Our latest blog comes from Mats Severin with a guide to all the latest features in the Qlik Sense SaaS September 2021 release…
The latest addition to the data integration platform is a game-changer in how you can use Qlik Sense SaaS and the most exciting news of the month. Qlik Application Automation provides a visual interface with a no-code approach and lets you quickly drag-and-drop automated business workflow activities that streamline your data and analytics processes. The service includes connectivity to market leading SaaS applications, as well as a native integration to Qlik Cloud Services which lets you communicate with Qlik apps and other content on your tenant. Examples of use cases include task-chaining, triggering alerts, responding to events, streamlining administration and development, and ultimately drive action. Spending less time programming back-end integration tasks leaves more time for analysis and insight.
Another new addition is the ability to analyse the origin and data lineage of your data. Impact analysis allows certain users to see the data flow of apps and data in a visual interface, including original sources and resulting outputs. Data admins can use the analysis to improve operational efficiency. App developers can gain trust and a better understanding of the data origins by viewing which applications use what data sets, and identify new information derived from an existing data set.
The data flows are visualised in the lineage graph. Open the lineage graph by clicking on an app or a dataset, and then selecting Impact analysis. You can also access the lineage graph from the Details section of a dataset.
Insight Advisor Discovery provides an improved Insight Advisor in-app experience, allowing users to easily auto-generate the most relevant analyses and insights from their data. There are two new features added to facilitate the use and navigation of the Insight Advisor:
1. Discovery button in Sheet view
2. Ask Insight Advisor search box in Sheet view
Custom analyses allow you to create custom responses for specific phrases in Insight Advisor. You can define the analysis that will be returned, such as comparison, ranking, and clustering, using specified input fields. This helps you control the auto-generated analytics the users receive and create preferred analyses. You can define the terms in different languages for a custom analysis. As of this writing, supported languages include English, French, Russian, and Spanish.
Subscriptions to charts and sheets can now be shared with up to 20 other Qlik Sense SaaS users. Report subscriptions let you schedule recurring emails containing a PDF report of a sheet or a chart with the latest data delivered to your inbox.
Users can now directly edit master items from the properties panel in a visualisation. This eliminates the prior need to navigate to the master items library in the assets panel to make changes.
The latest September release is clearly outshined by the new Application Automation capability which will expand the use of Qlik Sense SaaS and take the cloud experience to a whole new level. Integration with external SaaS applications and automation of manual tasks will put more focus on the analytics and less on the administration. The other new feature, Impact Analysis, is much welcomed news from an app developer perspective. An app’s data lineage is just a click away and no longer a black box that needs manual investigation or third-party software in order to be visualised.
Besides these brand new features, we see a continued effort to improve the augmented analytics experience and self-service capabilities. Improvements to the Insight Advisor and the expanded capacity of the report subscriptions will enhance the user experience and allow users to quickly receive insights from their data.