QlikView to Qlik Sense and beyond
Posted on March 20, 2024 | By Admin
This article aims to give a holistic view of the experience for teams migrating from QlikView to Qlik Sense, on both cloud and client-managed environments. It highlights triggers for modernization, differentiated features in Qlik Sense and recommendations to navigate with diligence. The article also traces the journey beyond migration and explores how Qlik Sense analytics can really be elevated for greater impact.
Drivers for migration
As teams plan this transition, they can right away draw comfort from the fact that the process can be incremental, without disrupting existing priorities or diluting all the benefits offered by Qlik Sense including unified licensing for products and reduced cost of platform ownership.
Let’s begin with a comparative look at differences that will come to the fore for users:
| Aspect | QlikView | Qlik Sense |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | Desktop development client with managed analytic experience | Web-based self-service visual analytics powered by a cognitive engine with AL/ML/NLP |
| Usability | Pixel-perfectness, compact layouts and layering | Fluidic, responsive user interfaces with high interactivity |
| Customization | High degree of customization for guided analytics | High degree of customization available via mashups |
| Data | Advanced data preparation | Advanced data and visual data preparation |
| Availability | Standard mobile capabilities | Advanced mobile – online & offline |
| Extensibility | In- app extensibility through macros and integrations | Open APIs for custom applications and embedded analytics |
While these differences are also the advantages between the products, many other core aspects remain the same including Qlik’s associate experience, guided apps, data model, load scripts, expressions and syntax, data integration/ ETL and security.
Preparing the ground
Migrating the entire repository of resources from data, transformations, scripts, visuals to applications from QlikView to Qlik Sense can be an arduous exercise spanning months without the right assessment of risks or use of tools. Let’s explore them both –
- Assessment – Quite like any software migration, before moving your data, reconfiguring data connections or redesigning the user interface, it is important to assess the trajectory of the process and define metrics that count, and in this case: the total number of applications involved, total number of sheets, their inter-dependencies, complexity of visuals and variables and so on and the estimated time and effort against each of them. In cases involving complexities, one can lean on Qlik’s own migration app that helps in assessment of existing servers, export of users, roles and authorization status once the to-be-migrated apps are tagged within the Qlik Management Console (QMC) for migration to the cloud. Read more about the migration app here.
- Accelerated approach – Post the assessment phase, all the assets need to be moved to the new server or to the cloud. If you are migrating to an on-premise server, then in all likelihood Qlik Sense installation and data connections setup can happen within the same server. Existing apps can be converted to Qlik Sense apps using the “Converter” in the Dev Hub for Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows and Qlik Sense Desktop deployments. This tool accelerates the migration timeline by over 60% and offers a good head-start. You can read more about Qlik’s Converter and how it works here.
The migration process: QlikView to Qlik Cloud
In case of migration to the Cloud, both data and the applications need to be moved in entirety to the remote server maintained by Qlik. The migration app helps here by assessing your existing server, exporting users, their roles and monitoring the authorization involved for all.
Key steps – Movement of data to the cloud is the best place to begin, enabling reduction in the infrastructure footprint within your QlikView environment. Following steps are involved in the movement of data:
- Understanding data connections in QlikView and the connectivity method
- Gaining secure access to data residing behind a firewall using the Qlik Data Gateway, that provides a data connection type for Qlik Cloud applications
- Distributing the applications to Qlik cloud using the migration app
- Setting up new data connections in the cloud tenant and reloading the applications
- Alternatively, data movement can be also be enabled using the Data Transfer tool from Qlik
Review – Once the data connections and files are successfully moved, then the migration of applications can follow. One of the key considerations prior to this step is the rationalisation of application sizes in Qlik Cloud, where the app sizes need to be within the prescribed 5GB limit each for SaaS usage and involves provisioning additional storage for larger apps, if need be.
Finally, a checklist to track and review extensions, themes, geo-analytics, functions and statements supported in QlikView and not in Qlik Sense helps in firming it all up. This can vary case to case. Read more about checklists
here.
The migration process: QlikView to client-managed Qlik Sense
In the case of client-managed environments, the QV to QS Converter of Qlik Sense works well to convert most elements including variables, visuals and expressions, with only the user interface being left to be redesigned as per needs. The only constraint in the Converter is that the size of a document should be within 500MB. By reducing the amount of data within a document or saving the document without data, one can reduce the file size without any loss of content. All said and done, teams need to be prepared to manually recreate a few visuals (~10 to 20%) when native conversions are not successful or fully translatable.
Common risks
In any migration, blind spots are not entirely avoidable. Analytics and business teams coping with the new experience will take some time to be fully hands-on. Involving them early on during the assessment phase and licensing discussions are key to success. There should also be caution while merging multiple applications into one and the overruns it can have on the timelines.
The journey beyond
By now, its clear Qlik Sense analytics offers a new flavour for users, especially with the interfaces, the colors, buttons, page-level options, interactivity and more. To make things easy, the use of Convertor already translates all measures, variables and visualisations from QlikView into Qlik Sense interpretable formats. What can follow is how well can users adapt to the new experience.
The power of Extensions
With the base set, users now have an option to infuse fresh visual elements within dashboards, improve adoption and collaboration within apps. SenseOps’ no-code extensions offer the last mile experience to Qlik Sense users, giving them the flexibility to create powerful visualization that reflects their imagination or is in tune with their brand or design sensitivities, something that otherwise involves deep expertise or restrictive in Qlikview and Qlik Sense.
