Qlik Business Glossary

Have you ever looked at a visual in your dashboard and weren't entirely sure whether the developer used the same definition of a term as you did? Or have you managed, after careful discussion, to get everyone aligned across departments on how a particular KPI should be calculated, but you're still looking for a way to make this quickly visible to your staff? For this, Qlik has added a new feature to Qlik Cloud: the Business Glossary. In this blog, BI consultant Erik van der Meer explains more about it.

What is a Business Glossary?

A Business Glossary is a collection of terms (Terms) with their corresponding definitions within Qlik Cloud that ensures there is shared agreement on the definition of commonly used concepts. This allows developers to easily find standardized definitions for the KPIs within your organization, builds trust among users in the apps and datasets, and drives better communication and collaboration between different departments on how a particular KPI should be calculated.

How do you create a Business Glossary?

But how do you create such a Business Glossary in Qlik Cloud? And how do you use it afterwards? Before you can start creating a Business Glossary, you need to have been assigned the "Steward" role by the tenant administrator. The Steward is a new role within Qlik that coincides with the introduction of the Business Glossary.

Next, you can add a Business Glossary in "Analytics Services" via "Add new", as shown in the video below.

In the next screen, you can give the Glossary a name, add a description, and assign it to the right space. You can also optionally assign Tags to the Glossary so that it's easier for users to find.

At "Term template" you can specify a standard for Terms so that users who want to add Terms know what should, at minimum, be included in the description.

Populating the Business Glossary with Terms

Now that you've created a Business Glossary, it's time to populate it with Terms and their corresponding definitions. This functionality isn't only available to the Steward, but can also be done by all members of the relevant space who have more rights than just "Can view". However, only Stewards can change the status of a Term to "Verified" or, if the term is outdated, to "Deprecated".

Click the green "Create" button within the Glossary and choose Term. On the next screen you have several options for defining the Term. In addition to the name and definition of the Term, you can also specify an abbreviation that's commonly used within the company. When someone searches for this abbreviation, the Term will also be found. Under "Related information" you'll see the previously mentioned "Term template", which you can then adjust. You can add links to apps where the Term is used and add related terms along with their relationship to one another.

Categories

You can imagine that the number of Terms can grow quite large in a large organization, which doesn't do the usability any favors. To make your Glossary more organized, you can work with Categories. This lets you create a folder structure to sort your Terms into.

You create a Category the same way you create a Term: via the green "Create" button. This time, however, choose Category. You can then specify the name of the Category and, optionally, a short description. You can then click on a Term and assign it to a Category. A Term can be linked to multiple Categories.

Aside from the links you can add to a Term pointing to a dataset or app, there's currently no further interaction available. For example, you can't yet link directly from an app to the Business Glossary without manually creating a button yourself and linking it to the Glossary, nor can you yet create an easy reference from a Master item to your Glossary so you can quickly see its exact definition.

Using the Business Glossary

Using the Business Glossary is intuitive. There's a search box you can use to search for Terms, along with logical and easy-to-use filters to refine your searches. You can also switch the view between "Tile view", "List view" or "Hierarchy view", — you can see what this looks like in the video below.

Adding Terms is straightforward, and as a Steward you're in control thanks to the ability to reject or approve submitted Terms.

Currently, the Business Glossary in Qlik Cloud is still a fairly standalone entity, and there's not yet much interaction possible between the Glossary and the apps, datasets, and Master items. A nice addition would be, for example, being able to link a Master item to a specific Business Glossary Term so that you can immediately see, from within the app, which definition belongs to the master item and navigate straight to the Business Glossary.

Written by Erik van der Meer
BI Consultant