Qlik Sense introduces the concept of storytelling within the application. The data story interface helps the user to collate all the important observations and insights from the application to create a convincing narrative and present it to the intended audience in the form of a slideshow.
As in the previous recipe, we will again make use of the Automotive.qvf Qlik Sense application.
To create a story, perform the following steps:
- Open the
Automotive.qvfapplication. - While you are still on the App overview page, click
on the toolbar. - Click on the
sign to create new story. - Add the story name as
Sales Overviewand description asA narrative of the overall sales for the company. - Click outside the description window to save the story.
Adding contents to a storyboard:
- Open the storyboard for "Sales Overview" by clicking on the thumbnail.
- The right side pane of the storyboard represents five libraries which serve as the source for the contents which we can use for our storyline:
- Click on the Snapshot library icon. This will display the list of snapshots we took in the earlier recipe:
- Drag and drop the Vehicle sales by region and Car sales by territory snapshot on the sheet.
- Click on the Text Library. Drag and drop the Title box on the sheet.
- Double click the Title box and add the title
Sales by Region and Territory. - Click on the Text Library. Drag and drop the Paragraph box on the sheet.
- Double click on the Paragraph box and add the following text:
AOME region has the highest number of total car sales while if we consider commercial vehicles, Americas leads the way.China is the biggest market for cars followed by United States. There is very little comparison amongst the volume of sales for european nations Italy France and United Kingdom.
- Click on the Shapes library. Drag and drop the
and 
shapes on the sheet. - Save the story by clicking on
on the toolbar. - The effective story interface should look like this:
-
The story can be played as a presentation by clicking on the
button on the left-hand side vertical pane.
The story with all the essential elements, namely the snapshots, commentary and the highlighters, conveys the essence of the data to the audience. The data added through the snapshots contains static point in time information. Since stories are native to Qlik Sense, there is no need to create separate PowerPoint files for presentations. Although with Qlik Sense version 2.1.1, one has the option to export the stories to PowerPoint so that they can be shared offline.
While working in the story Edit mode, click on any individual object. On clicking the object we will find two options highlighted on the top right-hand corner. The first one is 
for Replace snapshot and the other one is 
for Unlock the snapshot. Use the following steps to explore the Replace snapshot and Unlock the snapshot functionalities:
- Click on Replace snapshot.
- The following dropdown appears which lists all the snapshots captured for the original visualization. The snapshot in use is marked with a
:
- The user can replace the existing snapshot with a new one.
-
Alternatively, the user can click on the
button in the dropdown that opens the original sheet where the visualization resides. New snapshots can then be created using the live data. - Click on
button on the original sheet to return to the story. - Next, click on the button for visualization. This will unlock the snapshot and activate the edit
option. - Click on to change the basic properties of the object. The modified properties for the object are specific to the story. The object on the Qlik Sense sheet still has the original properties, as shown:
A Qlik Sense storyline can also have embedded sheets. This is particularly useful if we want to showcase the entire content of the sheet on the slide.