Low down on Qlik Cloud 2.0

Qlik Cloud was launched along with Qlik Sense 1.0 at the end of last year. It allowed users of Qlik Sense Desktop to upload a document to the cloud and then share that application with other users. There were limitations. For example, the number of users that you could share with was limited to 3. Also, once they were up there, the applications could not be edited.

With the launch of Qlik Sense 2.0, we were promised new functionality, and this appears to have been made available in the last couple of days.

Now, as well as uploading applications that have been created from Qlik Sense Desktop, we can also upload files and create brand new applications directly on the service. Not only that, but we can make use of Qlik's new DataMarket to bring in curated data sources such as demographics, currencies and weather.

The number of users that we can share applications with has been increased to 5. But we have a brand new feature in that we can choose to share individual charts from these applications on our blogs and other media - like this:



Creating new applications is very straightforward. First, we need to provide some data (Excel, CSV, etc.):

We can now start to create new applications in our personal cloud:

When we create the application, we can choose to load in the data that we have uploaded:

And Qlik will parse it out for us:

Or we can choose to get data from the Data Market:

We can bring in multiple data sources and Qlik provides a profiler to suggest the correct data links.

Once we have loaded the data successfully, we can start creating content with the drag/drop interfaces:

When we have created a chart, there is a right-click (or tap-and-hold) option to share it. We can get a link that can be used to share via email, social media, etc., or an embed link to share via blogs and other web pages (as I have used above):

All very, very easy!

Part of the success of Tableau Software is that they have had Tableau Public, where users can create content and share it for free. Only time will tell whether the Qlik Cloud solution will challenge that, but not having to have an installed Windows application will certainly be interesting for many people.

So, that is the down-low on Qlik Cloud - don't keep it on the low down. Time for you to go and play and start creating data applications in the cloud!

---

Stephen Redmond is a Data Visualization professional. He is author of Mastering QlikView, QlikView Server and Publisher and the QlikView for Developer's Cookbook