Qlik Sense offers a powerful and flexible platform for building business intelligence solutions, but the true potential of Qlik lies in its ability to create custom visualizations and mashups. These capabilities allow you to go beyond traditional charts and graphs, enabling you to design unique, interactive data experiences tailored to your organization’s needs.
But before diving into the world of custom visualizations and mashups, it’s essential to understand the Qlik Sense development environment—the toolkit that powers these custom creations. In this blog post, we’ll explore the development environment that makes custom visualizations and mashups possible in Qlik Sense, and how you can leverage it to create advanced, user-friendly analytics solutions.
What Is the Qlik Sense Development Environment?
The Qlik Sense development environment is a set of tools and resources that Qlik provides to developers, analysts, and designers to customize and extend the platform’s built-in functionality. It gives you the freedom to create unique visualizations, integrate external content, and build mashups that combine Qlik’s powerful analytics with other web-based tools and content. (Ref: Custom Visualizations and Mashups in Qlik for Tailored Analytics)
The development environment consists of:
- Qlik Sense Developer Hub: A workspace for creating and testing custom visualizations, extensions, and mashups.
- APIs and SDKs: Qlik provides a variety of APIs and software development kits (SDKs) to enable integration with other systems and to control the behavior of custom visualizations and mashups.
- Mashup Editor: A tool specifically designed for embedding Qlik Sense objects (like charts, KPIs, and tables) into custom web applications.
Together, these tools make it possible to create powerful, interactive, and personalized data applications that can be seamlessly integrated into websites, dashboards, and enterprise systems.
Key Components of the Qlik Sense Development Environment
1. Qlik Sense Developer Hub
The Developer Hub is the starting point for building custom visualizations and mashups in Qlik. It provides a user-friendly interface for creating new extensions and mashups, as well as debugging and testing them. Key features include:
- Extension Wizard: A tool that simplifies the creation of visualizations by providing templates and pre-defined functions for common tasks.
- Object API: The Object API allows developers to interact with Qlik objects, such as charts and tables, and modify their appearance, behavior, and data. This is essential for building customized visualizations that go beyond Qlik’s standard offerings.
- Testing Environment: The Developer Hub also includes a testing environment where you can preview your extensions and mashups in real time, ensuring everything works as expected before deployment.
By using the Qlik Sense Development Hub, you can create custom visualizations without having to write large amounts of code from scratch, thanks to the intuitive wizards and templates.
2. Qlik’s APIs and SDKs
Qlik offers a rich set of APIs and SDKs that allow developers to programmatically extend and customize Qlik Sense. These APIs are the backbone of custom visualizations and mashups, enabling developers to:
- Manipulate Data: Use Qlik’s Engine API to access and manipulate data within Qlik Sense. This allows you to create dynamic, data-driven custom visualizations.
- Control Objects: The Visualization API and Object API allow you to control the behavior of Qlik objects (like charts or sheets), enabling dynamic interactions based on user selections.
- Integrate with External Systems: The Capability APIs allow integration with external web services, databases, and applications, giving you the flexibility to build mashups that combine Qlik Sense data with external content.
These APIs form the foundation of custom visualizations and mashups, giving you the flexibility to create tailored solutions that meet your unique business needs.
3. The Mashup Editor
For Qlik Sense Development looking to integrate Qlik Sense data and visualizations into custom web applications, the Mashup Editor is an indispensable tool. Mashups allow you to embed Qlik objects into web pages and combine them with other external content (like videos, forms, or third-party data) to create more comprehensive, interactive analytics experiences.
Key features of the Mashup Editor include:
- Drag-and-Drop Interface: The Mashup Editor simplifies the process of adding Qlik visualizations to your web pages. You can drag and drop Qlik Sense objects into your HTML page and customize them as needed.
- Custom Layouts: The editor allows you to customize the layout of your mashup, enabling you to create visually appealing, responsive dashboards and reports that work on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Embedding Qlik Objects: Qlik Sense’s objects, such as sheets, charts, KPIs, and tables, can be embedded directly into your mashup using Qlik’s JavaScript API. This allows you to combine Qlik’s powerful analytics with other content sources for a fully integrated user experience.
Creating Custom Visualizations and Mashups in Qlik
Now that you’re familiar with the Qlik Sense Development environment, it’s time to explore how to build custom visualizations and mashups.
Creating Custom Visualizations
Custom visualizations are created using Qlik extensions, which allow you to build charts, graphs, and other data visualizations that go beyond what Qlik offers out of the box. These visualizations can be built using web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
Here’s a high-level overview of how to create a custom visualization:
- Define Your Objective: Decide on the type of visualization you want to create and how it will help users interpret the data.
- Use the Extension Wizard: Begin the process by using the Extension Wizard in the Developer Hub. This tool provides templates and pre-built functions that speed up the development process.
- Customize the Visualization: Modify the visualization’s appearance using CSS, add interactivity with JavaScript, and integrate Qlik data using the Qlik APIs.
- Test and Deploy: Use the testing tools in the Developer Hub to ensure that your visualization works correctly before deploying it to the Qlik Sense Development.
Building Mashups
Mashups enable you to integrate Qlik Sense Development visualizations into external websites or applications. Here’s how to build a basic mashup:
- Create a New Mashup: Open the Mashup Editor and create a new project. You can start with a template or build a mashup from scratch.
- Embed Qlik Objects: Use the drag-and-drop interface to embed Qlik Sense charts, tables, or KPIs into your web page.
- Customize Layout and Design: Use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to modify the look and feel of your mashup. You can also add additional content like images, external data sources, or interactive forms.
- Deploy the Mashup: Once your mashup is complete, deploy it to a website or web application for users to access.
Final Thoughts
The Qlik Sense development environment provides the tools, APIs, and flexibility you need to create custom visualizations and mashups that deliver powerful, interactive analytics experiences. By understanding how to leverage the Developer Hub, Qlik APIs, and the Mashup Editor, you can extend the functionality of Qlik Sense to meet the unique needs of your organization and users.
Whether you’re building custom visualizations to present complex data or integrating Qlik Sense objects into external applications, the Qlik Sense development environment enables you to create tailored solutions that maximize the value of your data and provide actionable insights in real time.
Ready to get started? Dive into Qlik Sense Development tools and begin building your custom visualizations and mashups today!