Qlik vs Power BI: Part 4 – End User Interaction & Integration 

Welcome to Part 4 of our Qlik vs. Power BI comparison, where we focus on end-user interaction and integration.

If you are new to this series, Part 1 introduced the topic, Part 2 explored back-end data modeling, and Part 3 focused on front-end development and styling. Now we turn to the people who matter most: the end users.

In Part 4, we examine how users interact with dashboards through selections, filters, drill-downs, and navigation, and how each tool supports or complicates that experience. We also touch on integration with other tools and platforms, which is increasingly important in modern BI ecosystems.

Both platforms can produce beautiful dashboards, but they can also present confusing ones. The environment and design decisions strongly shape the end-user experience. A poorly built or overloaded dashboard can leave users with a negative view of either tool.

That is why dashboard and data model design must start with the end-user in mind, focusing on the answers the dashboard should provide and the business functions it should support.

Let’s dive in!

Environment

An important part of the end-user experience is the environment in which they interact with it. The developer has limited influence on this part of the interaction. Some parts of it are just a part of choices of either Qlik or Microsoft, and some parts are a result of platform choices of the organization.  

In Power BI, the end-user usually interacts with reports through an app in the Power BI service. This is a cloud environment where you log in with your Microsoft account. A developer typically designs reports and data models in Power BI Desktop. They then publish these to the service for end-users to consume, either directly through the report or via an app, which is a collection of reports.

There is also an on-premise solution called Power BI Report Server. It has more limited functionality compared to the Power BI service and is less commonly used. However, it can be a good option for organizations that want to keep reports and models on premise. You just need to keep in mind that most Microsoft Fabric functionality is not included there and most likely never will be.

The Power BI service Home screen, with some recently opened and favorited reports.  

In Qlik, the end-user interacts in the same environment where the developer works. This environment always runs as a page in a web browser. This can be either the organizations’ own tenant within Qlik Cloud, or it can be a URL pointing to the self-hosted Qlik Sense Enterprise Client-Managed.  

The Qlik Cloud – Analytics start screen  

In both environments, users will interact with apps that developers built via tiles on the screen. Within Qlik Cloud, these live in “spaces”, but can be organized in multiple ways. In Qlik Sense Enterprise Client-Managed, they live in “streams”. While Spaces in Qlik Cloud offer additional functionality, you can view both simply as folders that organize apps.

The Qlik Sense Enterprise Client-Managed “Work” stream with 3 apps.  

Navigation through a dashboard  

When you open a dashboard in Qlik Sense or Power BI, you see visuals displayed on different pages (called sheets in Qlik).

In Qlik, there is a standard navigation menu with arrows on top, and a dropdown menu in which you can select all sheets, this is consistent across all dashboard, and independent of report author choices.  

What is interesting is that as an app developer, you can group these sheets together, and you can show or hide sheets based on selections in the data or user profile properties creating clarity for the end-user whilst keeping everything neatly tidied.  

Qlik also offers a navigation menu object that lets developers add navigation directly within a sheet.

The Qlik Sense sheet navigation menu, with 4 sheets grouped together in the “Bert Mitic” group.  

In Power BI, the developer can set the navigation either on the left-side or underneath the report. You cannot group pages together, but when you add a report to an app, the report appears as a collection of subpages. 

In Power BI, navigation can also take place within the report, with buttons and navigation menus that you can customize to create powerful dynamic in-report navigation.  

A Power BI navigation button, with separate colors for the active page (blue) and the one that is being clicked (grey).  

Selections and Filters 

This section focuses on navigation, interaction with data, and ease of use of a dashboard within each tool. 

Qlik Sense 

In Qlik, every object interacts with every other object by default. This is a result of the Qlik associative model, and it’s most visible to the end-user through what Qlik calls selections. Whether you select data in a bar chart or a filter pane, it always leads to a selection in the data model, clearly shown in the Current Selections bar at the top. 

Selections are also color-coded: 

• Green: selected 

• White: associated 

• Grey: unrelated 
  

A Qlik dashboard with Year: “2024” and Company Name: “Mitic Signature Cars” selected and therefore highlighted in green. The colors in the store Country filter indicate Mitic Signature Cars has only sold Cars in France in 2024, as this is white and all other Countries are greyed out.  

You can not only see or highlight selections, but also navigate through them. A user can step back to a previous selection, search all values in the data model, and make selections on the results.

This makes it easy to spot relationships, or the lack of them, between data points. For example, to find customers who did not buy a product, you can select the product, right-click a filter with the customer dimension, and choose “Select Excluded”. This works out of the box for every Master dimension and every selectable field in the data model. The developer does not need to build a separate “customers that did not buy” visual.

Sometimes you want visuals that always show a certain selection, such as Current Year Sales. For this, Qlik uses Set Analysis, which lets developers bypass selections and define fixed filters. While powerful, this can confuse beginners who may not understand why a chart doesn’t respond to selections. The best practice is to make this clear to end-users, for example in the (sub)title.

Power BI 

Instead of Qlik’s associative model, Power BI uses a query-based model. Every click in a report queries the underlying data model. As noted in the previous post, this makes it easy to create pages or visuals that stay separate from the rest of the report.

However, this approach makes it harder for end-users to analyze scenarios not designed by the developer. For example, the developer must build a specific visual to show customers who did not buy a product. If next week you want customers who did not buy in a certain year, the report developer must build that as well. 

Power BI offers three main ways to filter data for an end-user: 

1. Filter pane (report, page, and visual level) 

2. Slicers (interactive filters placed on the canvas) 

3. Visual interactions (clicking on data points) 

The filter pane is powerful but can be confusing for less technical users due to its layered structure. The developer can use colors and hide and lock filters to guide the user, but I still feel like for end-users that do not work with dashboards on a day-to-day basis, this is usually not intuitive enough.  

The Power BI filter pane. SubCategoryName is double, because it is in the selected chart ánd added as a page level filter by the developer. Year is blue, because there is a selection.   

I often hide the pane for end-users and rely on slicers. Slicers are more intuitive and highly customizable, but they come at a performance cost. A powerful feature is the ability to sync slicers across pages. This allows for consistent filtering throughout a report. At the same time, you can still create pages or visuals that remain separated from the rest of the report.

Microsoft has expanded the available slicer types significantly, giving report developers more options for building filtering directly into the report canvas. In practice, many reports rely more heavily on slicers than on the filter pane for end-user interaction.

Clicking a data point in a visual can also filter other visuals, but this is not always obvious to end-users. Developers can switch it off for each visual. If you scroll down the chart, the clicked data point may disappear, hiding your selection. For this reason, I always teach end-users to use the Reset button to return to the saved filter state.

The flexibility of different filtering options benefits developers, but if not implemented carefully, it can confuse end-users. This is especially true when slicers, filters, and visual interactions all appear in the same report.

Unlike Qlik, Power BI has no built-in “Current Selections” overview. You can build something similar with DAX, but it is not straightforward, especially when visuals are excluded from interactions. Instead, each visual includes an option that shows the filters influencing it.

A Power BI bar chart, that is showing nothing because in the table a date is clicked without Sales on the selected date. The date however, is outside of the scroll area of the table.  

Drill-Downs and Drill-Throughs 

Both tools support drill-down functionality, but they implement it differently. 

• In Power BI, you can define hierarchies in visuals and allow users to drill down by clicking. What is powerful here, is that next to drilling down, you have options to show all underlying levels at once, or show all the levels in a hierarchy as one dimension.  

Power BI’s drill options, with drill down highlighted.  

What I really miss, though, is the ability to auto-drill down when there’s only 1 dimension in the selection 

You can also create drill-through pages, where users can right-click a data point and navigate to a detailed view with context passed along. 

• In Qlik, you can define drill-down dimensions that automatically switch to the next level when a selection is made. While powerful and very handy, what I miss here is the ability to show the complete next level in the hierarchy.  

A BARC benchmark comparing Qlik and Power BI found that Power BI required approximately 1.3 times more user interaction on average to accomplish the same tasks as Qlik. At the same time, BARC concluded that both platforms passed all benchmark tests and that most users are unlikely to experience critical response times. My interpretation is that part of this difference comes from Qlik’s associative model: users can often follow their line of questioning through selections with fewer explicit drill and filter actions. In both platforms, however, a well-designed data model remains essential for helping users find answers quickly.

Bookmarks and Personalization 

Power BI allows users to create personal bookmarks, which can store filters, slicers, and visual states. This is great for users who want to return to a specific view of the data. As a report author, you can also create report-level bookmarks, available to all users of the report, to facilitate a specific view.  

What is nice here is that, as a report author, you can reference these bookmarks in buttons, catering for a dynamic report.  

Qlik also supports bookmarks, which can save selection states and the lay-out. As an end-user you will therefore have the ability to save frequently used selections on specific pages. As a developer, you can create these bookmarks dynamically using set analysis and reference these in report buttons.  

Search and Smart Filtering 

Qlik’s global search is a standout feature. It is another direct result of the associative model we discussed earlier in this series. Users can search across all fields and values in the app. This makes it easy to find what they are looking for, even if they don’t know where to start.

Power BI lacks a true global search. With the addition of Co-Pilot’s AI features (Chat with your data) you will get in the direction, but it is not really the same as just searching for all values in the data model.  Of course, slicers and filters can be searchable, but this is limited to the specific field that the filter or slicer contains. This can be a limitation in large, complex datasets.  

Integration 

Integration with other tools is becoming increasingly important, and both platforms are evolving quickly in this area. 

Power BI 

Power BI integrates deeply with the Microsoft ecosystem, and has the feeling of an addition to Microsoft 365.  

• You can share filtered report links via Teams, allowing colleagues to open the report with the exact same filters applied. 

• You can embed power BI reports into Microsoft Teams pages.  

• There’s a PowerPoint integration that lets you embed live Power BI visuals into slides. This is perfect for recurring meetings. End-users just update the text, and the visuals stay current. While powerful, it only lets you integrate charts from Power BI, without adding filters to influence the data.

• In Excel, you can connect directly to a Power BI semantic model and use the data in pivot tables or formulas. This is a powerful feature for business users who are familiar with Excel, but want to have updated and curated datasets.  

Qlik Sense 

• Qlik Cloud now also supports sharing filtered links, allowing you to send links with your specific selections in Microsoft teams or other tools.  

• Qlik Cloud also provides reporting capabilities for scheduled exports and report generation, covering many use cases traditionally handled with Qlik NPrinting. These features are more advanced than Power BI’s PowerPoint integration but are also more developer-oriented. I don’t expect business users to build PowerPoint reports in Qlik, but I have seen them do so in Power BI.

• Qlik also has an Excel add-on, but the approach is different. Instead of connecting to the semantic model, users can extract data directly from charts. This can be easier for end-users but offers less flexibility for power users who want access to the full model. 

Conclusion: Empowering the End User 

When it comes to end-user interaction, both Qlik and Power BI offer powerful capabilities, but they do so in very different ways. 

• Qlik Sense excels in transparency and interactivity. Its associative model, color-coded selections, and global search make it easy for users to explore data and understand what they’re looking at. However, it requires developer effort to control interactions and manage complexity.

• Power BI offers more flexibility in how visuals interact and integrates deeply with the Microsoft ecosystem. But this flexibility can lead to confusion, especially when slicers, filters, and visual interactions overlap without clear feedback to the user.

In my opinion, Qlik’s associative model is a very powerful tool. It works especially well for business analysts who look for specifics in the data. However, it requires a more developer-focused report builder.

In larger Qlik environments, creating a consistent end-user experience across apps requires clear design, navigation and development conventions. These are common focus areas in our Qlik consulting work.

In Power BI, the business analyst often receives broader report authoring rights. They work on top of a data model built by a data engineer or a centralized BI department. These users then use the filter pane or slicers to filter the data itself.

Power BI offers a great deal of flexibility in how reports are structured and how users interact with them. In our Power BI consulting work, we often help organizations turn that flexibility into a consistent and intuitive reporting experience.

Both approaches can work well for end users; which one fits best depends on your organization, users and business requirements.

In terms of integration, Power BI has an edge for business users. This is especially true if your organization uses many Office 365 features. The tool connects seamlessly with Teams, PowerPoint, and Excel. Qlik is catching up quickly, especially in Qlik Cloud, but its more advanced features often require developer involvement.

A move from Qlik to Power BI also changes how users navigate dashboards, filter data, and interact with insights. Our Qlik to Power BI migration guide covers the broader architectural, technical, and organizational considerations involved in that transition. The guide also includes our Migration Readiness Checklist with 85 concrete checkpoints to assess how well your current environment is prepared for a migration.

Ultimately, end users get the best experience when the platform fits the organization and its wider technology ecosystem, the implementation is solid, and dashboards are designed with care. If you’re deciding between Qlik and Power BI, our independent tool selection advice can help determine which platform best fits your users, architecture and organization.

Explore the full Qlik vs. Power BI series

Across the four parts of this series, one theme keeps returning: neither Qlik nor Power BI is universally better. The right choice depends on your data architecture, development approach, end users and wider technology ecosystem.

Part 1: Qlik vs. Power BI: Part 1 – A Hands-On Comparison

Part 2: Qlik vs. Power BI: Part 2 – Back-End & Data Modeling 

Part 3: Qlik vs. Power BI: Part 3 – Front End Development & User Experience

Part 4: You are here