So, you've built a Qlik Sense Desktop app and you want to share it with others, either colleagues or friends, so you can find insights together. The cloud is the best way to do that, and doing so is built directly into Qlik Sense.
Qlik Sense isn't just for work, playing with data can be fun too. In this chapter, I will share a Qlik Sense app exploring UK music singles chart data going back to 1952.
To upload an app, you first need to log on to Qlik Sense Cloud on the Web. From the Qlik Sense hub, there are two ways to open Qlik Sense Cloud: either by clicking on the cloud image in the top-right corner of the window or by right-clicking on the app itself. Both the actions will take you to the Qlik Sense Cloud Hub in a browser. At this point, if you haven't done so already, you'll have to register.
The following screenshot shows the option for in-built cloud uploading:
Options to upload to Qlik Sense Cloud from the desktop hub
As you'll see when you log in, Qlik Sense Cloud is intentionally simple, presenting just a few options. The actions you can take are:
- Uploading Qlik Sense apps
- Uploading personal data files and creating apps directly in the cloud
- Sharing apps with up to five people
- Managing your Qlik Cloud profile
The following screenshot shows the Qlik Sense Cloud Hub:
Qlik Sense Cloud Hub options
Uploading an app you have built on the desktop is simple. Click on New app, navigate to the file in the directory, and import. The uploaded QVF file brings the data model, sheets, and stories with it to the cloud for sharing. Note that the source data that was loaded into the app is not uploaded to Qlik Sense Cloud. This has implications for maintaining the app—more on this in a later section.
In the following screenshot, you can see the music chart app after upload. You'll notice that when uploaded, the app appears with the default thumbnail picture (rather than the custom image). Qlik Sense Cloud Hub does not currently support custom thumbnail images.
While not visible in the cloud hub, within the cloud app's information pane, you can show the custom image by selecting it from the media library. The media library is imported on upload, and includes thumbnails and any graphic files you've added to stories in the desktop app:
After the upload, you can use the app in exactly the same way as if it was running on a desktop. There's no difference; it's just Qlik Sense running on a server hosted by Qlik in the cloud. Modifications to the app can still be made using the Edit button, but only when the app is in the My personal cloud stream (more on this later).
Note that, unless you selected the publish option at upload, only you can see it—it's not been shared with anyone else yet.
Qlik Sense apps can also be created directly in Qlik Sense Cloud. The only difference in doing so is that data must first be loaded into the My personal data files folder on the Qlik Sense Cloud Hub in order to be available for loading.
Qlik Sense Cloud is designed to enable people to share apps. To do this, a cloud app needs to be published, moving it from the My personal cloud stream to the My shared cloud stream. To do so, right-click on the app icon in the cloud hub and select Publish to shared cloud, as shown in the following screenshot:
Once published, you can invite up to five people to access Qlik Sense apps in your shared cloud stream. Note that anyone you share it with will be able to see all the apps you have published. To do so, click on share and enter their e-mail address as shown in the following screenshot. When people accept the invitation to share and register on Qlik Sense Cloud, they appear as followers at the bottom of the My shared cloud stream:
By selecting the Notification center (in-tray icon), you can see who's viewed apps and other alerts about Qlik Sense Cloud, as shown in the following screenshot:
People that you share apps with can use those apps, making selections, and so on, but they cannot share them with others or modify them. You can see in the following screenshot (from my follower Sarah's Mac) that there is no edit pen icon on the shared app:
Some thought needs to go into maintaining apps in Qlik Sense Cloud:
- Just as with Qlik Sense Server, in Qlik Sense Cloud, when an app has been published to a shared stream, it can no longer be modified. To make changes, it must be unpublished. When this happens, your followers will no longer be able to see the app, until you decide to publish it again.
- For uploaded apps, rather than those created in the cloud, it's important to note that any modifications made to the cloud version of an app (for example, adding new sheets, and so on) will not be reflected in the original Desktop version. The simplest way to deal with this is to download the Cloud version to the Desktop, by right-clicking on the app in the Qlik Sense Cloud Hub. Ideally, you should decide which version (Cloud or Desktop) is to be the master on uploading in order to avoid version management issues.
If there are changes to the source data that need reflecting in a Qlik Sense Cloud app, there are differences depending on how the cloud app was created.
- If the app was built directly in Qlik Sense Cloud using uploaded data sources, then the easiest approach is to take down the data, using the Remove from cloud right-click option, and then upload the new dataset before reloading. If the data file has the same name and structure, the reload will work with no problems.
- If the app was uploaded directly from the desktop, then it is a little more complex, as the source data will not be in the cloud. In this case, there are two options:
- Remove the app from the cloud, reload the changed data on the desktop, and re-upload the app.
- Upload the changed data to the My personal data files space on Qlik Sense Cloud and then modify the load script. The file path in the load script will need to be amended so that each section points to the uploaded data files, which reads
lib://<user>/<file>.