For Every Business data-driven world, it’s not enough to simply present data—organizations need insights that are interactive, engaging, and tailored to their specific needs. Qlik Sense, a leader in business intelligence and analytics, offers robust capabilities for creating custom visualizations and mashups, enabling users to go beyond standard charts and tables and build unique, interactive dashboards and applications.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how to create custom visualizations and mashups in Qlik, and how these tools can help you unlock deeper insights and deliver personalized, dynamic analytics to your stakeholders.
What Are Custom Visualizations and Mashups?
Before diving into the creation process, let’s define what we mean by custom visualizations and mashups: (Ref: Advanced Scripting and Functions in Qlik Sense)
Custom Visualizations: These are data representations created using Qlik Sense’s extension capabilities. They allow you to build charts, graphs, and other data visualizations beyond the out-of-the-box options provided by Qlik. With custom visualizations, you can introduce unique styles, behaviors, and interactive elements that align with your specific business needs.
Mashups: Mashups in Qlik are web applications that combine Qlik visualizations with other web content or third-party tools. They allow you to integrate Qlik Sense objects into external websites or applications, offering a seamless way to deliver analytics alongside other data or services.
Both tools help deliver personalized, branded, and interactive experiences, and are key to building more engaging, user-centric data applications.
Why Create Custom Visualizations and Mashups?
The flexibility to create custom visualizations and mashups empowers organizations to take full control over how their data is presented and interacted with. Some of the main benefits include:
- Tailored User Experience: Custom visualizations allow you to design dashboards and charts that speak directly to your audience’s needs, making data more accessible and insightful.
- Enhanced Interactivity: With custom components, you can offer users a more immersive, interactive experience, allowing them to engage with the data in real time.
- Branding and Consistency: Custom visualizations and mashups enable you to maintain consistent branding, ensuring that the look and feel of your data applications align with your organization’s style.
- Integration with External Data: Mashups allow you to bring in data from external sources or combine Qlik Sense data with other web-based applications, extending the analytical capabilities of your environment.
Creating Custom Visualizations in Qlik
Qlik Sense offers a rich environment for building custom visualizations through extensions. These extensions allow developers to create visualizations using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Let’s break down the basic steps involved:
1. Set Up Your Development Environment
To get started with custom visualizations, you’ll need to set up Qlik Sense’s developer tools, including the Qlik Sense Developer Hub. This environment gives you access to all the necessary resources and templates to start building your visualizations. If you’re new to Qlik Sense, you may need to familiarize yourself with Qlik’s APIs, JavaScript libraries, and the Qlik Sense object model.
2. Build the Custom Visualization
Using the Developer Hub, you can begin building your custom visualization. Here are some key steps:
- Define the structure: Create the HTML skeleton for your visualization.
- Style with CSS: Use CSS to control the look and feel of your visualization.
- Add interactivity: JavaScript and Qlik’s APIs let you add interactivity, such as hover effects, click actions, and dynamic updates based on user selections.
For example, if you want to build a heatmap or radial chart, you can start with a basic HTML structure, add Qlik’s data-binding features, and then apply custom CSS for styling.
3. Test and Debug
Once you have your custom visualization, use Qlik Sense’s debugging tools to ensure everything works as expected. This includes checking how the visualization handles different data sets and ensuring it performs efficiently.
4. Deploy and Share
Once your visualization is built, it can be packaged into an extension and shared across your Qlik Sense environment. You can easily deploy it to the Qlik Sense Hub for use by other analysts or end-users.
Building Mashups in Qlik Sense
Mashups allow you to combine Qlik visualizations with other web content, giving you the ability to create sophisticated web applications powered by Qlik Sense data. Here’s how to create a mashup:
1. Use the Mashup Editor
Qlik Sense provides a Mashup Editor where you can integrate Qlik objects into HTML and JavaScript files. The mashup editor provides an intuitive interface for adding charts, filters, and KPIs into your web page.
2. Embedding Qlik Objects
To add Qlik objects into your mashup, use the Qlik Sense APIs. This typically involves embedding objects like sheets, charts, or KPIs into an HTML page. You can customize the appearance and behavior of these objects, making them more interactive for the user.
3. Customize with CSS and JavaScript
CSS and JavaScript are used to customize the layout and add interactivity. You can create custom navigation, add external content like images or forms, and even integrate data from external sources.
4. Deploy Your Mashup
Once your mashup is ready, you can deploy it as part of an internal web application or integrate it into an existing website. This helps provide a seamless user experience, blending Qlik analytics with other business systems or customer-facing applications.
Best Practices for Custom Visualizations and Mashups
Creating custom visualizations and mashups requires careful planning and attention to detail. To ensure your projects are successful, consider these best practices:
- Keep It Simple: Complex visualizations can overwhelm users. Stick to simplicity, clarity, and purpose.
- Focus on User Experience (UX): Your custom visualizations and mashups should be user-friendly. Test them with your target audience to ensure that they are intuitive and deliver value.
- Optimize Performance: Customizations can affect the performance of your Qlik apps. Ensure your visualizations are optimized for speed, especially when dealing with large datasets.
- Ensure Mobile Compatibility: Many users access Qlik Sense through mobile devices. Make sure your custom visualizations and mashups are responsive and work seamlessly on both desktop and mobile.
- Leverage Qlik’s Community: The Qlik community is a valuable resource for learning best practices and finding reusable components or inspiration. Don’t hesitate to tap into this knowledge base.
Final Thoughts
Creating custom visualizations and mashups in Qlik Sense opens up a world of possibilities for data-driven storytelling and user engagement. Whether you’re building bespoke visualizations to highlight key trends or embedding Qlik Sense data into a customer-facing web application, the ability to customize your analytics environment ensures that your users get the most relevant, actionable insights.
By leveraging the flexibility of Qlik Sense’s development environment, you can create dynamic, personalized, and interactive experiences that transform the way you interact with your data. Ready to get started? Dive into Qlik Sense’s developer tools and start creating custom visualizations and mashups that will elevate your analytics game.