Version Updates
Qlik Sense usually release 1 big update each quarter, so in this blog post we’ll only discuss the one update that was released in the first quarter of 2024. Do note: the Qlik Cloud version is continuously being updated so some of the Q1 updates might have already been available at the end of 2023. Additionally, the cadence of updates will change from now on to only deliver a new (big) release 2 times per year (May and November).
- New Pivot Table visual
The pivot table has been updated with a bunch of new features:
- Dimension headers
- Custom symbols/foreground color/background color for NULL values
- Grid styling (width and color)
- Font styling (size, color and family for headers AND cell contents)
- Styling and placement options for ‘Total’ values
- Scrollbars outside of the chart
- Interactive sort of dimensions
This new graph is separately available in the Visualization bundle but will eventually replace the native Pivot Table.
- New Layout Container visual
This is the coolest part of the update. No more working with the limited space and limited grouping of graphs inside a container. You’ll be able to:
- Stack charts on top of each other (eg overlay the KPI graph over a line graph)
- Combine charts into a new visualization
- Group different type of objects together
- Shadow and chart borders
More options have been added to most the graphs to be able to adjust the borders and add a shadow to your border to give it a depth effect. In the past the border settings were linked with the theme of the dashboard, but this can now be overridden.
- Copy and past style options!
In the past you used to either re-create a graph or manually change each graph if you wanted to change the style of multiple (similar) graphs. Now we finally have the option to just copy past settings from one graph to another!
- Extra styling options added to the Filter Pane and Grid, Funnel, Sankey charts
The normal styling options have now also been added to the mentioned charts (title, subtitle, background,…)
- Data window functions in engine load script
You can now perform complex calculations on their data tables in the Qlik load script to perform aggregation on different partitions without losing the granularity of the data. This used to be possible but mainly through workarounds and resulted in very bad performance.
- The Window function performs calculations from multiple rows, producing a value for each row separately.
- The WRank function performs ranking calculations inside Window.
These front end updates can also be found with examples on the Qlik Sense demos website:
https://demos.qlik.com/qliksense/WhatsNew?q=new
Link to help post on Qlik:
Upcoming
- Fix to sizing of (sub)titles and footnotes.
By the time this blog post has been published the following change will already be added to the latest Qlik Cloud version. This change will come in the May 2024 release.
Cosmetic changes will be made to the font sizes for titles, subtitles and footnotes. Currently, there is a bug in the sizing of these elements. If you select 16px, you won’t in fact be displaying the title at 16px but at 17.23px. With the May release this will be fixed. This means that when the your environment is updated to the May 2024 version all these elements will appear smaller than they used to look before the update.
So, it’s important to keep this in mind when upgrading and making sure you fix your existing dashboards if needed.
- Cyclic dimensions
Cyclic dimensions enable users to swiftly alternate between fields showcased as dimensions within visualizations. By utilizing a button, users can cycle through the fields contained within the cyclic dimension. In contrast to drill-down dimensions, fields organized within a cyclic dimension do not require a hierarchical relationship.
- Pivot and Straight table improvements
Interesting Reads
- New Layout Container
A very interesting watch is the video posted on the official Qlik Sense YouTube channel. In the video they go through the functionalities and examples of the new layout container graph.
- “Version Control” in Qlik Cloud
A new post that goes in detail on how to setup a type of version control for your Qlik Apps using Qlik App Automation. It is not yet real version control which tracks each change done but it does automate creating “backups” when publishing a new version of an app.
- Alternate States
The following article goes through an example use case of alternate states in Qlik. (Basically, a type of A/B testing)
https://community.qlik.com/t5/Design/Alternative-State-Use-Cases/ba-p/2414087