If you are a professional looking for a way to streamline Qlik Sense administration, you should consider decentralizing access management. YES Biżuteria has successfully implemented Admin Toolbox – a unique tool that makes it easy to delegate selected administrator privileges to designated employees.
Who is our client?
YES has been supplying jewelry to the Polish market for 40 years. From a small workshop, it has evolved into an extensive organization engaged not only in the production and distribution of jewelry, but also in retail sales through brick-and-mortar and online outlets.
The company has long used Qlik software, and recently also the Admin Toolbox tool.
The Challenge
At YES, the Business Intelligence platform – Qlik Sense – has been in use for many years. During this time, numerous applications have been created, each containing an average of several dozen sheets, which must be precisely shared with over 100 employees. Moreover, some users have access to entire applications, while others only to selected sheets. Administering such a system and maintaining consistency of rules over time is a considerable challenge – especially when the only available tool is the built-in Qlik Sense console, the Qlik Management Console (QMC).
The difficulty of sharing fragments of analyses can create the need to build redundant applications, which reduces efficiency. If you cannot grant access to a selected fragment of an application, you have to make copies of the application, modify them, and only then share them.
The need to manage access to analyses at a more granular level was justified by several factors:
- excessive administrator workload when granting permissions,
- additional and more difficult work for application designers (application copies; greater care required for application content due to access management limitations),
- longer time needed to make applications available to users,
- elimination of various kinds of organizational “self-imposed limitations” in the Qlik Sense area:
- “we could make analyses available to a larger group of users, but we don’t because it would be difficult to manage.”
- “we could create a new application/add analyses to an existing one, but we don’t because it would be difficult to manage.”
- “we could add new data to existing analyses, but we don’t because…”
Implementation
The AdminToolbox implementation was preceded by an operation to retrieve the entire access configuration of the Qlik environment. Hogart consultants then processed it into analytical form within the application. This provided full visibility into the current state of settings, and on this basis the target configuration was planned. It made it possible to verify the roles of individual users and assess the complexity of permission schemes across the entire organization. On this basis, rules were defined for assigning appropriate permissions to individual objects in AdminToolbox. The YES administrator created – based on system logs – a matrix with a list of users and the objects they use within applications, which made it possible to prepare definitions enabling the assignment of resources to specific groups.
On the administrative side, AdminToolbox is used by the main administrator at YES, as well as by individuals who serve as “delegates.” The system is so well configured that even a business user can use the tool without difficulty, with the ability, for example, to reload selected applications.
In the implementation process on the YES Biżuteria side, only the administrator was involved, while on the operational side, department managers provided additional clarifications regarding functionality, which made it possible, for example, to eliminate duplication of user roles.
What is extremely important – the collaboration with Hogart was very smooth and effective – potential issues were quickly resolved already at the implementation stage. As a result, the application became more transparent, and the speed of information retrieval also increased.
Benefits
In the assessment of Adam Landowski, Qlik Sense administrator at YES Biżuteria – AdminToolbox eliminated existing problems by enabling the definition of groups and their access to applications, but also to their elements. This helps in creating the appropriate dashboard or application, but also in defining access to selected data. This means there is no need to duplicate dashboards, and based on assignment to the appropriate group – the user can view a dashboard that contains the data they are authorized to see.
As a result, the number of applications decreased, while adding new users became very simple – a new employee sees what is assigned to them and what they use.
AdminToolbox additionally streamlines data access management, making it easy to delegate part of the administrator’s privileges to selected employees. This means that, for example, a department director or a selected manager has a portion of the administrator’s privileges.
In practice, this means they can grant limited or temporary access to, for example, new employees or interns. Some data is invisible to them, while the department director sees, for example, their work efficiency.
Additionally, an authorized person, in addition to granting access, can independently reload an application at any time, without waiting for the scheduled data refresh.
- the ability to share analyses/fragments of analyses more precisely,
- organization and increased clarity and transparency of the entire system/access management model in Qlik,
- improved administrator work comfort,
- removal of limitations (from the system administration side) in organizing and restructuring older analytical applications,
- Transparency in decision-making.