Qlik Sense (SMPH) — Getting Started with the MD_Students Stream

Qlik Sense is the interactive dashboard tool your program uses to share data. Your dashboards live inside a collection called the MD_Students Stream, which contains several different apps. This guide walks you through connecting, signing in, finding the stream, opening an app, and reading and filtering the data — no prior Qlik experience needed.

In this guide

• Before you begin
• Connect to WiscVPN
• Sign in to Qlik Sense
• Find the MD_Students Stream
• Open an app
• Get to know the interface
• Switch between apps in the stream
• Troubleshooting
• Get help

Before you begin

Make sure you have each of the following ready:

• Your NetID and password.
• Duo (multi-factor authentication) set up on your phone or a hardware token. See the DoIT Help Desk MFA–Duo documentation.
• WiscVPN (GlobalProtect) installed and able to connect (see below).
• A current web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari), kept up to date.
• Access to the MD_Students Stream. This is granted for you — if you don’t see the stream after signing in, see Troubleshooting.

Don’t have WiscVPN installed yet? Set it up first using the DoIT Help Desk WiscVPN GlobalProtect (All OS) guide. The VPN portal address is uwmadison.vpn.wisc.edu.

Connect to WiscVPN

Connect to the VPN before you open Qlik Sense. If your VPN drops while you’re working, Qlik will stop loading until you reconnect.

1. Open the GlobalProtect app on your computer (or the GlobalProtect mobile app).
2. If prompted for a portal, enter uwmadison.vpn.wisc.edu and select Connect.
3. Sign in with your NetID and password, then approve the Duo prompt.
4. Confirm you’re connected — GlobalProtect will show a connected status (Figure 1).

Figure 1. GlobalProtect after successfully connecting to the UW–Madison VPN.

Platform-specific steps and troubleshooting: WiscVPN GlobalProtect (Windows) • WiscVPN GlobalProtect (macOS). For connection problems, search the DoIT Help Desk VPN articles or contact the DoIT Help Desk (see Get help).

Sign in to Qlik Sense

1. With WiscVPN connected, open your browser and go to the Qlik Sense hub address: https://dataviz.med.wisc.edu/
2. If you have not already signed in to your UW–Madison account, you will be prompted to log in (Figure 2).
3. Sign in with your NetID and password and approve the Duo prompt if asked.
4. You will then enter the Qlik Sense hub, where all the streams and apps you can access will appear.

Figure 2. UW–Madison account login prompt.

Figure 3. Qlik Sense hub with the MD_Students Stream selected. (Yellow and orange highlights were added to the image for reference in the next section.)

Find the MD_Students Stream

Apps in Qlik Sense are organized into streams. Your dashboards are in the MD_Students Stream.

1. In the hub, the list of available streams appears on the left side of the page (highlighted in yellow in Figure 3).
2. Select MD_Students Stream. After selecting the stream, you can bookmark the URL so that you no longer need to select the stream each time. All student apps appear in the MD_Students Stream.
3. The apps in that stream appear in the main area to the right (highlighted in orange in Figure 3).

Open an app

1. In the MD_Students Stream, click the app tile you want to open.
2. The app opens to its sheets — an app is made up of one or more sheets, and each sheet is a page of charts and tables.
3. Click a sheet to open it and view the data.

Figure 4. The ribbon at the top of the app has a Sheets tab; click it to display all available sheets in the app.

Get to know the interface

For the apps in the MD_Students stream, you will mostly be applying different selections (filters) and navigating between pages.

Selections

Applying selections

You can apply selections in three ways:

Buttons — some sheets provide buttons for common choices (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Course-block selection buttons on the Phase 1 Gradebook sheet.

Filter panes — click a value in a filter pane to select it (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Filter pane for Course Block on the Full Data sheet.

Interacting with tables (not available for all tables or fields) — you can click values directly in a data table to filter (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Applying a filter by interacting with the ExamSoft Scores table on the Full Data sheet.

Viewing applied selections

Applied selections appear in a few places:

• In the toolbar near the top of the app, shown in green. In the example in Figure 8, two selections have been applied (COHORT = 2025 and BLOCK = BIB).
• In the filter pane related to the selection, if one is present (Figure 9).
• In the Selections tool button on the right side of the toolbar (Figure 10).

Figure 8. Applied selections in the toolbar.

Figure 9. Course Block filter pane after selecting BIB.

Figure 10. Selections tool view with two selections applied (COHORT = 2025 and BLOCK = BIB).

Modifying or removing selections

• Use the clear-selection button to clear selections. If clicked in the toolbar or the Selections tool, it clears all applied selections; clicked in a single filter pane or table, it clears only that one filter.
• Modify a toolbar selection by clicking the green selection (a filter pane like Figure 9 appears) or remove it by clicking the × on the right side of the green selection.
• For some apps, certain selections are applied by default and cannot be modified or removed.

Sheets

Within an app, you can navigate between sheets in two ways:

• The Sheets tab on the left-hand side of the toolbar (see Figure 4).
• The left/right arrows just below the toolbar in the top right of the app (see Figure 4).

Switch between apps in the stream

1. At the top left of the app, click the Qlik logo to return to the hub.
2. Open the MD_Students Stream again and pick a different app.

Your VPN connection stays active the whole time, so you can move between apps freely.

Troubleshooting

Most first-time issues come back to the VPN or to access not being provisioned yet.

Get help

VPN, NetID, or Duo problems

• UW–Madison KnowledgeBase — VPN articles
• DoIT Help Desk — help@doit.wisc.edu

Access to the stream, the apps, or the data itself

• SMPH Qlik Administration — data@med.wisc.edu