Report Development – The Data Community

This post provides a quick overview for each of the QlikView Sheet Objects.
Sheet Objects are the various objects that a developer or analyst places on a QlikView document’s sheet to provide the rich functionality of dashboards.

By right-clicking on an open area in a sheet, the below menu will appear. Select “New Sheet Object” to see the available Sheet Object options – which are – List Box, Statistics Box, Multi Box, Table Box, Chart, Input Box, Current Selections Box, Button, Text Object, Line/Arrow Object, Slider/Calendar Object, Bookmark Object, Search Object, Container, Custom Object, and System Table.

The sheet objects can also be created from the Design Toolbar selections.

Some of our example images are taken from the Movies Database application that comes with QlikView.

List Box
The “List Box” is one of the most heavily used QlikView sheet objects. It lists all the distinct values of a particular field. For example, you may have a List Box that displays all the products available within your data set. The List Box is often used as a menu, where a user selects a value to analyze the data based on that value.

The above example displays 3 List Boxes – the Director list box, the Actor list box, and the Title list box. When a user selects one or more values from one or more list boxes 9or any other object), the data in all other objects cascade to show only records relevant to that combination of selections.

Statistics Box
The “Statistics Box” is used to show aggregated representations of the data. There are several statistical aggregation functions that are available, such as Sum, Average, Min, Max, Std Dev, Null Count, and several more.

The above example shows “Statistics” for the Rating field – the number of ratings, the average rating, the min and max ratings, and the average and median ratings.

Multi Box
A Multi Box allows you to display several fields in a single object, with the values for each field available via a drop down. This object can be described as a set of List Boxes compacted together. The example screenshot below shows a Multi Box with the 3 fields, Director/Actor/Title, and by clicking any of the fields, you will get a drop down of all the values for that field – similar to a List Box for that field.

Clicking on Director will display the list of all Directors, as shown below. Similarly, you can Actor or Title to get those respective drop down lists.

Table Box
The Table Box, as the name implies, displays a table of records for the selected data fields.

Chart
The Chart object is used for creating charts of various types. Some of the chart types available include bar, line, combo, radar, scatter, grid, pie, block, funnel, gauge, and mekko charts, and pivot and straight tables.

The above shows one of the properties dialog tabs for the chart object – which shows some of the various chart types you can create.

Input Box
The Input Box object allows for users to enter a value. (which sets a variable that can be used for further processing)

Current Selections Box
The Current Selections Box displays all the selections that the user has selected. The Current Selections box is usually placed at the top of a sheet (dashboard page) in a position that allows users to easily see the selections that have been made.
Users are able to clear selections by clicking on the eraser beside the selection in the Current Selections Box, and the data on the sheet will change accordingly.

In the example above, the user has selected Rating 5 and Length Range 1 to 1.5 hrs.

Button
The Button object creates a button that can be configured to execute various types of actions. When clicked the configured action will be executed.

Text Object
The Text Object is used for adding simple text to the document/sheet. It can be used to display informational messages, directions, descriptions or titles and labels, or any kind of information that needs to be shared with viewers/users of the document.

Line/Arrow Object
This object is used to create a line with or without arrows, and vertical or horizontal or diagonal. This object can be used for many purposes such showing relationships and flows.

Slider/Calendar Object
The Slider/Calendar object is used to create either a slider with multiple values that the user can slide across to select, or a calendar that the user can use to find and select a date.

In the above slider, the user has selected Rating 4. In the calendar object, clicking the grid icon opens a calendar that allows selection.

Bookmark Object
The Bookmark object is used to save the selection state of the current sheet. If a bookmark is created after a specific Actor has been selected, when you select that bookmark, the selection and corresponding data in the sheet will be displayed based on that saved selection state of the bookmark.
Multiple bookmarks can be saved for each sheet. Each having a different set of saved selections.

Search Object
The Search Object allows users to search for values in entire data set or within a specific set of fields.

Container
The Container is a sheet space saving object that can contain multiple other objects, such as multiple chart objects. This allows you to display multiple views of the data within the same sheet “real estate” and change the view by clicking on the appropriate tab to get to each chart.

In the above example, the container contains 3 objects (3 charts), and therefore displays 3 tabs across the top, one for each chart. There are different possible orientations for the tabs – they can be to the left, right, top (as in this example), or bottom.

Custom Object
The custom object is a sheet object specifically intended to carry custom defined OCX replacement controls.
The Custom Object: Object Menu can be accessed from the Object menu, when the custom object is the active object.
Replacement controls are windowless OCX controls programmed by Qlik, yourself or third party vendors, which comply with the specifications for QlikView replacement OCX controls. The OCX control will be drawn in a rectangle on the sheet outlined by the underlying custom object. Communication between the OCX control and the QlikView document is maintained via the internal macro interpreter.

System Table
The System Table object creates a pivot table that shows the data structure of the qlikview document.

In future posts, we will be covering each object in depth.

This post shows an example of how to conditionally set Interaction (Action Links) on a column.

Most times, when you set “Interaction” on a column, you set it for the column under all conditions – this is the default. However, it is possible to conditionally set “Interaction” on a column – so that the Interaction link is conditionally available.

Let’s look at an example …

You have a pivot table displaying Values by day range as shown below. Interaction is set on the measure value, and therefore, a user can click on any of the measure values (in any column and any row) to drill/navigate to a more detailed report for example.

(Note that all the measure values are “blue” indicating that they are hyperlinks allowing navigation to some other BI content).

Let’s now assume that you only want to make the Interaction available for the measure values associated with “Value A”. Therefore, the row in your pivot table associated with “Value A” will have measure values that are clickable (hyperlinks), while the “Value B” row values will not. In other words, you only want to allow drill down/navigation on “Value A” data.

To do this, from your analysis, edit the column properties, and go to the Interaction tab, and Edit the relevant Action Link.

Change the “Show Link” property from “Always” to “Conditionally”.

Then enter the condition(s) in the Conditions box. Such as in our example, we want to show/activate the action link only for “Value A” values. So, choose the column, and then select “Value A” (and of course, do not select “Value B”).

Now when you go back to your report, action links will only be available on the measure values for “Value A” row.

(Note that only the measure values associated with “Value A” are “blue” indicating that they are hyperlinks allowing navigation to some other BI content; while “Value B” values are black indicating that they are not clickable.)

You can add more conditions and more complex conditions as necessary. One thought that came to mind … I could even see this being used to conditionally set Action Links based on users – allowing some users to be able to click the action links while others just see the data without being able to click and navigate to other detail.