Generally, when you present your conclusion to a group of executives, your presentation competes for their time and attention with a lot of different things. Using your data to explain a story is powerful because stories have the following characteristics:
Using storytelling to present your data or insights can help you to do the following:
There is a lot of good literature around storytelling and data storytelling. The objective of this section is just present this Qlik Sense functionality but I would like to share my trick to prepare presentations. Usually, in our daily work, we need to prepare a presentation within a limited preparation time. Personally, I use a notepad (not a digital one) and I write down my outline in seven fundamental building blocks:
Qlik Sense Desktop has a great tool for data storytelling. To open a data story, click the Stories button and choose the Shipment delays impact story, as shown in this screenshot:
As you can see in the following screenshot, press the Play button to start the story:
The presentation mode has arrow buttons at the right and at the left, to go forward or backward in your presentation. When you present your insights, people will have questions about the data; by pressing the Go to sheet button, you can open the data application and show them the data, as illustrated in this screenshot:
To create a new story, you need to take some snapshots of your data visualizations. Go to the application, open a sheet, and press the camera button, marked by the arrow:
Now the charts are in snapshot mode and the visualizations are highlighted with a dotted line; you just need to click on the chart and Qlik Sense will take a snapshot that you will be able to use to create a story, as shown here:
Finally, we have some data snapshots we can use to create a new story. We have to go to the top area of the screen, press the stories button, and press the Create new story button:
Choose a name for the story and start creating it. To create your story, you have five main components:
The following screenshot shows the five components:
Now you can create a sheet using these components just by dragging and dropping the components into the sheet.
We've added a blank slide and we've added charts, effects, text, and images but we can also add live slides by embedding a sheet into a slide. In the bottom left area, click the plus sign to add a new slide. There are three types of slides:
These slides are illustrated in the following screenshot:
Select Sheet left-aligned or Sheet and choose a sheet for your slide. You will get a blank sheet into which you can drag and drop components, as well as customizing them according to your preference. The following screenshot shows a 360 Analysis sheet that has been customized:
The Go to Sheet button and the inclusion of a live sheet in a slide give the opportunity to bring your story to life and handle audience questions.