Qlik Sense: Configuring Your Narrative
Documentation for Arria NLG’s Extension for Qlik Sense Desktop
This documentation is organized as follows:
Import Arria’s extension and a sample Qlik Sense report
Configuring and generating a narrative
Overview
The core insights delivered by Arria’s extension are determined by the dimensions, measures, and statistics you select in the widget. You configure your narrative by telling the widget what you want. This happens in three steps:
1. Tell me about your data. You select the dimensions and measures you want to be covered in the narrative, and then characterize them.
2. Tell me what you want to say. You select the kind of analysis you want to perform (e.g. descriptive statistics, trends, variance) and then provide the necessary parameters.
3. Tell me how to say it. You preview the generated text to decide on how much narrative you want – something brief, or something more comprehensive.
Import Arria’s extension and a sample Qlik Sense report
You’ll begin by downloading Arria’s extension and a sample Qlik Sense report.
Prerequisites:
- Qlik Sense Desktop (free download)
- Arria NLG Studio account (free trial) https://app.studio.arria.com/
- A ZIP file from Arria (the Arria Qlik Sense extension).
Audience: BI analysts, BI developers
Download and install Arria’s extension and sample Qlik Sense report
1. Download the Arria Qlik Sense extension.
2. Extract the ZIP file.
3. Copy the extracted folder (ArriaQlikSense2.0) to the Extensions folder in your Qlik Sense installation folder (\Qlik\Sense\Extensions).
4. Download this sample Qlik Sense report and copy it to \Qlik\Sense\Apps.
5. In Qlik Sense, open the report (Quick Start Project).
6. In the toolbar, click Edit.
7. In the assets panel, click Custom objects.
Under Extensions, you should see the Arria NLG extension.
8. Click the Arria NLG extension, then click the Add to sheet icon.
The Arria widget is added to the sheet:
Configuring and generating a narrative
Add dimensions and measures
In the Arria widget, let’s add some dimensions and measures.
1. Click Add dimension, then select Segment.
2. In the properties panel at the right, click Dimensions.
You should see Segment listed.
3. Click Add dimension, then select another dimension: Product.
4. Do the same to add the dimension Year.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you select the dimension Year at the bottom of the Dimensions list (scroll down). Do not select Year under the Date hierarchy.
5. Now add some measures. In the properties panel, click Measures.
6. Add the measure Sales.
a. In the Sales row, click the arrow.
b. Choose the aggregation type Sum(Sales).
7. Add the measure Profit, and again choose the Sum aggregation type: Sum(Profit).
Tell me about your data
You can now configure your narrative.
1. In the Arria widget, make sure the Configure Narrative tab is selected and you see 1. Tell me about your data as follows:
2. In the top-right corner of the widget, click the Full screen icon to expand the working area.
3. Scroll down to view all the dimensions and measures you added.
4. For the Sales and Profit measures, select Entity Type: currency and specify USD as the Unit:
Tell me what you want to say
Click Next to advance to 2. Tell me what you want to say. For now, leave the default Descriptive statistics option selected, but deselect the Variance option:
Tell me how to say it
Click Next to advance to 3. Tell me how to say it. Either click Important things or Tell me everything and click Generate Text. You will see the report generated from the data:
Click Stop editing sheet on the top menu and then you can select parts of your visualizations and you will see the generated text changing according to your selections.
Guides to Arria’s extension
For more details about Arria’s extension, see:
Basic things to understand about configuring a narrative
Reference for configuring a narrative
Other documentation for Arria’s extension
For more information, see:
Using Drilldown with Narratives