Qlik Object - Charts

Adding chart object

To add a Qlik chart as an element to your report and design it, perform the following steps.

1. On your Sense sheet, select the ancoreShare button to which you want to add the object.
2. On the properties panel, click Report Elements > Add Element.
3. From the displayed options, the Object is already selected by default.
   If you modify an existing element, click on Type and select Object from the dropdown list.
4. Click the Select Qlik Object button and scroll down to the following section for next steps.

NOTE: The Add Element button is always available at the bottom of the properties panel. For multiple elements, please scroll down to see the button.

Selecting chart object

1. Click the Select Qlik Object tab.
2. From the displayed Select sheet drop-down list, choose the sheet from which you want to pick the chart.
   You will only see the sheets to which you have access.
3. Click a chart to select it, set some basic positioning properties first, which are explained in the next segment below, and then click Apply to exit the window.
   
   

Positioning and sizing

For convenience, you can specify the main object settings for positioning and sizing the element already here. The same settings are also available on the properties panel, and you can change these properties from there at any time.

These same settings are also available on the properties panel, and you can change these properties from there at any time.

To position and size the chart on your report you can set:

• Anchor: Specifies the relative position to the preceding element.
• Size: Specifies the size of the chart on the report.
• Spacing: Specifies the distance of the chart to other neighboring elements.

See details about these settings in sections further below: Anchor, Size, Spacing.

To learn more in general about how those settings work together and affect each other, and how to precisely position the elements on your report by combining them, go to Positioning and Sizing elements.

Once done, click Apply to save your changes and close the window.

Caption

Link to URL

The Link to URL field allows you to add a link to the chart object. When the report is generated, the URL is embedded in it. Clicking the object image on the report redirects the users to the URL specified here. This is particularly useful when you want users to access the live view of the object in the Sense environment (ensure they have sufficient access rights).

You can also use this to redirect users to a website, or any other kind of link.

NOTE: You will not be able to see or click the link in the Preview window. Download a draft report to verify the correct working of your link.

Calculation condition

In the Calculation Condition field, click fx to open the expression editor. Specify an expression to set a condition that needs to be fulfilled (true) for the object to be displayed on the report. It works just like the Activation Condition but is specific to each report element. 

Refer to the Qlik documentation to know more about expressions.

Element Properties

Anchor

If there is another existing element on your sheet that comes before in order, you will see an Anchor tab. This setting defines the relative position of elements on the report page. Drag the orange box "B" to set the position of this chart with respect to the preceding element "A" or choose an anchor position from the drop-down list above.

To learn more about how all the positioning and sizing settings work together and affect each other, and how to precisely position the elements on your report by combining them, go to Positioning and Sizing elements.

If your element is within a cycle section, please refer to details in Positioning elements within a Cycle.

Position

• Specify whether to place the chart object in the Body or Header of the report page. Elements in the header will be repeated on every page.
  For example, you can add a Text & Image custom object to add your logo to the report header, and a Treemap chart to the report body.
• Optionally, select to Place element on new page to add a new page to the report and start with this chart object there.
• Use the alignment options to align the chart object on the report page.
• Use the Rotation options to rotate the chart object in four different angles.

These settings are only general positioning properties. To define the precise position and size of an element, you have to combine the three settings: Anchor, Size, Spacing.

To learn more about how all the positioning and sizing settings work together and affect each other, and how to precisely position the elements on your report by combining them, go to Positioning and Sizing elements.

Size

Click the Size tab to set the size of the chart on your report, the scaling of its content, and the page break behavior.

Type

Here, you can choose any of the following options:

• Automatic: Select this option to automatically adjust the size of the element while maintaining the aspect ratio on the report page. It reflects the size of the chart as it is on the Sense sheet.
• Percentage of page size: Select this option to define the Width and Height as a percentage of the report page.
• Numeric value: Select this option to provide a specific Width and Height value manually. By default, the size is measured in millimeters, but you can change the page unit in the Report Settings.

Scale

Scaling affects the content resolution of a chart object (or a table object, if Process Table as Image is enabled).

You can either provide a numeric value to define the scaling of the chart object or use an expression.
For example, if you have set the scale as 2, the chart scales twice in size, showing a more detailed view. The text gets smaller with a higher scale, but as this is still a dynamic web object at the time the image is taken in Qlik Sense, it adjusts on the container automatically and therefore may display more details.

Note that scaling is not zooming, and also does not increase the size of the chart. It increases or decreases the scale of the image while maintaining its aspect ratio of the size you set for it. Therefore some objects like for example KPI charts won't show any difference, as they don't contain more information when increased. 

Of course this way the font size is reduced on your report, but combined with a high Image Quality and a larger Page Size, the scaling feature enables you to show a lot more information within your chart objects, that would otherwise only be available via scrolling on the live dashboard or reducing selections. On your generated PDF or PPTX report you can then zoom in to make all the information perfectly visible for readers.

Example:

Page Break

Set the behavior of the chart object for when the element overflows the page.
This might happen, when the element would need more height on the page to be displayed completely than there is space left on the page, due to the size and or the positioning settings of the chart object.

You can choose between the two following options:

• Auto: A page break will be inserted automatically, and the chart will be placed on the next page.
• Avoid: The image is clipped to only what space is available within the report page.

To learn more about how all the positioning and sizing settings work together and affect each other, and how to precisely position the elements on your report by combining them, go to Positioning and Sizing elements.

Spacing

Click the Spacing tab to define the distance of the chart from neighboring elements on your report. You can do this separately for Left, Right, Top, and Bottom. The behavior of spacing depends on the selected size type.

1. If you have set the size type as Automatic or Percentage of page size, then the spacing will act as padding and affect the visual size of the chart.
2. If you have set the size type as Numeric, the spacing will act as a margin and affect the actual position of the chart.

To learn more about how all the positioning and sizing settings work together and affect each other, and how to precisely position the elements on your report by combining them, go to Positioning and Sizing elements.

Border

Click the Border tab to define the width (thickness) and color of the border.
The border is particularly useful while working with multiple elements, as it forms an outer boundary for your object, and you can clearly see the position of various elements.

Image Quality

Click the Image Quality button to define Image Processing, the dpi (dots per inch) settings, and Image Compression.

For Image Processing, you can select between two methods, Detailed and Fast:

• Detailed: Select this option to get a high image quality of the chart. It takes around 3-6 seconds to process such an image, as it will include all the parts and details and offers higher dpi settings.
  You can select the image quality preset from Low (96dpi), Medium (192dpi), and High (384dpi), or specify a value in between. The lowest and highest values are limited by Sense.
• Fast: Select this option for faster image processing. However, some of your chart details (e.g. a legend or a caption) may not be rendered in the image. You cannot define any dpi settings for the fast mode, and the images are always displayed in low quality.

For Image Compression level, you can choose from Fast (low compression), Medium, or Slow (high compression) options. The Fast mode produces bigger file sizes and the Slow mode produces smaller file sizes.

Note

You can add Notes to your chart objects to provide additional information to your users.

For example, you can add notes for commenting on something, drawing attention to a specific area in the report, taking a note for yourself, giving some context for colleagues, adding information that is not in the title or legend of the chart, and so on.

To add a note:

1. Specify the Title (optional) and Notes in the corresponding fields.
2. Alternatively, click fx to open the expression editor and provide the Title and/or notes using Qlik Expressions.
3. You can also specify the Position of the note with respect to the object. Select the position from the four available options, top-left, top-right, bottom-left, and bottom-right.

If you generate a PDF report, then the notes are exported as actual annotations in the PDF file. Users with sufficient privileges can further edit them too, which enables active collaboration. The appearance of notes depends on the PDF viewer being used, For example, PDFs displayed on web browsers may show them different from what they are shown in Acrobat reader.

In the case of PPTX exports, the notes are shown in the Notes area at the bottom of each slide. As the PPTX does not show notes on objects, all the notes are shown collectively at the bottom. It is recommended to use Titles for notes to segregate them for each element.

NOTE: You will not be able to see the notes in the Preview window. You can download a draft report to see the notes.

TOC Table of Contents

If you added a TOC element to your report, you can choose for each other element, if it should appear in the table of contents or not. This might be useful to disable headers or paragraphs. You might also go for only enabling the header in the TOC instead of each object.

The following settings are available in this section:

• Show element in TOC: This is enabled by default and also applies should the TOC be set to Bookmarks only.
• Indent: The indent can also be set individually for each element in your TOC, creating a topic hierarchy. 
• Label: By default the element's Caption is populated as a label in the TOC, but you can choose a separate one here just for display in the TOC. 
• Font Style: This property can also be set individually for each element in this corresponding TOC menu of each element.

Events

With the help of a little JavaScript you can create On Before Element events for making selections or setting bookmarks in your app, based on an individual element. If you are familiar with JavaScript and the Qlik API, have a look at the fx Expression Editor of this setting to see examples and code snippets.