Creating visualizations from your data using Insights

Insights provides an entry point for exploring your data and creating visualizations. Insights uses the Qlik cognitive engine to create visualizations for you based on your fields and master items, as well as learned precedents for using fields in charts.

Open Insights from the Analyze tab in the top toolbar. You are also asked if you want to explore Insights when you load data into your app. If you have a previous version of Qlik Sense, you can open Insights from the right side of the toolbar in a sheet.

You can search Insights to display visualizations, including new Insights charts and existing visualizations from your sheets. Insights can also generate a set of visualizations by analyzing your data set and creating charts of potential interest.

As you change the data in your app, by adding data, making associations, editing tables, or classifying fields, the charts generated by Insights may change. When opened in a app, Insights looks at how fields and master items in the data model are used in dimensions, measures, and expressions. It can then learn from the previous interactions when creating charts in other apps.

Insights supports keyboard navigation. For more information, see Keyboard navigation and shortcuts in Qlik Sense.

What happens when you search

When you enter your search query, Qlik Sense generates relevant Insights charts. You can specify fields for Insights, either entering them or selecting them. You can also enter natural language queries, such as Show me Product by Revenue in Sweden. You can click the microphone icon to ask Insights to query if your browser's voice-to-text capability is supported in Insights.

Insights uses the fields you specify but may also use additional fields in the generated visualizations. Insights looks at your data model and how fields are used in existing charts and master items in your app. Field names, field values, and master items are then used to generate visualizations.

Insights also uses any precedents you have given it for hiding charts, setting fields as dimensions or measures, and excluding fields from analysis.

When you enter a natural language query, Insights attempts to find a matching chart result. If one is found, additional related results are shown. If no matching results can be found, Insights attempts to offer possibly related results. You can click to view how Insights generated results from your search query

A: Fields and master items

These are the available assets (fields and master items) for creating Insights charts. You can select them to add them to your search query. You can access fields by clicking and master items by clicking .

B: Insights search field

Enter field and master item names to search for charts using those fields. If you used a natural language query, you can click to view the filters generated from your query. You can change the language used by Insights by selecting a language from the Language button.

C: Insights charts

These are the Insights charts created by Insights. Insights indicates the number of results and breaks them down into how many results are found, how many charts already exist in your sheets, and how many charts are newly generated byInsights.

Insights charts can be added to existing sheets or to new sheets in your app. An Insights chart can also be downloaded as an image or PDF.

You can expand a chart by selecting it or clicking s.

If an Insights chart is new, you can add it to your sheets. If the chart exists already, you can click the sheet name at the bottom of the chart to go to that page.

If you do not like an Insights chart, you can hide it so it will no longer be included in future results. You can view hidden charts and restore them if you change your mind.

Selecting a chart expands the chart and enables you to make selections in it. Selections apply to all displayed Insights charts. Selections made in charts from your sheets are kept when you open Insights. Selections do not affect the charts created by Insights. For more information on exploring visualization and making selections, see Using apps.

D: Properties panel

The properties panel contains options for editing Insights charts and changing the precedents you have set in the Insights chart.

In General properties, you can view and edit your hidden and learned charts and the precedents you have set for generating insights.

In Insight properties, you can edit an Insights chart and view the detail of the Insights chart. You can see the Analysis type used to create the chart. Click to learn more about the analysis type used. You can change the fields used as Dimensions or as Measures, as well as the aggregation used. Under Details, you can view why the chart was made and change precedents learned from the chart.

Using natural language in search queries

You can phrase your search query using natural language, Show me Sales for example.

Natural language queries need to reference field names or synonyms for field names in your data model.

You can tag master items with synonyms using tags on your master items. Use the format alt:<term> in synonym tags. For example, alt:cities. For more information, see Tagging master items.

Natural language queries support three kinds of filters:

• Time: A unit of time or date. For example, Show me 2019 Sales.
• Category: A value from one of the dimensions. For example, Show me Sales by Product for Sweden.
• Measure: A value or values from a measure. For example, Show me Sales for Sweden by Product under 1K.

You can phrase your search queries for facts, comparisons, and rankings. Facts are statements such as What are my sales, or Show expenses over time for 2019. You can ask for a comparison by adding vs or compare to your query. For example, Compare sales to expenses over time.

For more information about natural language queries, see Qlik Sense Natural Language Query features.

Editing Insights charts

You can edit Insights charts by selecting an Insights chart, clicking , and changing properties in the Insight properties panel.

You can change the insight chart's type by selecting Chart type and selecting another type of chart.

You can change the fields used as Dimensions or as Measures, as well as the aggregation used. If a chart has multiple measures or dimensions, you can drag them to reorder them. If you specified filters in a natural language query, you can modify them as well. You can add dimensions and measures from Insights charts as master items.

Hiding Insights charts

When you generate Insights charts, you can hide charts that you do not want to be offered again. To hide a chart, you can right-click on the chart and select Hide. You can also hide charts from the Details section of Insight properties by selecting We suggested a chart for this combination of data and clicking Hide this chart.

You can view the charts hidden from your current search query in General properties.

Managing precedents in Insights charts

The precedents you have set in Insights can be viewed in General properties.

Hidden charts contains charts you have hidden from queries. You can click to show the chart again in queries.

Learned charts contains charts you liked from query results. You can delete learned charts by clicking .

Your defined preferences shows all the preferences Insights has learned. You can delete preferences by clicking .

You can clear all hidden charts, learned charts, and precedents by clicking Clear all.

Creating visualizations with Insights

Do the following:

1. In your app, click Insights in the Analyze drop-down menu.

2. To generate charts based on an analysis of your data, click Generate insights.

3. To generate charts based on specific data, type or ask a query.

   Information note

   Qlik Sense supports English, French, Russian, and Spanish for natural language queries. Insights supports Google Chrome voice-to-text capabilities for queries. When using voice-to-text for natural language queries, your Insights language should match the language used in your data.

   You can change the language used by Insights by selecting a language from the Language button.

   Alternatively, select which fields and master items you want to use in Insights charts. Select the data from the list of available assets or search for them by name in the search field.

4. To add an Insights chart to your app, do one of the following:

   • To add a chart to your current sheet, click Add to sheet.
   • To add a chart to a specific sheet, click S and select the sheet
   • To add the chart to a new sheet, click S and select Create new sheet.

Creating master items from Insightscharts

Do the following:

1. In Insights, select an Insights chart and click .
2. In Insight properties, click a dimension or measure and click Add new.
3. In the Create new dimensions or Create new measures dialog, click Create.

Disabling Insights in an app

Insights can be disabled in an app by adding a variable and then refreshing the app. Disabling Insights on an app in a cloud hub prevents the Precedents Service from learning precedents from the app. By disabling Insights, the service will no longer learn the aggregations, dimensions, and measures used with that data model for use in apps with a similar data model.

Do the following:

1. In the sheet edit mode, in the assets panel, click .
2. Click Create new.
3. In Name, type DISABLE_INSIGHTS.
4. In Definition, type any value.
5. Click Close.
6. Refresh the app.