Qlik Spaces

If you have a lot of documents on your laptop, you probably like to divide them into folders. On your phone, you probably have your photos in different folders, too. After all, you don't want someone to see the crazy photos of your partner, pet or child the moment you show them last summer's vacation photos. Or you use folders to center apps together. Some people are very orderly, while others are just a little sloppier in everyday life.

Without realizing which of the two you fall under, it helps Qlik you become an orderly. At least, as long as you work with their product. In this blog, I'm going to talk about Spaces, or spaces if your web browser is in Dutch.

Type Spaces

Basically, Qlik currently has four different spaces; a personal, a shared space, a managed space and the odd duck in the hat, a data space. A personal space is just for yourself and what's in it is really for you. A shared space is for development. Multiple people can collaborate on an app to develop it. Initially, only the owner was able to edit a script. But, it seems that Qlik has backtracked on this and will change this soon. So, in addition to a shared space, there is also a managed space. Think of this as a production environment. There is always a copy of the app in a shared environment.

Data Space

Then there is also the data space. This space was available to anyone using Qlik Cloud until recently. It was a place to store data marts and other files. Unfortunately, they removed this functionality and it is now only available to customers who purchased Data Integration as a product. Personally, I think this is a huge shame. It was a great solution for the mediocre folder structure. Fortunately, they themselves point it out. We are not a faulty provider.

The spaces can be found in the catalog. So this is where all your apps, data, links, machine learning stuff and soon also your automations are neatly arranged. For now, the automations are still in your personal. We were promised that soon this will be better managed in another place. That is what we are assuming. You can read more about what automations are in blog 5.

Rights in Qlik

The biggest benefit of organizing is: rights! Although I'm a big proponent of opening up your data within the organization, there's always data that isn't or shouldn't be visible to everyone. For example, you don't want your HR data to be visible to just anyone. Granting permissions can be done in a limited number of ways. In Qlik Enterprise, we were used to being able to go crazy with setting permissions, dynamic or otherwise. In Qlik Cloud, this has been significantly simplified. Does it mean it is therefore less? If you ask me, most certainly not.

Active Directory linking

By linking your Active Directory (that thing where all your users are listed with their associated permissions) to your tenant, you keep the management of your permissions in one place. You can then use the groups you're used to. This way, when you have new employees, you don't have to think about giving them the right rights in Qlik. For each group or user, you can assign permissions again. Tip! Do this right at the beginning of setting up your environment.

Qlik Spaces image - 2Foqus Data Analytics

Granting individuals rights

If you do not want to give groups rights, but individuals separately, this is also just possible. Use the add members or share a dashboard with a person. Although someone has no rights to the space, he or she can open the dashboard. This way you don't have to go through IT to arrange access for your colleague. Very convenient!

Notifications and data connections

In addition to managing permissions, notifications and data connections can also be managed at the space level. This way you can ensure that certain developers cannot access certain information. Or you can center all your connections in one space. While this makes management easier, it is less future-proof. Depending on the needs of your organization a choice can be made.

Shared and managed spaces - 2Foqus Data Analytics

My advice is to at least use the shared and managed spaces. Also create a Governance space in which you can place monitoring apps. With these apps you can continue to monitor the environment on the use of the apps, the users or the environment itself. Below you will find a link with an overview of various monitoring apps. In this governance space you can also store documents such as qvs.scripts, section access etc. Take a good look at your development lifecycle and make employees responsible for certain dashboards. If you have several developers, make sure each one is responsible for a certain chain. That way, you make optimal use of the spaces.

As a rule, a human being hates change. Probably this shortcoming underlies the times when we could not go to a supermarket to get our food. Constantly changing places brought uncertainty. Is there food on the route and place we are going? You can also ask yourself this question when purchasing Qlik Cloud. Spaces brings a big change for those who have worked with Qlik before. But, if you understand the philosophy, it all makes a lot of sense. There is certainly plenty of food on the road, tastes differ and it takes some getting used to.

In the next blog, I'm going to take you into data connections. Again, there are different options in this with different advantages and disadvantages. Techniques such as change data capture, data gateway and APIs will be discussed. Does it sound too technical now? Rest assured, it is not that bad.