Is this a right time to migrate from v16 to v17+ (currently Nprinting November 2019)?

QlikView NPrinting 17 started originally as Vizubi product called “Opera” and was released to market as beta version in 2014. I remember the day when I tried to use it for the first time and was lacking so many different functionalities that I gave up. I was not convinced to use-web based console, metadata generation did not work and I did not see it being enterprise product at all.

Few years later I did not see much of the improvement and my frustration was even larger when I saw this post on community. I think my response was strong enough to show my big disapproval to the tool I liked so much. It was also polite enough (I hope) to not to spark open “word war” with Qlik employees.

But from that day things have changed upside down and the change was for good! Each new release of Qlik NPrinting was closing feature gap to ol’good v16 or brought new functionalities (API being one of the most important allowing for such more flexible use of this great tool). So here we are few years down the track and there is NPrinting November 2019 given to us as an early Christmas present! Let’s have a quick glance at release notes “What’s new” section:

• Variable-based filters, this is big one. It was one of the big feature gaps to v16 and it opens up a lot more options on how we can now build QlikView/Qlik Sense applications to support NPrinting reporting. I will cover this feature in next post as it will cover enough space just by itself.
• QlikView NPrinting 16 migration tool – This is built-in migration tool allowing for project migration from QlikView NPrinting v16.3 or newer (let’s call it NP16) to Qlik NPrinting November 2019 or newer (I will call it here NP17+).

Let’s focus on migration tool. First of all, you can only migrate projects which will be supported in your destination environment. NP17+ does not support “Bookmark Filters” and “Linked Fields” yet. I suggest that they should be removed from nsq file before migration as there is no way you can use these objects in NP17+.

Now… how does the process look like?

First you export your whole project to zip file in NPrinting 16.3 or newer client. You then take it to your new environment, navigate to “Admin –> Import NPrinting 16 project” section and browse to your zip file. Wizard take you immediately to next step where you must verify connection(s) details and if they are “ok” you can click on “Start import”. This triggers creation of NP17+ app (project) and NP17+ connection(s). It also starts generating metadata. So far so good!

Once connections are created and metadata generation is done, process automatically takes you to the next phase where filters are imported. During my testing I used various filters (variable, field, numeric, field evaluate, advanced search etc…) and all of them came through to NP17+ properly. I also did a test with bookmark filter and linked fields filter. Both were created in NP17+ but they were tagged with big, red warning sign that those are not supported and hence are empty.

In the next phase conditions are imported. I tested all possible conditions and they all went through without issues. Great. If I used conditions in particular report in NP16 those are also correctly allocated in publish task in NP17+ under report section, which is great.

Next step: Reports. In my test I created 1 entity report and 1 excel report. In excel report I put some table tags and I also applied some filters on individual objects. Everything came through during import and was properly configured. I was really impressed with it and I cannot wait to do more testing with more complicated PixelPerfect and HTML reports which will include conditional formatting etc. I hope those settings will flow through seamlessly too. I tested various attributes as well, including “enable cycle” which was migrated properly as well as all associated report filters. Entity report came through without issues.

Task import is the next step and as I suspected this is the place where there will be errors and warnings. What came through without issues?

• Task name (Overview section)
• Reports and their settings
• Task filters
• Email message (there are warnings if you try to embed not supported objects – I tried to embed entity report as email body)

What you must reconfigure is Users/groups (recipients), destinations and triggers. All not migrated and not supported features are clearly indicated and warning signs are in place.

At the end you get a 1-page import summary with hyperlinks to all imported entities, with highlighted warnings and errors, so you can follow up on those and modify them to meet requirements of NP17+.

Summary:

I am very impressed with migration tool. I did not expect it to work so well, to highlight all issues and make it clear what worked and what did not. For the first time I am very convinced that migration from NP16 to NP17+ can be very easy and practically automated. Version I have tested was still in BETA, but now there is official version available and I think it is a good time to consider migrating! *

The aim of above review is not to provide steps or teach how to migrate from NP16 to NP17+. There is Qlik NPrinting Migration Tool User Guide and Qlik NPrinting Migration Tool FAQ documents which cover just that, so for How-To details go and check them out.

cheers

Lech

* unless you heavily use linked fields and bookmark filters.