Deep Dive

Light touch report distribution with Chart Monitoring

The first thing to know about reporting in Qlik is you don’t always need to delve into a Qlik app to get what you need.

sometimes you just need a quick overview of your core KPIs without getting muddied in the detail.

That’s where Chart Monitoring comes in.

Chart Monitoring is a Qlik Sense SaaS feature that lets you track KPIs directly from the Qlik Sense Hub - no need to open your apps every time.

It’s important for a couple of reasons:

• It keeps everything in one centralized, auto-updating view.

• When the source app data is refreshed, the monitored visualizations in the activity center updates automatically.

Why You Need It

• Quick Access: See KPIs on your Activity Center - no dashboards required.

• Automatic Updates: Charts refresh every time data reloads.

• Historical Trends: Compare the last 10 reloads to track changes.

• Time-Saving: Eliminate manual report exports and dashboard refreshes.

• Mobile-Friendly: Perfect for on-the-go decision-makers and sales teams.

Who Should Use It?

• Sales & Marketing: Track lead conversions & revenue at a glance.

• Operations & Finance: Monitor daily cash flow & performance instantly.

• Executives: Get key insights in seconds, no deep dives needed.

• Business Analysts: Compare historical data without running queries.

But what would a Real-World scenario look like?

Here’s how I recently worked with a sales team to implement Chart Monitoring.

The sales team tracks revenue and conversions. Before Chart Monitoring, sales managers:

• Opened Qlik apps multiple times a day.

• Applied filters manually to track key metrics.

• Refreshed dashboards repeatedly to see updated KPIs.

With Chart Monitoring:

• Sales leaders get real-time revenue updates in the Hub/Activity Center.

• Lead conversion trends auto-update—no manual checks needed.

• Quick view of past 10 reloads helps spot pipeline trends early.

End result? Faster decisions and more proactive sales strategies.

🫸 Wait, that all sounds great Brian, but how do I set that up?

I got you…

How to Set Up Chart Monitoring in 5 Steps

Step 1: Open your Qlik Sense App

Navigate to the app that contains the chart you want to monitor.

Identify the KPI or visualization that provides the key metric you need at a glance.

Step 2: Click Monitor Chart

Locate the chart, right-click on it and select the Monitor in activity centers option.

You can also optionally specify Tags and decide if the Location of the chart is in your Personal Space or the Space where your app is stored.

These steps will allow you to pin the visualization to your Qlik Sense Hub for easy tracking.

Step 3: Retain Selections & Enable Auto-Refresh

The monitored chart will automatically retain your selections and refresh itself whenever the data reloads, ensuring you're always viewing the latest insights.

Step 4: Access Historical Trends

Click on the monitored chart to access a historical view of the last 10 reloads.

This helps identify trends and detect anomalies in your data over time.

You can even compare 2 snapshots in Chart History by clicking on the 1 and 2 which appear in the top right hand corner of the snapshot!

Step 5: Deep Dive with “View in App”

If you need more detail, click “View in App” to navigate directly to the full dashboard, where you can further analyze and manipulate the data.

Here’s some best practices for Chart Monitoring, as it’s something that should be used judiciously to get the best out of it…

1. Choose Only Key Charts → Avoid dashboard clutter, focus on essentials.

2. Use Historical Trends → Compare past reloads for better insights.

3. Combine with Alerts → Set alerts for threshold KPIs, use monitoring for ongoing tracking (We’ll cover Alerts in a future edition!)

4. Make It Mobile-Friendly → It’s not a good idea to monitor complex tables for example.

5. Use for time-sensitive KPIs → like daily revenue, user activity, or inventory tracking.