Qlik Business Glossary

Have you ever looked at a visual in your dashboard and not been entirely sure whether the developer uses the same definition of a term as you do? Or, after good discussions, have you managed to get everyone across the different departments on the same page about exactly how a certain KPI should be calculated, but are 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 associated definitions within Qlik Cloud that ensures 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 enforces better communication and collaboration between the various departments on how a certain KPI should be calculated.

How do you create a Business Glossary?

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

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

On the next screen you can give the Glossary a name, add a description and assign it to the right space. Optionally, you can also assign Tags to the Glossary so that users can find it more easily.

With "Term template" you can set a standard for Terms, so that users who want to add Terms know what the description should contain at a minimum.

Filling the Business Glossary with Terms

Now that you have created a Business Glossary, it's time to fill it with Terms and their associated definitions. This is not only possible for 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 However, only Stewards can change the status of a Term to "Verified" or, if the term is outdated, to "Deprecated".

Within the Glossary, click the green "Create" button and choose Term. On the next screen you have several options for defining the Term. Besides the name and definition of the Term, you can also specify an abbreviation that is commonly used within the company. When someone searches for this abbreviation, the Term will be found as well. Under "Related information" you will find the previously mentioned "Term template", which you can then adjust. You can add links to apps in which the Term is used and add related terms, along with the relationship between them.

Categories

As you can imagine, the number of Terms can grow considerably in a large organization, which doesn't help usability. To make your Glossary easier to navigate, you can work with Categories. This lets you create a folder structure in which you organize the Terms.

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

Apart from the links you can add in the Term to a dataset or app, there is currently no further interaction. For example, you can't refer to the Business Glossary directly from an app without manually creating a button yourself and linking it to the Glossary. Nor can you yet easily create a reference from a Master item to your Glossary to quickly see its exact definition.

Using the Business Glossary

Using the Business Glossary is intuitive. There is a search window to look 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", and you can see what this looks like in the video below.

Adding Terms is easy, and as a Steward you stay in control, with the option to reject or approve submitted Terms.

At the moment, the Business Glossary in Qlik Cloud is still a fairly standalone entity, and there is little interaction between the Glossary and the apps, datasets and Master items. A nice addition would be, for example, for a Master item to be linkable to a specific Business Glossary Term, so that you can see directly from the app which definition belongs to the master item and navigate straight to the Business Glossary.

Has this story sparked your interest in the Business Glossary, or would you like to see it live in action? Then get in touch with us or make an appointment right away using the buttons below.

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