Business Intelligence (BI) ja analytiikan työväline valinnoissa nousee esiin monia toistuvia kysymyksiä, joista tässä muutamia avainsanoja:

• erot tuotteiden ja teknologioiden välillä
• hinnoittelumallit
• käytettävyys
• onnistuuko tilannekuvan luominen
• entä tarkemmat tiedot esitystavat ja linkitykset tietojen välillä
• mitä tietoja ja taitoja tarvitaan
• eri lähteiden tietojen yhdistelyt
• visualisointi ja esitystapa mahdollisuudet
• soveltuuko koko organisaatiolle.
• onnistuuko edistyksellisen analytiikan integraatiot

Kysymykset ym. aihealueilla ovat todella oikeutettuja kun ajattelee vallitsevaa kehitystä ja muutosta BI ja analytiikan saralla. Työväline valintaan ja pohdintoihin vaikuttaa selkeästi myös sen hetkinen BI hyödyntämisen maturiteetti.

“Mitkä ovat BI strategiamme oleelliset vaatimukset työväline valinnalle?”

BI työvälineiden tulee sopeutua valittuun BI strategiaan. Kaikkien markkinoilla olevien BI työvälineiden osalta tässä sopeutumisessa tehdään varmasti kompromisseja.

Lähtökohta on miettiä ne oleelliset strategiaa ja lisäarvoa tukevat vaatimukset. Mieti sitten mikä on se monipuolinen ja jatkossakin tarpeisiin skaalautuva työväline. Miten..?

Jotta pääset työväline valintaprosessissa alkuun suosittelen testikäyttö menettelyä. Kun testaat raportointi sovellusta omalla datalla havainnollistat parhaiten tuotteen kyvykkyyden.

Alla hieman pohdiskelua omin sanoin testikäyttö ajatusmaailmasta.

Seeing Is Believing (SiB) tai Proof of Concept (PoC)

SiB tai PoC testikäyttö lähtee pohdinnoista, että sille asetetaan selkeä rajattu laajuus aloituspalaverissa. Eli pitää ymmärtää mitä testikäytöllä haetaan. Älä kurota kaikkea taivaalta vaan rajaa selkeä havainnollinen otos. Useasti aloituspalaverin jälkeen asennetaan testikäyttöpalvelin sovelluksen julkaisua varten.

On syntynyt ensimmäiset konkreettiset tuotokset. Mahtavaa…

* informaatiot ja toiminnallisuudet vaatimuslista (Scope)

* Tekninen asennettu toiminta ympäristö. (Qliksense palvelimet, toiminta valmiina)

Toteutusjakson on hyvä olla tiivis vuorovaikutteinen kehitysjakso. Siinä ovat osallisina tiedon omistajina busineksen edustajat ja teknisten vaatimusten osalta tietohallinnon edustajia. Toteutusjakso vaihtelee ajallisesti n. 2-5 päivän välillä.   

Kehitystyön valmistuttua pidetään testikäytön aloituspalaveri. Tässä palaverissa esitellään kehitystyön tulos ja selkeytetään testikäytön tavoitteet ja vastuut.  

Vaihe tuottaa raportointisovelluksen testattavaksi. Samalla Qliksense käyttö ja mahdollisuudet alkavat avartua testikäyttö työryhmälle.

Testikäyttöjakson aikana testaajat peilaavat tehtyä sovellusta alussa annettuihin vaatimuksiin ja mm. käytettävyyteen. Testijakso kestää ajallisesti n. 2-3 viikkoa.  

Testijakso päättyy päätöspalaveriin missä keskustellaan kokemuksia ja annetaan mahdollisesti palautetta.

“Aseta tavoite niin, että tuotos on jotain mikä mahdollista ottaa käyttöön testikäytön  jälkeen”

Hyvä testikäyttö

• kertoo työvälineen perustoiminnallisuudet
• kertoo myös mahdollisuudet
• vastaa esitettyihin vaatimuksiin
• tuottaa hyvän käyttökokemuksen ja siistin visuaalisen ulkoasun

Edut ja hyödyt:

• Tuote evaluoinnin pienet kustannukset
• nopeasti tuotoksia
• tutustu Qlik teknologiaan omalla datalla
• koe mahdollisuudet
• näe esitystapa ja toiminnallisuus mahdollisuudet

“Miten jatkaa tästä eteenpäin…ketterästi edelleen!”

We cannot avoid seeing the importance of data today regardless if it is private or business data. How do we read, create or communicate the data as information is another question.

This is very interesting topic to look closer.

“Data literacy is a journey, one that individuals and organizations are starting to attack head on” – Qlik

Data Literacy books recommendations

by @JordanMorrow

• Endurance Shackletons’ Incredible Voyage
• Everybody Lies ( Big data, new data, and what the internet can tell us about who we really are)

Data literacy videos:

• Qlik Data Literacy Programme

(Updated 20th June 2018, will be updated soon)

Forewords

Qlik Qonnections this year will be very interesting. Some early thoughts why so..

• I am sure there will be very exciting new products releases
• TeamQlik has a new CEO Mike Capone (read: how Mike outlines his business strategy)
• Qlik Community is stronger than ever
• Qlik positioned in leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for analytics and business intelligence platforms for eighth consecutive year (Read more)

Invite from Mike Capone:

Introducing KeyNote speakers – Dubner & Levitt

 

What I expect to see at #Qonnections are:

• What is a Big Data Indexing’s (BDI) roadmap. This is very interesting and important subject due increasing amount of data.
• Cognitive engine and advanced analytics and how these topics are in Qlik’s Roadmap.
• Data Literacy: How to approach and understand data. How to present it in so that it’s understandable to everyone.
• What are an user interface new additions and functionalities in Qlik Sense.
• What are trends in 2018 (2019)
• Augmented Intelligence – how technology and people works together in a best possible way.

 

Story will be updated soon..

Here are listed QlikSense main release updates since June 2017 release. Qlik will release QlikSense updates five times a year.

 

Precedent based learning

• Machine Learning with precedent/application learning capabilities

Insight advisor light authoring

• Users change the suggested visualizations and analytics offered by the cognitive engine

Alternate states

• Create visualizations for comparative analysis based on a state other than the default selection state
• make different selections on the same dimension and compare them in a single visualization, or in two or more visualizations side by side

Exposed set analysis

• Easier for developers to create expressions with the correct set analysis syntax

Single selection in fields

• To enable the “always one selected value” for a particular field

Fully supported Dashboard Extension bundle

• extension bundle can be installed alongside Qlik Sense and are fully supported by Qlik
• Can choose to opt out of this bundle option
• The Dashboard bundle includes
  • Date range picker
  • Navigation button
  • On-Demand reporting
  • Tabbed container
  • Show/hide container
  • Variable input

Sharable Qlik Sense chart links

• Share chart links with custom selection states
• Currently available only in Qlik Cloud Services and Qlik Sense Enterprise for elastic deployments

New map chart layer

• A new map chart layer
• Displaying pie or bar charts on top of a map to illustrate distribution of values of multiples types

Improved pie chart

• Support a second measure to display multiple values in the outer radius

Further advancements in tile map services

• Advancements in tile map services, such as Bing Maps, are now supported by the map chart background layer

Import Export App enhancements

• Ability to import and export apps with or without data out of the QMC

Multi-Cloud Developments

• Multi-cloud offering now offers simplified configuration options using self-signed JSON Web Tokens (JWTs)

 

 

Insight Advisor

• Extended to all users of Qlik Sense apps
• Search and generate insights on master items

Visualizations

• Show or hide columns in a pivot table based on a formula
• Customize master measure items with color scales or gradients

Application management and customization

• Developers can disable responsive layout for sheets and set a custom size in pixels. (not supported in mobile device mode)
• Default bookmark for an app
•  Improved control over Qlik Sense when using devices that support touch and mouse input events

Mapping

• Density layer (multi-color gradient map background)
• Optimize performance when browsing dense maps with pixel zoom.
• Default colors for added layers.
• KML files with geographic line data (load and render)
• Manage field labels

Expression editor enhancements

• Direct links are provided to the Qlik Sense help page from expression functions.
• Improved categorization of functions.
• Improved search makes it easier to find field names, functions and variables.

Qlik Connectors

• Native connectivity to MS Azure QSL DB
• Jira connector
• QlikODBC Connector (Enhanced security for LDAP authentication)

Mobile

• Access to Qlik Sense Enterprise is now supported in AirWatch EMM (Enterprise Mobile Management) (Safari and Chrome or WMvare browsers)

Back end management

• Multiple apps can be moved between streams in the QMC
• Open source front end framework upgraded to version 1.6.9

Insight Advisor

• Auto-generates and suggest best insights for user
• Auto-generates visualization and analytics
• Add auto-generated insight directly to sheets

Accelerated Self Service

• Automated chart generation based on data
• Alternative chart suggestion to user to consider
• Improvements to workflows and properties

Advanced authoring and publishing

• Scrollable sheets
• Resizable sheets
• Expression editor improvements
• Expression labels for dynamic naming of charts, visualization and sheets
• Direct editing Master Items
• Self Service publishing in the Qlik Sense Hub

Mapping

• New line layer

Qlik Sense Hub

• Dedicated section to published apps

Connectors available at ODBC data connectivity package

• MongoDB
• Presto
• Apache Spark
• Apache Phoenix
• Apache Drill

File connector filtering option

Accessibility improvements

• Keyboard based navigation
  • Select sheets and objects
  • Selection in table
  • Navigate forward and back
  • Navigate the hub
• Chart to table flipping

Multi cloud cababilities

• Use Qlik Cloud or Public Cloud for consumption
• New hub experience
• Single license
• Single login
• Scale with Linux Containers

Accelerated self-service with Qlik Sense chart suggestions

• Easier to create a visualization by allowing you to simply drag and drop fields onto your sheets. Chart suggestions are created using the Cognitive Engine in Qlik, which leverages insights from the data loaded and combines them with best practices for data visualization

Publishing an app from the hub

• Publish an app that you have created to any stream for which you have publish access.

Improvements based on customers feedback

• Grid size of an app sheet can now be customized with three different sizes: small, medium or large.
• You can now set custom abbreviations in the load script. For example, you can choose to use Billions instead of G.
• When clicking the Edit button of a Linked visualization, a new shortcut redirects you to editing the Master visualization item.
• New keyboard shortcuts for selection back/forward have been added.

Multi-layer maps

• Support for multiple layers.
• Labels for point layers and area layers.
• Quick look up of countries, divisions, cities, postal code areas.
• No fixed upper limit of number of objects.
• Circle select with distance measure.
• Drill down support.
• Layer control, zoom limit and draw order.
• English or local name in the background map.

Keyboard navigation support for Qlik Sense hub

• Qlik Sense hub now supports keyboard navigation and shortcuts

Linking Qlik Sense Mobile to third-party applications

• Interact with third party mobile applications through a custom generated URL (deep link). The link can be embedded within the third party mobile application, with appropriate selections and filters

Deployment improvement

• It is no longer necessary to use port 4244 as the authentication port. If you are using SSL to protect your environment, you can use port 443 as an external facing port for the Qlik Sense Proxy service (QPS).

Per-app VPN mode for Qlik Sense Mobile

• Qlik Sense Mobile now works in a per-app VPN mode with the appropriate VMware Workspace ONE tunnel components

Allocations for new license types

• Professional and Analyzer license types can now configure the allocation of these licenses in the QMC

Analytic connections improvement

• Administrators have the ability to add, remove, and reconfigure Analytic connections without additional restarts of any service becoming required for the Analytic connections to function

Enable anonymous users to export data

• Anonymous users can print and export data

 

More info: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense/April2018/Content/WhatsNew/What-is-new-Apr2018.htm

Dynamically generated queries to web sources in scripts

Loading a table from an analytic connection

• Return a full table in a single request to an analytic connection from the data load script, using the new Extension clause of Load

Simplify data preparation with recommended associations

• Use recommended associations to see possible associations between tables.

Styling an app with custom themes

• Custom themes to style an app on a global or granular basis:
  • Change colors of background and individual chart elements.
  • Define color palettes and color gradients.
  • Specify font sizes and font color.

On-demand App Generation

• Create On-demand App Generation (ODAG) solutions with support for anonymous usage. This adds capabilities for external facing websites and OEM scenarios

SSO with Microsoft SQL Server

• Single connection to Microsoft SQL Server that can be shared across a number of different users

 

Keyboard navigation in Qlik Sense apps

• Navigation is supported both within the app overview page and within the Qlik Sense toolbar

Details dialog in Data manager

• Enables you to easily see the source of a table or field, the current changes that have been made, and the sequence in which the changes have been applied.

Add data manually

•  Manually enter data in Add data in Data manager

Additional functions for calculated fields

Visualization improvements

• Scroll horizontally in a table
• Control the bubble size and add jittering of data points in a distribution plot
• Expression to set the color of a box plot or a distribution plot.
• Labels in a combo chart.
• Expression as the name of a sheet.
• Customize the message that is displayed when a calculation condition is not met.
• Add and refresh data in the sheet editor, without needing to go to the data manager.

New ODBC connectors

• Amazon Redshift
• Google BigQuery

SAML single logout

 

More in detail at: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense/November2017/Content/WhatsNew/What-is-new-Nov2017.htm

 

Sequential operations in Data manager

• Single data profiling card transformation on a single field, you can now use the data profiling cards, concatenation, calculated fields, and unpivoting data together.

Recent colors in color picker

• The color picker in Qlik Sense now displays the five most recent colors selected in Qlik Sense

Expression Driven Labels

• Provides the ability to use expressions in labels for dimensions and measures in property pane. E.g. This allows you to add dynamically calculated values into the labels on your charts.

Navigation and usability improvements to Data manager

New visualization:

• Waterfall chart
• Pivot Table Improvements

Ease-of-use enhancements to on-demand apps

Qlik Sense Mobile app

Centralized logging

• All nodes now have direct access to a common database and file system.

More in detail at: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense/September2017/Content/WhatsNew/What-is-new-Sept2017.htm

New chart types and color options

• Box Plot
• Distribution plot
• Histogram

Assigníng colors to master items

Assigning colors to master dimension values

Enhanced data preparation

• Replace
• Set nulls
• Order
• Split
• Bucket

On-demand apps for big data

Advanced analytics integration

• R and Python (SSE)

Three new monitoring apps

• Log Monitor
• Reloads Monitor
• Sessions Monitor

More in detail at: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense/June2017/Content/WhatsNew/What-is-new-June2017.htm

A very common dilemma (still) today is that we see our business from yesterday to today.  More often a tomorrow aspect is not available. Even though all technical capabilities to forecast “tomorrow” (future) are possible. Not with 100 % certainty but close enough.

Why advanced Analytics Integration (AAI) is still a myth

I have seen and heard great examples of use of AAI. Some companies may have hundreds of data scientists analyzing, explaining or preparing data. But many don’t use it. Why?

Reasons are something like;

• Not enough understanding what it really means
• No support, sponsorship from top management
• Thoughts that data quality is not well enough
• There are are too many data sources to integrate
• Not understanding what it technically really means
• Even basic reporting and analytics are not finalized

People normally are curious to know what will happen in future and then they wonder how can we make it happen.

I love to find explanations and examples why somethings is like it is.  Jason Silva mentions in his video that we are learned to be more present, learner to be in the moment. Aren’t we learned to know a “tommorrow”?

Finding Balance Between The Now And The Future – Jason Silva

 

 

On the other hand it is said that e.g. Fintech is changing consumers behavior. Consumers have more options to access to an information and various services to choose. Services guides and gives information what to do, chat pots, live chat etc.. This is close to augmented intelligence approach.  What about if consumer can choose a right services at right time using advanced analytics. Open data and “analytics of openness”.

We love or not a technology and a services will change things in our everyday life. Some of them explains what has been done and is now, other can lead you to do rights decisions in future.

“Learn from history, act now, be ready for tommorrow”

 

About 6 years ago I jump along to the Qlik ecosystem as a Qlik partner. I immediately realise the value of it… cool I thought then.

“It’s not only the great technology but an active, innovative community surrounding it”.

Here are listed some findings and perspectives of this ecosystem:

– Innovative technology (continual innovation and right direction)

– Sharing information through community

* qlikview resources

* qliksense resources

– QlikMarket for fantastic apps

– Qlikbranch for awesome outputs like extensions and visualizations

– Qlik’s local presence geographically

– Qlik partner programmes and sharing technical informations

– Yearly Qlik Qonnections events to have a look for future opportunities

– Awesome training programmes

– Continual and valuable communication from Qlik to Partners

– Help from Qlik partner technical responsible persons

– Fantastics Qlik product support

– Very skilled Qlik personnel

– Lots of very experienced partners worldwide

– Massive amount of written articles, whitepapers, books and guides

– Great marketing activities, blogs and great Social Media activities.

– QlikDevGroup internationally

I don`t know but for me this list looks pretty impressive, right.

Additional info:

I you yet haven’t then please check more information from here;

 

Qlik website: www.qlik.com

Qlik blog: http://www.qlik.com/us/blog
Qlikview community: https://community.qlik.com/community/qlikview/resource-library
Qlik Sense community: https://community.qlik.com/community/qlik-sense/resource-library
Qlik Market: http://market.qlik.com
QlikBranch: http://branch.qlik.com

“If you believe to something and you see the opportunities, it’s then easy to share the message”.

And then idea..

Qlik Community has been technically oriented. It has its place definitely, but why not have business part as well.

Success stories, values added, needs, challenges……

Well nevertheless this is one of the greatest analytics communities I know!!

Qlik uusin julkaisu mukailee nyt uutta nimeämiskäytäntöä. Kesäkuun julkaisu on nimeltään June 2017. Samalla poistui service ja feature julkaisu jaottelu, mikä on mielestäni hyvä ja selkeä uudistus.

Kesäkuussa julkaistiin Qlik Nprinting ja QlikSense uudet versiot

Qlik Sense uudet ominaisuudet

UUDET VISUALISOINNIT JA VÄRIEN KÄSITTELY (Master dimensiot)

Julkaisussa on lisätty natiivit visualisoinnit (Lähde: Qlik.com):

Box Plot 

Distribution plot

Histogram

Julkaisussa on mukana master dimensioiden värienkäsittely ominaisuus. Näin saat kaikille halutuille arvoille dimesioissa samat värit visualisoinneissasi.

• Perusväripaletti:

• Hexadecimal väri koodit
• Lisä-värivalinta vaihtoehdot

DATAN KÄSITTELY

Datakäsittely on erittäin odotettu ominaisuus.

• Voit korvata arvoja,
• asettaa valittuja arvoja “null” arvoiksi,
• järjestää arvoja aakkos- tai numerojärjestetyksen lisäksi räätälöityyn järjestykseen
• jakaa sarakkeen useaksi sarakkeeksi
• Ryhmitellä tietoja

EDISTYKSELLINEN ANALYTIKKA (R ja Python)

“Analytics Connections” integraatiolla voidaan hyödyntää ulkopuolisten laskentamoottoreiden käyttö. Tämä on mahdollista server side extensioneiden kautta.

 

BIG DATA VIA ON DEMAND APPS

On-Demand apps mahdollistaa ladata Big Datasta käyttäjälle olleellinen osa tärkeää tietoa analytiikkaan.

 

KOLME UUTTA MONITOROINTI SOVELLUSTA

Aiempien monitorointi sovellusten lisäksi on tullut nyt kolme uutta sovellusta.

Log Monitor

Reloads Monitor

Sessions Monitor