Stefan Stoichev

QlikView Access Point as Chrome Extension (Updated)

Stefan Stoychev -

If you have one Qlikview Access Point then you have no problems but when you have few Qlikview environments and multiple customers and want to open qv document then you are in trouble (kinda).

Organizing bookmarks is one solutions that helps.

I was thinking recently how to speed up the process of open document quickly and decided to make a little Chrome extension that will help.

The idea of the extension is simple - define few Qlikview Access Points links and get the documents that are available. Then just search the list for document and jump in it.

Here is the screenshot from the latest version

This is the list of the documents from the official Qlikview demo site

Documents List

When you open the extension you will see the full list of the documents (to which the logged user have access), document availability (ajax, mobile, ie) and server color (explained below).

Hovering over document will show you some additional info about the document like category, size, modified dates etc.

By default search is performed over various options:

  • qvw file name
  • category (if you set the document category in QMC)
  • server name tag (explained below)

Options

Options page is used to setup the list of servers.

For each server you need to specify

  • link - the root link in format http://server-ip-or-name
  • username - username to login in format DOMAIN\username
  • password - user password
  • Identifier - optional name tag. Can be used to filter documents
  • Color - optional. If you have multiple Access Point defined this color will give you more visual way to see to which server the document belong.

Overall options page view:

Color coding the servers can help sometimes:

Security

Chrome offer two ways of storing data from extension - local and sync. Both act the same way. The difference is that data stored using "sync" storage will be synced across all your Chrome sessions.

I've decided to use the "local" approach ... it just don't sync the data across internet.

Future

Nothing much left to be done actually. When I started the extension the current functionality was pretty much what I was imagined.

Few features might be added in the future:

  • Background sync - Extension will grab the documents list every X minutes in background and when you open the extension you will have the full list instantly (more likely to implement this) Implemented
  • More advanced search - at the moment you cannot sub filter the result after search. What I was thinking that will be nice when you type "server1" and the list is filtered if you then add ", marketing" in the search bar to filter the document for marketing category.
    Since im not the author of the search implementation it might be little tricky to implement this but it will be interesting :)
  • Sorting - option to sort the documents list by name, lat modified, category etc. Implemented

The extension is available in the Chrome Web Store

If you have any problems or questions don't waste time and mail me :)

Update (2014-10-01)

  • Background page is added. The extension will check for documents every 10 min. You can check manually for new documents from Options page --> Servers
  • Sorting options are added. Two main sorting options are available:
    • Title, Sever, Last Modify and Last updated
    • Asc and Desc
  • Fixed bug that was not loading all documents ... sometimes

Extension is updated in the chrome web store.

Hope you like it!
Stefan