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NL Insights

The NL Insights visualization displays natural language insights and information about selected dimensions and measures.

NL Insights uses Insight Advisor to generate natural language information about the dimensions and measure added to the chart. The chart updates the insights as selections are made in the app.

Native NL Insights object displaying natural language insights with full verbosity

Native NL Insights object, with custom styling applied

NL Insights is a native chart type replacing the deprecated NL Insights control from the Dashboard bundle.

By default, NL Insights generates insights for all analysis types supported for the selected fields. The classification of fields in your app logical model determines which fields are available as dimensions or measures. For more information on defining fields, see Defining fields and groups.

When to use it

Use NL Insights when you want to include a narrative or analytical summary of your data. For example, on a sheet focused on sales, you might want narratives summarizing key ranking, correlation, and comparison analyses for sales to complement your other visualizations.

It is also helpful to pair NL Insights with another chart containing the same dimensions and measures. This provides additional context and information for the chart. To do this, configure the NL Insights object to use an input chart that has already been created on the current sheet. The dimensions and measures from that input chart are used to generate the natural language insights, and the NL Insights will update based on changes you make in the input chart.

NL Insights with natural language insights generated directly from input bar chart

Native NL Insights object, shown alongside bar chart. The NL Insights chart is linked to the bar chart and uses the same dimensions and measures to generate the narrative insights

Migrating from the Dashboard bundle to native object

NL Insights extension objects from the Dashboard bundle must be migrated to native charts if they appear on a public (base) sheet or published (community) sheet. To do this, follow the applicable steps to make the sheet private, then publish and/or make it public again.

Information noteAn alternative to the following instructions is to duplicate the app in the stream, open the sheet in the duplicated app to ensure proper chart migration, and then re-publish the app to the stream.

Public sheets

Do the following:

  1. Open the app overview, or open SheetsSheets from sheet view.

  2. Right-click the public sheet and select Unapprove.

  3. Right-click the community sheet and select Unpublish.

  4. Open the private sheet and ensure the chart has been migrated.

  5. Right-click the sheet and then select Publish.

  6. Right-click the community sheet and select Approve.

Published sheets

Do the following:

  1. Open the app overview, or open SheetsSheets from sheet view.

  2. Right-click the community sheet and select Unpublish.

  3. Open the private sheet and ensure the chart has been migrated.

  4. Right-click the sheet and then select Publish.

  5. Right-click the community sheet and select Approve.

Creating NL Insights

You need at least one dimension or one measure to create the chart. Combine dimensions and measures as needed. If you use an existing chart to generate the content of your NL Insights, the dimensions and measures from that input chart are used and will be dynamically updated if you change the input chart.

Do the following:

  1. From the assets panel, drag an empty NL Insights chart to the sheet.

  2. Click Add chart to use natural language insights from an existing chart in the NL Insights visualization. Choose from any of the supported charts in the current sheet.

    Alternatively, click Add dimension or Add measure to add natural language insights from a dimension or measure into the chart.

  3. In the properties panel, add or remove dimensions and measures from the chart.

    Information noteYou cannot add or remove dimensions and measures if you have chosen to use insights from an existing chart.

When you have created the NL Insights visualization, you might want to adjust its appearance and other settings in the properties panel. For information about how to style the visualization, see Styling NL Insights.

Styling NL Insights

You have a number of styling options available under Appearance in the properties panel.

Click Styling under Appearance > Presentation to further customize the styling of the chart. The styling panel contains various sections under the General and Chart tabs.

You can reset your styles by clicking next to each section. Clicking Reset all resets styles in both General and Chart.

For general information about styling an individual visualization, see Applying custom styling to a visualization.

Customizing the text

You can set the text for the title, subtitle, and footnote under Appearance > General. To hide these elements, turn off Show titles.

The visibility of the different labels on the chart depends on chart-specific settings and label display options. These can be configured in the properties panel.

You can style the text that appears in the chart.

Do the following:

  1. In the properties panel, expand the Appearance section.

  2. Under Appearance > Presentation, click Styling.

  3. On the General tab, set the font, emphasis style, font size, and color for the following text elements:

    • Title

    • Subtitle

    • Footnote

  4. On the Chart tab, style the following text elements:

    • Analysis type: Set the font, font size, and color of the headers displaying the analysis types of the insights.
    • Style: Set the font, font size, and color of the narrative insights.
    • Structure: Set how the narrative insights in the chart should be presented. Choose bullet points or sentences.

Customizing the background

You can customize the background of the chart. The background can be set by color and image.

Do the following:

  1. In the properties panel, expand the Appearance section.

  2. Under Appearance > Presentation, click Styling.

  3. On the General tab of the styling panel, you can select a background color (single color or expression), and also set the background to an image from your media library.

    When using a background image, you can adjust image sizing and position.

Customizing the border and shadow

You can customize the border and shadow of the chart.

Do the following:

  1. In the properties panel, expand the Appearance section.

  2. Under Appearance > Presentation, click Styling.

  3. On the General tab of the styling panel, under Border, adjust the Outline size to increase or decrease the border lines around the chart.

  4. Select a color for the border.

  5. Adjust the Corner radius to control the roundness of the border.

  6. Under Shadow in the General tab, select a shadow size and color. Select None to remove the shadow.

Adjusting the verbosity

You can control the verbosity of the natural language insights. Verbosity can be full or brief. Full verbosity groups natural language insights by analysis type. Brief verbosity displays all natural language insights as a list.

Verbosity can be configured under Appearance > Presentation in the properties panel.

Removing analysis types

You can remove unwanted analysis types from NL Insights under Appearance > Presentation in the properties panel.

Changing the language of the natural language insights

You can change the language of the generated natural language insights under Appearance > Presentation in the properties panel.

Information noteNL Insights has the same language supports as natural language insights in Qlik Sense within Qlik Cloud Analytics. For information, see Supported languages.

Considerations

The analysis types and number of narrative insights generated in the NL Insights chart depend on the volume and variety of data that belongs to the fields selected. A limited number of analysis types and insights might be displayed in the following scenarios:

  • The selected items use the same underlying field with aggregations or selections.

  • The selected items include only measures and no dimensions.

  • The selected items are mostly unrelated.

Limitations

The NL Insights object has the following the limitations:

  • You cannot use the following chart types for direct input into the NL Insights chart:

    • Animator

    • Button

    • Container

    • Date picker

    • Filter pane

    • Text & image

    • Video player

  • The NL Insights chart does not provide natural language insights for the following analysis types (even if it uses an input chart generated from these analysis types):

    • Clustering (k-means)

    • Overview

    • Period changes

    • Process control (rolling mean)

    • Year to date

  • Expressions with modifiers, either applied directly to the chart or via an input chart, might not provide correct values in natural language insights.

  • The number format accompanying an expression is only applied to narrative statements generated using that expression. Additional narratives that are generated might not adhere to the expression's number format.

  • When using an existing chart as the input for an NL Insights object, certain actions taken on the input chart will not result in the natural language insights being updated automatically. Specifically, switching to alternative measures or dimensions, or customizations made through chart exploration in analyze mode, do not update natural language insights unless those changes are applied and made available for all users.

  • Changing the number format of a measure might not always result in this formatting being changed in all available insights.

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