Editing Files

Owned by Sales (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 12, 2022 by Jean-Philippe Golay
9 min read

Table of contents

You can work with a file by clicking on the file and highlighting the file within the file list. Please note you can select multiple files at the same time (grey background) so should you wish to check out / in or publish multiple files you can click on multiples files and then select the action you wish to apply.

File Edit

  • Selecting a file and clicking on the Edit button will bring up the selected file’s properties view.

File Properties: Identification information & +Check-Out

  • The main window will provide the Identification information and check-out information about the file.

File Properties: Versions

Please note: The specific file version properties provides the same action buttons you have on a file level so every action you perform will be performed on that specific version of a file not master file that is managed in the WIP repository. See Edit File section for a description of the action buttons.

  • Edit

  • Delete

  • Get

  • Check In and Check-Out

  • Undo Check-Out

  • Publish

  • Compare

  • Cancel

  • The versions section of a file will provide you with all the historical version of the file within the WIP repository

  • Selecting a specific version of the file provides the Edit option

  • Clicking on the Edit option will open that specific version’s properties where the user can review the version properties and version content (see compare) of the specific version

Impact Analysis

  • The impact analysis provides a view of both the file impact analysis as well as the data lineage of the file

  • The Impact analysis view if dynamic so the user can click on the active (input/output) file to view where this file is being utilized and or an input / output for other files

  • As an example: Clicking on VM_DL03_DASHBOARD.qvf in the image below will take me to the impact analysis view of where this .qvf file gets it’s data and it’s data’s source view.

  • In this view we can now see that Sales orders.qvd is actually generated from sales orders.xls which loads the VM_DL01_QVDGEN.qvf which is a .qvd generator which then generates the sales orders.qvd file.

Publication History

  • Publication History of a file will show a view of every version of the file and where that version which environment that version was published into.

  • You can select the Environment you wish to view from the provided dropdown list of environments. Changing the environment from the dropdown list will show that file’s publication history for the selected environment.

  • You can select a file from the list and click on the Rollback button which will rollback the file to the previous version of the file that was published into that specific environment.

  • This feature is very handy should you publish a file into an environment and the file is not working anymore so some or other reason. You can rollback to the previous working version of the file while you fix the problem in the latest version.

  • In the image below you can see we have replaced version 1.0.9 of the file with version 1.0.8 of the file so the latest version of the file in the environment is 1.0.8

File Destinations

  • The destinations of a file are the destination of the file you pre-set when a file is check-out or published to the selected environment. This will override the destination settings of the folder

  • This feature is very useful for administrators of environments to ensure that the files not exposed to areas they should not be in for governance and security reasons

  • The Destinations options enable the user to add multiple destinations per environment or edit existing destinations or delete destinations

  • You can rename the file when you publish to an environment, so that the file has a different name within the destination folder/stream you have selected

Variables

  • File level variables enable the user to assign variables and environment wise value to the file or link globally defined variables to the file, when a file is checked-out or published to an environment.

  • Variables are useful for instance if a user wishes a file language to change based on the environment they published the file into they can define the file language for that environment as a variable and when users access the file from that environment the default language will be the variable language. It can be also used to define functions, paths and connections in the scripts and in the application UI

  • To set an value for a certain environment, first select the environment on the right, then double-click on the “Environment Value” and set that value. The value will be pushed in the file after next publish or check-out

  • Variables can be added by clicking on the Add variable

    • Provide a name and variable value for the variable

  • Global variables can be linked by clicking on the Link button

    • Select the global variable you wish to assign to the file

Connections

Connection are retrieved on checkin and will be used only when publishing to create the connection if it does not exists. As WIP can’t retrieve users credentials you might need to fill the Username and Password in order the connection to be created on the destination.

  • Folder Connections are defined on a global or local file level

  • See Folder Connections section for a detailed description of Connections

  • You can create new connections by clicking on the Add Connections button

  • You can Link global folder connections to the file by selecting the Link button.

  • You can unlink global connections by selecting the connection and clicking the unlink button

Complexity Analysis

  • You can review the complexity analysis across different file versions within the complexity analysis view on a file level.

  • The complexity analysis provides you with a view of all the different categories that influence the complexity of a file and the score, percentage or value of the specific category for the file.

  • This view is useful to see when you are in the process of optimizing your application or you wish to see why an application suddenly does not perform well within an environment.

File Check-Out

  • Selecting a file and clicking the Check-Out button will automatically check-out the application or file to the destination defined for the file and add the check-out metadata to the checked out version (lock and owner)

File Check-In

  • Selecting a file and clicking the Check-In button (should this file be checked-out) will bring up the file check-in form

  • The check in form requires that you add a Check-In Comment to the version you are checking-in. The comment allows other users to follow what changes you have applied to the version

  • Version Numbers are automatically assigned. You can change the major version number but the Minor and Revision numbers are automatically assigned to the version

  • Check-In But Keep Locked enables you to check in the file but keep it locked for editing by other users. This is generally used when you are in UAT process with a business/testing user and you don’t wish other developers to change the file while you are in testing phase

  • Empty Qlik Data is automatically ticked as some files could be very large and there is no benefit of bringing all the file data into the WIP repository unless you are weary of the source system and / or there is no time for a reload when the file has been published. Disable global option Enable “Check-in with Data” will automatically check and lock the option preventing any user to check-in any app with data

 

Publish

  • Selecting one or multiple files and clicking on the Publish button will take you to the file publication form.

  • The default form will show you the File Name, publish comment, publication type, publication environment and reload automatically options.

Publish Comment

  • The publish comment is a required field and adds information to the publication for other users to better understand what has changed in the file published from the previous file published.

Publication Type

  • The publication type provides two options for publishing your file, Should you have the rights to publish you will be presented with this options

    • Immediate: Publishes the file to the selected environment(s) immediately

    • ForApproval: Does not publish the file but sends a request to the administrator users to publish the file. Note that is you have only “publish for approval” right on one of the selected environments then you will only be able to publish for approval, not immediately.

Publication Environment

  • Clicking on the select publication environment will bring up all the possible environments the user is able to publish into.

  • You can select one or multiple environments to publish into at the same time

  • Selecting an environment will bring up the environment checklist as well as the complexity analysis view for the environment

Reload Automatically Once Published

  • Qlik Sense

    • Unchecked: data from the current application is retained

    • Checked: WIP creates and launches a reload task (“WIP Manually triggered reload of <appname>“) to reload the data

  • QlikView

    • Unchecked: data from the current application is lost

    • Checked and QlikView publisher defined in the server definition : WIP creates and launches a reload task to reload the data

    • Checked and no publisher defined : a 3 minutes WIP reload is trigered, only set it for small apps and for development.

Environment Checklist 

The environment checklist if defined per environment and has optional and required checks per environment that should be fulfilled and checked by the developer/publisher or they will not be able to publish the application into that environment

  • Selecting multiple environments will bring up the checklists for all selected environments

Environment Complexity: 

  • of the file compared to the index threshold set for that environment and will return a pass or fail view per environment selected. This will help the user identify whether his file will be allowed to be published into the environment or not.

  • Should you have a file that fails the environment complexity analysis threshold you can click on the Fail message to review the reason your file has failed i.e. in the example image below the Cardinality of the data threshold is to high for the 02-QSENSE-223-PRD environment

  • Should you have a file that fails the environment complexity analysis threshold WIP will enquire whether you wish to request dispensation from the Administrator users in order to publish the file. This means that the request will go to Admin users and they will be able to publish the file should they approve the publication of the file to the specific environment.

  • Should you meet all the publication requirements your file will now be published into the environment(s) selected and can be automatically reloaded once published into the environment.

File Publications

  • Selecting a file and clicking the publish button will bring up the publications view for that specific file

  • The publications view of the file will show you the latest version of the file across all environments as well as who published it and what the publication path for the file within that environment is i.e. which stream or folder it is published to in that environment.

  • The publications view also provides a button that will take you to the Rollback view in the publication history of the file, should you wish to rollback the file within a certain environment.

Package (Folder)Destination

Deselect all files and press “Destination” to get “Package Destination” (not file destination) then select the destination for the environment

  • The destinations view provides a view of the package destinations when it is checked out or published across the different environments.

Destination Prov: The provenance of the destination, it can be:

  • Envi : destination is defined in the environment itself. For universes default it’s the root universe for files the “Public Folders”

  • Current Package: the destination is set in the selected folder

  • Inh Package: the destination is inherited from a parent folder

Edit : see Edit Destination

Reset : only available if Destination Prov = “Cur Package” will remove the selected package destination and inherits from its parent or environment

Edit Destination

Will display the server browser to edit the destination

 

 

File More: Properties

  • Clicking on the file properties button will bring up the standard file properties view and alternative Version Content view.

  • The Version Content view provides you with a hierarchical structure view and values of all the metadata about your file. You can expand all or collapse all be clicking on the buttons provided.

File More: Compare

  • Selecting multiple versions will provide the Compare option which will enable the user to compare two versions of the same file to one another

  • There are two ways to compare your files

    • Selecting the Compare function from the file level will automatically compare the latest version of the file with the previous version of the file. The comparison will provide you with a hierarchical view of the structure and value of the previous version of the file on the left and the comparative view of the latest version on the right and will compare all changes on every line of metadata

    • Editing a file and going to the versions section of the file and then selecting two different versions of the file will provide you with a comparison of two specifically selected version of the file

  • Selecting the Only Difference option will show you only the differences of changes between the applications

  • Change Colour Codes:

    • Red: Red means that something has been deleted from the previous version of the file

    • Blue: Blue means that something has changed from the previous version of the file

    • Green: Green means that something has been added to the latest comparable version of the file vs. the previous version being reviewed

File More: Delete

  • Selecting a version and clicking the delete button will delete that file or file version from the repository

File More: Get

  • Selecting a version clicking the Get button will Get a copy of the file but not check the file out of the repository

File More: Undo Check-Out

  • You can undo a checkout should you wish to ignore any changes made to the file within the checked-out stream/folder.