Category Archives: Charts

Friday Qlik Test Prep – Week 4 – Time series visualization – Solution

Every Friday at Bitmetric we’re posting a new Qlik certification practice question to our LinkedIn company page. Last Friday we asked the following Qlik Business Analyst certification practice question:

The answers you gave to this question were quite varied, with each answer getting at least one mention. While in real life there is often room for nuance, in the context of Qlik certifications there is typically only one answer:

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Qlik named leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant

The 2017 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms has been released and Qlik is in the Leaders quadrant for the 7th consecutive year! Besides Qlik, both Tableau and Microsoft return in the Leaders quadrant, where they also were last year.

 

Comparing this edition with previous year’s Magic Quadrant, we can see that Qlik has lost around 15% on Completeness of vision, while more or less keeping the same Ability to execute. At the same time, we can see that both Tableau and Microsoft have both significantly improved their lead in these areas. I haven’t seen the actual analyst report yet so the reasons for these changes remain speculation at this time.  (will update with a link once a vendor releases it for free).

Update 2017/02/22: the full report can be found here.

 

 

Looking at the multi-year trend, we can see that Business Discovery has truly become mainstream while the previously dominant ‘Mega Vendors’ have been downgraded to the middle of the pack (look where IBM was in 2013, and where it is now). The positive exception here is Microsoft, which seems to have reinvented themselves in the past few year (Power BI!).

 

Geographical analysis with QlikMaps

QlikMaps

There are multiple mapping extensions available for geographical visualization and analysis in QlikView and Qlik Sense. Examples of commercial offerings are GeoQlik, NPGeoMap, Idevio and QlikMaps. Bitmetric (the people behind this blog 😉 ) is a QlikMaps partner, so I have been working a lot with QlikMaps recently. I have found it very powerful yet easy to work with.

QlikMaps demo

Today I want to share with you a small demo that I built. This demo shows demographic information about London mixed with a few of my holiday snapshots. The demo shows most of the common features of QlikMaps.

Want to try QlikMaps?

QlikMaps is available for both QlikView and Qlik Sense. Want to get a free trial and try it out with your own data? Then send us a request using the form below and we’ll get you hooked up!

[contact-form-7 id=”8459″ title=”Contact Form QlikMaps”]

 

What does Narratives for Qlik make of the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics Platforms?

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms

The 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms was released last February 4. This year’s edition caused quite a stir on various blogs and social media platforms as most of the ‘old-school’ vendors were dropped from the Leaders quadrant, leaving only Tableau, Microsoft and Qlik as Leaders.

Many excellent blog posts appeared in the last week, providing further commentary and thoughts on the current state of the BI and Analytics market. Rather than adding another post with my own commentary, I will take a slightly different approach.

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The Joy of QlikView Grid Layouts

While most QlikView Designers are familiar with the works and principles of data visualization gurus such as Stephen Few and Edward Tufte, when it comes to dashboard layout many (including myself) are more likely to follow the design principles of that other visualization expert: Bob Ross.

Dashboard Design - The Bob Ross way

I plot different objects on the sheet, basing their location on my experience, sound judgement and the overall aesthetic appeal. “Maybe in our world there lives a happy little treemap over there.” Apply a little horizontal and vertical alignment and I’ve finished another ‘masterpiece’. It’s much more of an art than a science, or at least that’s what I like to think.

While this approach is a lot of fun, it’s not a very fast way to get things done. Not every layout works immediately, and reshuffling objects after “happy little accidents” can take a lot of time.

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“Art” in QlikView, now in color!

Mona Lisa in QlikView - Oh no the horror, it's only black and white!!!! Save us MicroStrategy!!!!! ;)I came across this post on the MicroStrategy Community tonight. It mentions a few of the Qlik and Tableau visualizations of famous paintings that floated around a few years ago. The images that were used back then, an example shown on the right, were black and white. Robert, the author of the MicroStrategy article, concludes that black and white is boring, and that it would be much better if the pictures were in color.

MicroStrategy to the rescue! Robert writes that as of version 10, you are able to do colored visualizations in MicroStrategy. He then goes on to demonstrate a few visualizations in color! Take that QlikView and Tableau!

Overwhelmed by this spectacle of colors, I was already considering dropping my career in QlikView and moving into MicroStrategy when a thought popped into my head. Could it be that the author was mistaking the limitations of the data set (which only contained black & white values) for limitations of the tools? Perhaps QlikView (and Tableau) could also visualize pictures in color?

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Adding annotations to charts

Annotations in QlikView charts

I am currently at the Masters Summit for QlikView in San Francisco attending Bill Lay‘s session on QlikView data visualization. Besides hilarious delivery, Bill is showing some pretty cool visualization examples and tricks.

One thing Bill was showing are various ways you can add annotations to charts, putting them either on the axis or in the legend. One additional view that Bill and I discussed earlier is to put the annotations on the data point. Bill just asked me if there was a blog post about it. There wasn’t, but there is now. Not as polished as usual, but you’ll get the gist by looking at the QVW attached below.

Download the annotated chart example

Target lines on a bar chart using error bars

During my internship at Bitmetric one of my project goals was to build a QlikView application to benchmark logistical companies. I needed to visually compare the results of one organization with the average results of all organizations. My first try was using a combo chart with symbols, but I wasn’t happy with how that looked:

Error bars ComboChart

The dot seems to reflect an interval instead of a value. What I really wanted was to make is a chart that uses a straight line for the benchmark:

Individual target lines on a QlikView bar chartIn this blog I will show you how you can make such a chart.

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Visual FX in QlikView (5): Merry Xmas 2014!

Christmas time is near again, so it’s time for another visual effect in QlikView: the QlikFix 2014 Christmas Card. Using the trusty animated scatter plot once more, I’ve built a little spinning Christmas tree (and, in the spirit of Christmas, added some awful music 😉 ). Check the video below:

The complete QVW can be downloaded below:

Download the 2014 QlikFix Christmas Card

Wishing you all happy holidays and all the best for 2015!

More visual FX in QlikView:

 

Remove scrolling tabs from QlikView Chart Properties

Remove scrolling tabs from QlikView Chart Properties

A short post today, but one that will fix a very common developer annoyance in QlikView 11 and 11.2; the scroll tabs in the chart properties dialog window. When you want to change properties on tabs that are on opposing sides of the tab row (for example, Dimensions and then Layout) you first have to click the scroll arrows before you can select the tab. Extremely annoying, if you ask me.

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