Add failed reload alerts for apps on Qlik Sense Cloud

[mountaindude]

Already existing Qlik Sense Cloud alerts

Qlik Sense Cloud has built-in alerting when app reloads fail.
It gets the job done but is not super flexible when it comes to alert destinations, for example.
The alert email is also very basic when it comes to contents, it basically just says that an app failed reloading.

Using Automations it's possible to capture failed reloads and then send alerts to any destination supported by Automations (in theory anything with a REST interface).
But - that approach will use Automation runs that may be in short supply in some organisations.
You must also create and maintain the needed automations and integrations.

The built-in alerts in Qlik Sense Cloud will be enough for lots of use cases, but in order to add maximum flexibility Butler can be enhanced with support for Qlik Sense Cloud reload failed alerts.

Extra-everything alerts for Qlik Sense Cloud

The idea is simple: Bring the same level of super-flexible alerts that Butler already offers for client-managed Qlik Sense also to Sense cloud apps.

In other words: When a Sense cloud app fails reloading, alerts can be sent as nicely formatted messages to email, Slack, Teams, MQTT, webhook, New Relic and other destinations supported by Butler.

Companies using both client-managed Qlik Sense and Qlik Sense Cloud can get the same kind of rich reload-failed alerts thanks to Butler.

Solution draft

Details TBD, general principle will be

• Define outgoing webhooks from Sense cloud. These will trigger when apps fail reloading.
• The webhook will call a serverless function (for example in Azure). The function will act as a bridge, parsing the message and then forward it as MQTT messages to a well defined, secure topic on an Internet facing MQTT broker.
• Butler is subscribing to the MQTT topic and will send the alert to all enabled and configured destinations.

Why this design?

There are lots of possible variants to the above concept.
The above design is chosen as it decouples Sense cloud from Butler. This decoupling is done using the serverless function and MQTT, both are really ideally tools for this scenario: Simple concepts, yet robust and well tested.

Butler then acts a smart agent that can be configured as needed to get alerts to the desired destinations.
If there is a need to support a new destination or a new alert message format, that quite easy to do given Butler's modular structure.

Downsides of this design

The main one is the fact that Butler needs to be hosted somewhere.
I.e. you need a server or Docker environment running somewhere. Can be on-premise in your company network or in Azure/AWS/Google Cloud/....
Some extra work needed, but you gain lots of flexibility when it comes to alerting (and other features offered by Butler).
If you have both a client-managed Qlik Sense environment and Sense Cloud, then using Butler will really be a no-brainer - you get the kind of alerts for all Sense apps!

[mountaindude]

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