App overview screenshots: what a run changed, in a picture

Requires BSI 5.0.0 or later

Earlier versions took a single overview screenshot, named overview-1.png.

Every create-sheet-thumbnails run photographs the app overview page twice: once before any sheet is touched, and once after the new thumbnails are in place.

File	What it shows
overview-before.png	The app overview as it looked when the run started
overview-after.png	The same page once the run had finished

They land in the per-app image directory alongside the sheet thumbnails, below whatever --imagedir names (default ./img):

img/qseow/<app-id>/overview-before.png     # Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows
img/qseow/<app-id>/overview-after.png

img/cloud/<app-id>/overview-before.png     # Qlik Sense Cloud
img/cloud/<app-id>/overview-after.png

Why you would use them

A run's log tells you what it decided — which sheets it updated, which it skipped, and why. That is the right thing for diagnosing a run, and the wrong thing for showing someone the result. The pair is the picture: rows of identical grey placeholders in one, each sheet carrying a miniature of its own layout in the other.

It earns its keep in three situations:

Situation	What the pair gives you
A change request that needs signing off	Visual proof the app looks the way it was meant to, without asking the requester to log in
A run that partly failed	The "after" image shows exactly which sheets ended up with an icon and which did not
An audit trail in CI	Two artifacts per app per run, in a predictable place, needing no extra tooling

The cost: a second sign-in

An honest "after" picture needs a browser session that exists after the thumbnails have been uploaded and assigned — and by that point in a run the first session has already logged out and closed. Butler Sheet Icons therefore signs in a second time, purely to take the closing screenshot.

Per app, that is one extra browser launch and one extra web UI login, plus two more login-page screenshots named loginpage-after-1.png and loginpage-after-2.png so they cannot overwrite the first sign-in's.

On a single-app run that is not noticeable. On a run sweeping fifty apps by tag or collection it is paid fifty times, which is when you may want it off:

./butler-sheet-icons qseow create-sheet-thumbnails \
    --host sense.company.com \
    --appid a1b2c3d4-0000-4a1b-9c8d-000000000001 \
    --apiuserdir INTERNAL --apiuserid sa_api \
    --logonuserdir COMPANY --logonuserid svc_bsi --logonpwd password-here \
    --capture-overview-after false

The option defaults to true and can also be set from the environment, as BSI_QSEOW_CST_CAPTURE_OVERVIEW_AFTER and BSI_QSCLOUD_CST_CAPTURE_OVERVIEW_AFTER. With it off, the run signs in once, writes overview-before.png and no overview-after.png. The interactive wizard asks about it under Advanced; a guided run that accepts the defaults gets the capture.

The image directory also holds login screenshots

The same directory contains loginpage-1.png, loginpage-2.png and, when the after-capture runs, loginpage-after-1.png and loginpage-after-2.png — screenshots of the Qlik Sense login page with the password field filled in. Copy out the two overview files by name. Never publish or attach the image directory wholesale.

What the pair does not do

• It never fails a run. The closing screenshot is taken after the thumbnails have been created, uploaded and assigned, so the work is already done and saved. If the second sign-in cannot be made, the run logs a warning naming the reason and still succeeds. A missing overview-after.png means the picture is missing, never that the thumbnails are.
• It does not run on a dry run. A dry run changes nothing, so there is no "after" state to photograph — and it opens no browser at all.
• It does not apply to the removal commands. qseow remove-sheet-icons and qscloud remove-sheet-icons work entirely over the Qlik Sense APIs and never open a browser, so they have no web UI session to photograph from — and adding one would mean requiring web UI credentials they otherwise do not need.
• It photographs the app overview, not the hub. Thumbnails also appear on the Qlik Sense hub, which is a different page and is not captured.

Upgrading from an earlier version

Before	Now
overview-1.png	overview-before.png
—	overview-after.png
—	loginpage-after-1.png, loginpage-after-2.png

Anything reading overview-1.png by name should be pointed at overview-before.png. The positional name was renamed because, with two overview screenshots per run, a number no longer says which state the picture shows.

See also

• Sheet thumbnails on client-managed Qlik Sense
• Sheet thumbnails on Qlik Sense Cloud
• Dry runs — see what a run would change before it changes anything
• Troubleshooting