screen reader is a third-party product and users need to obtain their own license for the screen reader.
Nebula extensions for Qlik Sense
nebula.js is a collection of JavaScript libraries that helps developers build and integrate visualisations on top of Qlik’s Associative Engine. With this update, developers can generate a nebula visualisation that can be used as an extension in Qlik Sense. This also allows developers to generate a legacy extension to run in Qlik Sense before 2020.
Reflection of Qlik Sense SaaS October 2021
The October release does not disappoint and Qlik continues to deliver new functionality in the cloud. First of all, the introduction of Qlik Forts will reduce the barriers of entry to the cloud, extending the Qlik Sense SaaS capabilities to an organisation’s local data environment, protecting data privacy but at the same time allowing access to Qlik-hosted cloud analytics across the organisation, regardless of location.
Secondly, the introduction of the Advanced Analytics connectors takes Qlik Sense SaaS one step closer to the realm of machine learning and AI, making it possible to connect to third-party platforms for advanced calculations and predictive analytics. Examples include connecting to predictive analytics models in Amazon Sagemaker, Azure ML and DataRobot, as well as text analyses in Amazon Comprehend, such as sentiment analysis and entity recognition.
Besides these new services, further enhancements have been made to assist app development. Improvements in configuring data alerting, evaluating app performance and customising visualisations will assist app developers in fine-tuning the analytics experience.
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