Introduction to Qlik® Sense

How to Build Your First Qlik Sense Application

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Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 3
Workshop Objectives.............................................................................................................. 3
Qlik® Sense – The Next Generation of Visual Analytics ......................................................... 3
Using Qlik Sense ......................................................................................................................................... 4
Insight Advisor Chat ............................................................................................................... 4
Filter Your Data ...................................................................................................................... 6
Interact with Your Data ........................................................................................................... 6
Search for Data – Global Smart Search.................................................................................. 8
Visualize Your Data ..................................................................................................................................... 9
Open the Insight Advisor ........................................................................................................ 9
Using Edit Mode to Create Visualizations ..............................................................................11
Add Visualization using Qlik Cognitive Engine .......................................................................12
Working with Maps ................................................................................................................15
Add Visualization without using Qlik Cognitive Engine ...........................................................18
Create KPIs ...........................................................................................................................21
Add Filters .............................................................................................................................22
Add Alternative Dimensions / Measures ................................................................................22
Enhancing Visualizations .......................................................................................................23
Clean up application ..............................................................................................................25
Monitor a Chart in Hub ..........................................................................................................25
Create an Alert ......................................................................................................................26
Connect and Load Data ............................................................................................................................ 28
Create a New Qlik Sense Application ....................................................................................28
Load in data ..........................................................................................................................28
Next Steps: Training and Support ........................................................................................................... 31

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Introduction
Workshop Objectives
This workshop is designed to introduce you to Qlik Sense and provide step-by-step instructions on how to
build your first Qlik Sense application. The application that we will build will help you answer relevant
business questions such as:
• Where do our top sales originate?
• Which product has the highest sales?
• What are our most profitable products?
• What does our sales performance look like over time?

Qlik® Sense – The Next Generation of Visual Analytics

Qlik Sense is a next-generation self-service data visualization application that empowers people to easily
create a range of flexible, interactive visualizations that drive exploration and discovery using one’s
intuition. With the proven Qlik Associative Experience along with the cutting-edge Cognitive Rules
Engine, Qlik Sense delivers:
1. Easily combine multiple data sources and automatically index all the data
2. Interactively explore and search all data while receiving real-time calculations
3. All analytics kept in context together, relative to your selections
4. Find hidden insights by understanding both related and unrelated data, query tools miss this
5. Experience the fastest calculation performance for instant analysis across large and complex
data sets

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Using Qlik Sense
Insight Advisor Chat
1. Let’s begin by simply asking a question. From the Qlik Sense Hub, open Insight Advisor Chat from
the top right-hand corner by selecting the “Ask Insight Advisor” button.

2. The Insight Advisor display will appear.

3. Type “Total Sales by Customer”.

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4. Notice the light grey bar without a Customer name. This highlights that there are some Sales not
attributed to a Customer. This is an example of insights that traditional query tools would not show.
5. Select “Explore this Further” in the bottom right hand corner of this chat response to see more
insights about this Bar Chart for Customer Sales.

Notice how the Insight Advisor has passed our question through to the relevant application so we can
seamlessly continue our analysis.

1. Now let’s explore all the relationships in our data. In the top left-hand corner, click on the “Insight
Advisor” button to view a pre-built dashboard.

6. This brings us to the “Associative Difference” sheet where we can explore our data further.

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Filter Your Data
1. Filter your data by selecting all Customers that begin with the letter “A” and only Categories that
begin with the letter “B”.
2. Green denotes that a value has been selected, white shows the associated values to that selection,
and gray shows where there’s no relationship between values for the given selections. This type of
interactive analysis is at the heart of Qlik and allows you to discover new insights.

Using the Qlik Associative Engine, you interact at the speed of thought and have an interactive
conversation with your data. Within any Qlik application you see the “power of the grey”. Light gray
represents an alternative to a selection made in another field, while dark gray represents the excluded
values with no relationship based on the current selections made. With Qlik, you need not worry about
unclean data since we leave no data behind so that you can uncover the whole story within your data.

3. Clear your selections by clicking on the ‘Clear all Selections’ button ( ) In the top left-hand
corner of the sheet.

Interact with Your Data

1. Now let’s move to a different sheet in the application to continue our exploration. Select the top right
hand ‘Sheets’ drop-down and then select the “Sales Dashboard” sheet.

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2. In the Bar Chart titled ‘Sales by Customer’, select the horizontal bar ‘USA’ and click the green check
mark in the top right-hand corner to confirm your selection. Notice how all the other visualizations on
the sheet update.

3. Notice the ‘Sales by Customer’ chart is now showing the underlying US cities as it has drilled down
into your selection. Now select ‘Portland’ to drill down further and see the Customers in Portland.

4. Once you have seen the underlying customers in Portland, clear your selections by clicking on the

‘Clear all Selections’ button ( ) In the top left-hand corner of the sheet.

5. On the Map, left select the map in the open space and notice the lasso button appear at the top of
the chart.

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6. Select the Lasso and while holding down your left mouse button, circle a selection of values.
7. Note that we are currently searching and filtering on different visualizations, fields and tables from our
data and application. Qlik allows you to freely explore, without boundaries, the full context of your
data.

Let’s move onto the next section to see a few more ways to accomplish that in Qlik Sense.

Search for Data – Global Smart Search

1. Clear your selections using the ‘Clear Selections button’.

2. In the top left corner, select the ‘Search’ icon.

3. Type in “footwear Germany”. Not only will you be able to see real-time suggested completions of
words based on your partial text, but all the field value combinations matching your search.

1. Select the first option from the search results and notice the application update and
apply the filters of Germany and Men’s and Women’s Footwear.

4. In the top right-hand corner, click on the Selections tool icon . The Selections tool allows you to
filter on any value that appears in your data set. Click on various values then click again on the
Selections tool icon to return to the Sheet view.

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5. *Click on the ‘Clear all Selections’ ( ) button to remove your selections if you haven’t done so
already.

Visualize Your Data

Open the Insight Advisor
In this second section, you will create your own sheet within Qlik Sense using the data model that is
already loaded. You will learn how to build the UI components such as dashboards, visualizations,
calculations etc.
Qlik Sense was built with self-service and ease of use in mind, Qlik’s Insights Advisor utilizes a
combination of Qlik’s Associative Engine and Qlik’s new Cognitive Rules Engine to help you find insights
from your data that you might not have been aware of.
1. To open the Insights Advisor, select Insight Advisor in the top left-hand corner of the sheet while in
Presentation mode.

2. Qlik’s Cognitive Engine allows for several options to start interacting with your data. We will start by
using Natural Language Queries that you can type/search for to get specific insights. Type “Sales by
Customer” in the “Ask a question” dialog box and press enter. Note that as you type, it will search
through your data and provide suggestions and recommendations for the fields you may want to use.

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3. Notice that two charts (bar chart and table) are now created specifically for this query.

4. Click on Add to sheet for the bar chart to add it to a newly created sheet in the existing
dashboard.

5. Navigate to this new sheet by clicking on “My new sheet” in the lower right-hand corner.

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6. Interact with your visualizations and see what you can discover about your data. Of course, since we
only have one visualization on our sheet, we don’t fully see the power of the Associative Experience.
Let’s add some more visualizations and take care of this in the next section.

NOTE: You can click on the Insight Advisor button again at any point to bring additional
visualizations onto the sheet. As we build out our library of dimensions and measures, Qlik’s Insights
Advisor Engine will utilize them to build new types of visualizations.

Using Edit Mode to Create Visualizations

1. In this section you will again use Qlik’s Cognitive Engine to generate new visuals by simply dragging
and dropping fields into the canvas as well as explore other options to do so manually. From the view
we are on, click on the Edit Sheet button from the top right of the screen to view Edit mode.

2. Qlik has now put us into Edit mode where we can create new visualizations from scratch and/or edit
existing visualizations.

Before we add any visualizations, let’s take a closer look at Edit Mode interface. Within Edit Mode,
you will see three main sections:
Assets: On the leftmost ribbon, you will see the Assets Panel. This includes a list of available data
fields and a reusable dimension and measure library that you can drag-and-drop onto the Design
Canvas.
Design Canvas: The Design Canvas is where you can build visualizations and preview of how your
dashboard will look in “Analysis Mode”.

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 Properties: The Properties panel allows you to see and edit the properties of individual objects or the
sheet such as sorting, color, and styling.
Data Preview: A table by table preview of the data model beneath the current Qlik Sense Application.

Add Visualization using Qlik Cognitive Engine

Question to Answer: Which Product has the Highest Sales? Which Product is the Most
Profitable?
To answer this specific question, we don’t want to concern ourselves with which visualization to create,
we just want to tell Qlik what dimensions and measures we would like to use and have Qlik do the rest.
1. Before we begin building, hide the data preview table by selecting the table icon on the right-hand
side of the Design Canvas.

2. To unlock the design canvas, select the lock on the right-hand side of the Design Canvas then select
the “+” to add a new object to the sheet.

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3. With the Edit option enabled, search for the Product dimension. Drag Product on to the new object
to the right of the bar chart. You will see a drop zone that populates saying “Drop master item to use
as a dimension”.

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3. Now search in Measures for Sales and with the newest visualization selected, drag-and-drop Sales
to a drop zone that populates saying “Drop master item to use as a measure”.

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4. From the same Measures library, drag and drop Margin% on top of our newly created Bar Chart.
Make sure the visual displays “Drop item here” and not “Create new chart”.

5. The visualization should now look as follows:

6. This scatter plot helps us find an outlier in Sales (Minnki Palsii) and a few in Margin % (Adihash
Running Shoe, Root Boot, and Fuji Boots), but the other Products are dense.

Working with Maps

Maps provide an effective way to see how specific KPIs are performing in a geographic based manner.
Qlik provides support for five map types:
• Point Maps. Bubbles on a map to denote specific latitude/longitude data points. This can be a
country, city, zip code, or a specific point.
• Area Maps. Shapes that are layered on top of a map with boundaries. This can be different countries,
states, counties, etc.
• Line Maps. Lines from one type of location to another indicate movement from one place to another.
The map type requires two dimensions – a dimension for the start point and a dimension for the end
point.
• Density Maps. Useful for a large quantity of values, density maps show the concentration of data in
certain areas.
• Chart Maps. Like a Point Map but displays the point as either a pie chart or a line chart, allowing you
to see values for two dimensions instead of just one.
• Background Maps. A custom base map for your map visualization. A background layer could, for
example, be a map of an airport that then has a point layer with WIFI hotspot locations overlaid on it.

With Qlik Sense, you are no longer bound to a single layer in a map, but you can now create multiple
layers. We will create one in this next exercise.
1. Create a new object below the Bar Chart and Scatterplot by selecting the “+” button below both
objects,

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2. Find City under Dimensions in the Assets panel and drag it onto the new blank object. A map
should appear. Qlik’s Cognitive Engine tries to show the best visual representation of the data
introduced to the object.

3. Drag Sales from Master Items -> Measures onto the map as well, and your dashboard should now
look like the image below:

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4. Now that we have a point layer that looks at Sales by City, let’s add another layer to this map.
7. From the Assets Panel, under the Master Items -> Dimensions library, drag the field Country onto
the map. You will see a drop zone that populates saying “Drop master item to use as a dimension”.

8. We now have a new layer, but let’s add some color to make it stand out more and extract some
additional meaningful insight from the map. Find the master measure titled # of Customers and drag
it onto the map. You will see a drop zone that populates saying “Drop master item to use as a
measure”.

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5. Now that we have the mapping visualization that we want, it’s time for our 10-minute break.

Add Visualization without using Qlik Cognitive Engine

Thus far, we have been relying on Qlik’s Cognitive and Insights Engine to build out visualizations very
easily and quickly for us. In this section, we will explore what it takes to build a chart from scratch and
without the help of Qlik’s Cognitive Engine. Qlik still employs an easy drag-and-drop approach in building
visualizations while also giving you more control over what you want to populate it with.
Question to Answer: What do our sales numbers look like over time?

1. While in Edit mode, select the “+” to the right of the Map to add our Line Chart.

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2. Find Visualizations from the Properties Panel on the left-hand side of the screen.
NOTE: Qlik frequently adds new or enhances existing visualizations to the Charts library, so
depending on the version you’re working with, this list may vary.
3. Select the Line Chart from the available options. The object on the sheet will now give you options to
add a dimension and a measure.

4. Drag the OrderDate Master Dimension and drop it on the chart to add it as a dimension. You will see
a drop zone that populates saying “Drop master item to use as a dimension”.

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5. Select “Add Measure” and search for the Sales Measure.

6. Now that we have the visualization that we want, lets add a title.
7. Begin by having the Line Chart selected, then from the Properties Panel select “Labels”, and lastly
under the Title text box, name the visualization Sales Trend. Repeat these steps for each of the
objects on the sheet to have all objects with a Title.

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Create KPIs
Now we want to show our users summary information about our data. For instance, we still can’t see what
the total amount of sales are, how many total customers we have, or what our overall Margin % is. KPIs
will help us do that easily.
1. While in Edit mode, toggle “Advanced Mode” on from the switch in the top right-hand corner to have
more granular control of the Design Canvas.

2. While in Edit mode, create space above the bar chart (two grid boxes of height will do).

Note: You can use the edges and the center block on the outline of a chart to re-size a visualization.

3. Find Sales in the list of Master Items -> Measures and drag and drop the measure into the available
space in the top left-hand corner. Resize the KPI visualization to be two units tall by four units wide.

4. This time we are going to use a Master Items -> Visualizations that has already been created for us.
From the Visualizations drawer, drag and drop the “Margin %” to the available space. Resize the
KPI visualization to be two units tall by four units wide.

5. We want to add one more KPI to keep track of unique Customers. Again, we will manually create the
KPI. From the list of Charts select KPI and drag the chart onto the Design Canvas. Select “Add
measure” and select # of Customers.

6. Your application should now look as follows:

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Add Filters
Question to Answer: How to Further Refine These Results Based on Specific Values?
In addition to selecting items directly from a visualization, filter boxes can be added that will allow you to
dynamically select values from a list to filter the results on the application.
1. Resize the scatterplot to provide one line of extra space at the top.
2. Select the Charts drawer, drag-and-drop the Filter pane chart into the new area above the map.
3. Select Master Items -> Dimensions, and with the Filter pane selected, double click the following
dimensions:

• Location Drill
• Product
• Supplier

NOTE: You can either add filters as individual objects or drop them into a responsive Filter pane to
make them easier to manage.

Add Alternative Dimensions / Measures

Question to Answer: How do we offer different views of the data without switching to a
new sheet or rebuilding visualizations?
Qlik Sense allows you to duplicate chart objects as well as entire sheets, but this may not always be
necessary for the user experience you would like to impart. To allow the user to switch between several
dimensions and measures within a chart, you can simply add them as “Alternatives”.
1. Enter Edit Mode by selecting the green Edit Sheet button in the top right-hand corner, select the
Sales by Customer bar chart.

2. In the Data drawer, there are places to add both “Alternative Dimensions” and “Alternative
Measures”. Select Add alternative under Dimensions.

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3. Let’s make the alternative Dimension the Location Drill (or any dimension you like). Find the master
item Location Drill from the dropdown and confirm that selection.

4. When we go back into Analysis Mode by selecting Done in the top right-hand corner, we can now
select the field label Customer and toggle between Customer and Location Drill dimensions.

Enhancing Visualizations
While we’re exploring this bar chart, let’s take a closer look at how we can work with some of the
properties to enhance it.

Null Values

As you may have noticed, there is a gray bar that stands out in this bar chart. What this is telling us is that
there are some Sales values that are NOT associated to any Customer. Qlik’s Associative Engine will
load and interpret all your data and through this gray coloration, highlight non-associated data in a
meaningful way to provide an insight into various areas of opportunities, improvements, or a means to
address any data validation issues.

1. Enter Edit Mode by selecting the Edit Sheet in the top right-hand corner, click on the Sales by
Customer bar chart.

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2. Sometimes there is a need to not show the null values in a chart, so let’s take look at how we can turn
that off. In the Properties panel under the Data drawer, select Customer under Dimensions.

3. Select the check box next to Include null values to turn off null values for this chart.

Limitations

Other times it may be necessary to limit chart values to a certain value (e.g. Top 20 Customers).

1. In the Properties panel under the Data drawer for the same bar chart, select Fixed number from the
Limitation dropdown.
2. Input “10” to show our Top 10 Customers. Ensure to uncheck Show Others.

Changing Appearance

The bar chart is a bit cleaner looking now, but we can still do a bit more to enhance it.

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Under the Appearance drawer, select Colors and Legend (You may need to scroll down to see Colors
and Legend), uncheck Auto. Change from Single Color to By Measure. Select the drop down next to
Select Measure and confirm Margin %.

Clean up application
In this last section we will perform a final cleanup of the application. That will include adding a title to our
sheet, renaming and updating labels wherever applicable, and swapping/resizing any visualizations for
preferred layouts.
Add a Title to the Sheet
1. While in Edit Mode, select My new sheet or any area on the canvas (but outside of a visualization).

2. From the properties panel, give this sheet the Title: “Sales Dashboard”.

Monitor a Chart in Hub

1. You can monitor visualizations in the cloud hub, enabling you to view charts without opening any
apps. You can select a visualization from an app and add it to your personal space in the cloud hub.
Visualizations you add this way can be found in Your content on the Home section of the cloud hub.
Any bookmarks and selections applied to the visualization are kept when it is added to the hub. The
monitored visualization updates every time the source app reloads.
2. Right click the Margin % KPI and select “Monitor in hub”.

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3. Give the Pinned Chart a name of “Margin %” then confirm using the green “Monitor” button in the
lower right-hand corner.

4. We will view this Chart from the Hub after creating an alert in our next exercise.

Create an Alert
1. Data alerts allow a Qlik Alerting user to create a variety of alerts which will check their data in a Qlik
Sense application. This check is performed as a user session which impersonates the user ensuring
all application and data access security is respected. Alerts can be created on a schedule or when an
application reload completes through a reload task in Qlik.
2. Let’s create an Alert for New Customers! We can use the # of Customers KPI to monitor this KPI.
3. Right click on the # of Customers KPI and choose the “Create Alert” option.

4. Give the Alert the title “New Customers” and using the green “Add Measure” button, select the
Measure as “# of Customers”

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5. After selecting the green “Next” button. We can now set the Condition of this Alert. Under Measure
use the “# of Customer” measure, define the “Operator” to be “Greater than”, set “Compare with”
to be “Value”, and lastly the “Value” to be “96”. Once your condition is aligned with the image below,
select the green “Next” button to proceed to “Distribution”.

6. We will leave the notification frequency to Always allow on reloads.

7. Lastly, select the Green ‘Create’ button in the lower right-hand corner of the dialog box.
8. Note: Will need to wait until next scheduled reload for the alert to be triggered. Notice how you can
always see your notifications whether in the Hub or Application view. This is to ensure you don’t miss
any alert no matter where you are in the Qlik platform.

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9. Use the Open hub button in the top left-hand corner to navigate back to the hub for our next exercise.

Connect and Load Data

In this section, you will build a simple Qlik Sense data model leveraging multiple data sources.

Create a New Qlik Sense Application

1. Navigate to the Add New button in the top right-hand corner, select New Analytics App

5. Provide a name such as Sales Analysis – Build Model, and then select Create

Load in data
When you create a new application, the first requirement is to provide data. Qlik offers the user three
options for adding data to their application
• Data Catalog is an inventory of data assets which provides on-demand access to business-ready
data.
• Files and other sources allows you to load data in a simple and intuitive way by connecting directly
to file-based, relational and cloud sources allowing you to select the required data.
• Data load editor allows you connect to the same sources but do more advanced data preparation
and provides complete control over all data preparation aspects.

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1. Select Add Data from Data Catalog

2. From the drop-down window, select Customers.xlsx and QlikSenseWorkshop.xlsx then select the
“Next” button in the lower right-hand corner.

3. Confirm the data by selecting the “Load into app: button.

4. You will now be brought into our visual data load editor, or data manager. We also call this the
“Associations” modeling view.
5. By default, Qlik Sense automatically has found associations in the data from these different tables
based off common column names and subset density match of column values. This interface allows
you as the user to determine what “associations” between tables should exist. We are going to use
the Data Profiler to associate this first set of values by selecting the purple Apply all button on the
right side of the screen

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6. Your view should now look like this:

7. If you select one of the small buttons in the links connecting two of the tables (such as Categories
and Products, you can see that the data profiler detected that there was a list of values that matched
in those two tables, it was a good subset and had the same column name. This means that likely
these tables are related, and thus associated through the algorithm. You can always disconnect these
tables, or change the association, but for now leave it as is.
8. Lastly, please select Load Data at the top right of the screen to load data into your model.
9. Select Go to sheet once the “Data was loaded successfully” dialogue box appears.

Validate the Data Model

We now have a fully functional data model. Let’s go ahead and create 1 Sales KPIs to validate the model.

1. Select the “Edit Sheet” option to validate our data model.

2. From the Assets Panel, under the Field drawer, drag the field “Sales” onto the screen as a measure.
3. The KPI should measure 1.87M in Sales.

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Next Steps: Training and Support
Upon completion of this brief introduction to Qlik Sense there are some recommended next steps:

1. Join us next week for our Qlik Sense for Advanced Users Workshop!
Learn how to use Application Automation, Collaborative Notes, Forecasting, Master Items, Set
Analysis, Variables, Alternate States and Navigation buttons.

2. Free Training – Qlik Learning

Take our free learning modules in Qlik Learning, our self-service learning platform (learning.qlik.com).
Each module includes fully searchable videos as well as exercises, reference guides, quizzes and
more. Individual and corporate subscriptions available for full access.

3. Getting Started: Step by Step Guide

Follow this step-by-step guide to get started with Qlik Sense.
(https://help.qlik.com/en-US/onboarding)

4. Free Qlik Sense Applications

Download free Qlik Sense applications to showcase in class.
Visit Demo Page (https://demos.qlik.com) to download now.

5. Qlik Community
Qlik Community is a website for people to share their Qlik knowledge and resources on a global level.
It contains hundreds of best practices, tutorial videos, informative discussion topics and much more.
You can login to Qlik Community using your Qlik login. Visit Qlik Community to learn more.

We recommend you review the following areas:

• New to Qlik Sense

o https://community.qlik.com/t5/New-to-Qlik-Sense/bd-p/new-to-qlik-sense
• Resource Library
o https://community.qlik.com/t5/Qlik-Resources/ct-p/qlik-company
• Qlik Sense Video Tutorials
o https://community.qlik.com/t5/Qlik-Sense-Enterprise-Documents/New-to-Qlik-Sense-
Topics-You-Need-to-Know/ta-p/1530582
6. Instructor-Led Training
Qlik Education offers expertly designed coursework and training materials to help you adopt Qlik
products faster and maximize their capabilities. Visit the Recommended Qlik Sense courses
(https://www.qlik.com/us/services/training/qlik-sense-training) to determine what’s next to help you
maximize the full capabilities of Qlik Sense.

7. Support
Access our support portal at support.qlik.com to manage all your support needs. Our new, state-of-
the-art portal is designed to centralize all case communications which reduces time to resolution. You
can follow the progress of your case in real time with Support Technician comments and case status.

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