Author Archives: Barry Harmsen

Barry Harmsen

Hi there, I'm Barry and I'm a Business Intelligence Consultant at Bitmetric and based in the Netherlands. Originally from a background of 'traditional' Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and Performance Management, for the past 10 years I have been specializing in Qlik and a more user-centric form of BI. I have done numerous QlikView and Qlik Sense implementations in many different roles and industries. In 2012 I co-authored the book QlikView 11 for Developers. You can follow me on Twitter at @meneerharmsen.

The QlikFix blog has moved to the Bitmetric blog

The QlikFix blog is moving to the Bitmetric blog. Check out https://bitmetric.nl/blog from now on.

Hi there!

As of February 28th 2023 we’ve moved all our blogging activities to our Bitmetric company blog (https://bitmetric.nl/blog). Why? Because it just seemed more practical than running two separate blogs (also, it looks much nicer!). Check it out, we’ve already have more than 50 posts there, including our weekly Qlik certification test prep questions (follow our LinkedIn company page if you want to participate in the weekly questions).

We’ll gradually copy and refresh some of the content from the QlikFix blog to the Bitmetric Blog. Of course, we’ll keep this site running in archive mode so you can revisit the golden oldies.

If you have any questions then do not hesitate to get in touch. Take care and hope to see you at the Bitmetric blog.

Kind regards,

Barry Harmsen and the team at Bitmetric

Join us in Madrid at the Masters Summit for Qlik

Masters Summit for Qlik - Madrid - September 19 - 21, 2022

The Masters Summit for Qlik is the premier advanced training event for Qlik Sense and QlikView. Since 2013 more than 1200 developers from all over the world have taken their Qlik skills to the next level at one of our events.

After 2 years of online trainings, we’re glad to return to in-person events, starting in the beautiful city of Madrid in September 2022.

Join Rob Wunderlich, Oleg Troyansky, Bill Lay, Nick Webster and Bitmetric‘s Barry Harmsen for 3 days of Qlik deep dives, peer networking, ready to use resources and much more.

Are you ready to take your Qlik skills to the next level? Then join us in Madrid!

The Masters Summit for Qlik in Madrid offers a complete developer program that consists of sessions on Data Modeling, Advanced Scripting, Set Analysis and Advanced Aggregation, Effective Visualizations, Performance Tuning and Qlik Sense Integration. Besides learning best practices and tricks of the trade, you’ll also take home many ready-made examples, tools and drop-in solutions to use in your own environment.

Visit the Masters Summit for Qlik website for all information and registration.

PinIt 2.1 sneak preview – improved favorites

With PinIt anyone can create self-service mashups, letting you combine charts from multiple Qlik Sense apps into overviews that are relevant to you. No code, no hassle.

Next week we’ll be releasing version 2.1 of PinIt. One of the improved features that I quite like are favorites. These let you instantly switch between your favorite apps, sheets and objects. Watch a quick demonstration in the video below.

PinIt is free to use, so if you want to try it, you can download it from our website here:

Get PinIt for Qlik Sense


Another feature I quite like is the Shared Calendar. This let’s you use a common calendar across all apps on your pinboard. The video below gives you an impression of how it works:

If you’ve had a chance to try PinIt then I’d be very interested in hearing your feedback!

Season’s greetings!

Season’s greetings from your friends at Bitmetric and the QlikFix! It’s been more than 6 years since I added an entry into the visual FX category, but recent technological advances at Qlik have finally made it possible to create animated scatter charts in Qlik Sense as well. So without further ado, here’s our Qlik Sense animated greeting to you. Wishing you and yours happy holidays and all the best for 2021!

Want to see how it works? Download the QVF file by clicking here.
This QVF uses our 2018 Christmas Theme, which you can download here.

Music credits: Wham – Last Christmas (8-bit) by Mongrelvids

SenseTheme Premium – QlikWorld discount

Style Qlik Sense your way with SenseTheme

If you’ve been working with Qlik Sense for a while, then you may have come across SenseTheme, our free, online editor to create custom themes for Qlik Sense. Every week, hundreds of themes are created and downloaded using this tool.

Did you know we also offer a premium version?

While we offer a lot of functionality in the free version, we also offer a premium version for consultants and Qlik partners that offers even more value. Such as the option to save and edit themes in your own private account, add custom CSS, get email support and remove the ads. You’ll also get first dibs on all the other cool stuff that we’ll be adding to SenseTheme (most of which will probably not make it to the free version).

If you frequently need to create custom themes for Qlik Sense, then you certainly want to check out SenseTheme Premium.

Celebrating QlikWorld with a 20% discount

To celebrate QlikWorld, we’re offering you a 20% discount on your first year SenseTheme Premium subscription. Both for Consultants and Qlik Partners. This offer lasts until June 30th 2020, so don’t miss out!

Click here for more information.

Auto AutoNumber your key fields

A quick note on a cool feature that I recently learned from Oleg Troyansky: AutoNumber.

I hear you thinking: “What? You didn’t know about AutoNumber? It’s been around for years. Hand over your Luminary badge!“. Admittedly, this is also what I thought when I hear Oleg mention it but it turned out that I misunderstood. Oleg wasn’t talking about the AutoNumber() script function, but the AutoNumber script statement. This statement was added in the June 2018 release of Qlik Sense (as well as QlikView 12.20) and lets you AutoNumber multiple fields, across multiple tables in a single line of script. And no, despite it being available for over a year, I hadn’t heard about it before. I’ll certainly be using it going forward though!

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Qlik named a leader again in the 2019 Magic Quadrant

Qlik has been named a Leader in the 2019 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms for the 9th consecutive year! More information and a write up by Qlik’s Dan Sommer can be found here. The full report can be requested here.

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Qlik named a leader in the 2018 Magic Quadrant

Qlik has been named a Leader in the 2018 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms for the 8th consecutive year. Although Tableau and Microsoft seem to have expanded their lead, Qlik has made some excellent progress along the “Completeness of vision” axis. With all the cool stuff that is coming up in the next year, I am sure this will be followed next year by more success along the “Ability to execute” axis.

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Qlik introduces Professional and Analyzer licenses for Qlik Sense

Qlik announces Professional and Analyzer licenses for Qlik Sense

As of today, Qlik has changed to a new licensing model for Qlik Sense. To those of you who’ve been around the Qlik ecosystem a little longer, this change will sound very familiar. Read on for a short summary of the most interesting changes.

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Meltdown & Spectre impact on Qlik products

Meltdown and Spectre are two vulnerabilities disclosed in early 2018 that affect nearly every processor manufactured in the last 20 years. The initial assessment was that patching these vulnerabilities could in some cases lead to a 30% performance decrease on server workloads. Those are very serious numbers!

This may read like old news, but new patches have become available and some recommendations have changed. It is a good idea to regularly check up on these issues and avoid further problems.

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