In the previous chapters, we looked at how to go about creating Qlik Sense apps.
In this chapter, we look at sharing those apps with colleagues and friends in the cloud. We will cover the following topics:
Why using the cloud makes sense
Sharing Qlik Sense Desktop apps in the cloud
Creating Qlik Sense apps directly in the cloud
Maintaining Qlik Sense Cloud apps
Adding context through external data from Qlik DataMarket
Deploying software in the cloud removes infrastructure challenges and provides access to data and computing power, software, and services from virtually anywhere. For Qlik Sense Enterprise customers, this might mean a large organization choosing to deploy Qlik Sense apps on a private (internal) cloud, using a platform such as AWS, for example. This could enable them to scale up their applications in a cost-effective and flexible manner. Deploying using a private cloud model is out of the scope of this chapter; however, it instead covers how Qlik Sense Desktop users can also get the benefits of the public cloud in two ways—through sharing apps and adding data content.
So, you've built a Qlik Sense Desktop app and you want to share it with others, either colleagues or friends, so you can find insights together. The cloud is the best way to do that, and doing so is built directly into Qlik Sense.
Qlik Sense isn't just for work, playing with data can be fun too. In this chapter, I will share a Qlik Sense app exploring UK music singles chart data going back to 1952.
To upload an app, you first need to log on to Qlik Sense Cloud on the Web. From the Qlik Sense hub, there are two ways to open Qlik Sense Cloud: either by clicking on the cloud image in the top-right corner of the window or by right-clicking on the app itself. Both the actions will take you to the Qlik Sense Cloud Hub in a browser. At this point, if you haven't done so already, you'll have to register.
The following screenshot shows the option for in-built cloud uploading:
Options to upload to Qlik Sense Cloud from the desktop hub...
Adding externally sourced data to any business intelligence app can yield new insights. For example, looking at how the weather affects the sales of certain products could be hugely beneficial to retailers. Much data is freely available on the Web, but it is rarely in an easily consumable form. This is exactly the problem Qlik DataMarket solves, by providing curated, normalized datasets that can be easily loaded into Qlik Sense available in the cloud.
Note that Qlik DataMarket works as a source for Qlik Sense irrespective of whether you are running in the cloud or not.
The UK music chart app contains a field showing the country, the musician, or the group it originated from. Perhaps it would be interesting to know which countries have had more hits per head of population. It is easy to do this in Qlik Sense, and can be done directly with cloud deployed apps too.
First, within the app, open the Data Manager and click on Add data and select Qlik DataMarket. This shows you a menu with the categories of data available. In this case, select Demographics as shown in the following screenshot:
Qlik DataMarket data categories
At this point, the available datasets containing demographic information are shown, including those that are premium (that is, paid for) and those that are free. In this case, the free dataset World population by country is what is needed:
At this point, the data from the set is selected before loading:
In the app, there is already a field called Country, which Qlik Sense uses as a key in order to allow you to work with...
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