A gray box in the middle of your Qlik Sense dashboard where the extension is supposed to be… Most users of Qlik Sense Extensions probably experienced this at least once. Fortunately there is our solution which can prevent this from happening. By using PlatformManager, the management of extensions and apps can be kept very simple. Start with reading this article and read more about the possibilities of PlatformManager.
The most important topics to manage your Qlik Sense Extensions
Using various Qlik Sense versions or various versions of extensions can lead to app problems. PlatformManager can help you to inventory and manage all these versions with as result a good working app. PlatformManager offers you the next options among others to support the use and management of Qlik Sense extensions:
1 How to import Qlik Sense Extensions
Qlik Sense Extensions can be added directly to PlatformManager from every Qlik Sense server. Extensions also can also be added to PlatformManager by loading a zip file.
Figure 1) Import in PlatformManager
2 What is checked during Import of Qlik Sense Extensions
During the import of a Qlik Sense app, PlatformManager checks if used extensions in that app are available in PlatformManager. If that’s not the case the app won’t be imported in PlatformManager. So there is an active check to prevent mistakes from missing extensions.
3 Dependencies
PlatformManager makes it comprehensible where the dependencies lie by showing which Qlik Sense dashboards make use of a certain extension and vice versa.
Figure 2) The tab ‘Extensions’ shows which Qlik Sense dashboards use a certain extension. This also works the other way around (see the figure below)
Figure 3) Details of a dashboard show which extensions are being used. The existence of the extensions is being checked from the publication to production.
4 A notification is given at Publication
When publishing from your Qlik Sense dashboards to other environments (Acceptance, Production, Testing, etc.), PlatformManager checks if the necessary extensions are in the concerning environment. Herewith a notification is given and the publication is stopped if the necessary extensions aren’t present. This can be resumed when the necessary extensions have been published to the concerning environment. Therefore a user won’t be able to see a dashboard with a gray cell because the extension that accounts for the visualization doesn’t exist in the Production environment.
5 Automated Documentation
It also is easy to obtain a complete overview of the used extensions. This using the automatically generated documentation. Therein among other things, the version-number, insight into the necessary files and the extension types. Herewith it is also possible to discover the existing of different versions of the same extension.
6 Get control on your versions
With PlatformManager you can make changes in extensions in Development. These changes are directly visible after the check-in whereupon you can deploy the new extension with PlatformManager. After that you can test and put it to production. Because you can also see which dashboards make use of an extension testing has become easier. In this way you can get control of all your versions. This information is not normally at your disposal in Qlik.
PlatformManager for your Qlik Environment!
PlatformManager offers besides extension-management also support for managing Qlik Sense (and Qlik View!) dashboards and the use of Qlik Sense Mashups and Widgets.