Qlik Sense App "Access Denied" Why?

As a user you may have a seen above error message "Access is denied" when attempting to open a Qlik App link on a Qlik Sense Windows server. Or as admin a user reports to you above error message and you are wondering "why no access".

Lets look at some other error messages first: You can tell from this message already, that it is NOT an issue of license assignment (if so the message would be "You cannot access Qlik Sense because you have no access pass") and that it is not that the user was set to "blocked" in the Qlik Management Console (then the message would be "Your account is inactive. Contact your administrator to activate it."). So what is left are two checkpoints:

• Lack of access on app level or stream level (Security Rule)
• App has Section Access and user is not member of the list

One important thing to understand with Security rules is that there is no "Deny" rule. It is the other way around, at least one of the rules needs to "Allow" access, then the user can access the resource. If not a lot of modifications were made, the default is that access is maintained on the Stream level and all the apps in that stream follow that rule (Rule is called "Stream"). If some customizings have been made, access can be on app level or on other checkpoints.

Section access again is something that the app developer has set up, not the admin. There is a hidden table in the data model with a USERID field and the user with "Access denied" issue is not part of that field - or the username was not added in UPPER CASE ... there a couple of pitfalls, I recommend checking this video

On Log Level here is how you can check if it was a Security Rule or Section Access rejecting access for a user. Go to C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Sense\Log\Engine\Audit\####_AuditActivity_Engine.txt (where #### is the machine name)

Then search for one of the below entries:

• Command=open app;Result=5;ResultText=Warning: Access denied (... it was Section Access)
• Command=open app;Result=403;ResultText=Warning: Forbidden (... it was a missing Security Rule)

Hope this helps you get access and enjoy the Qlik App you are trying to open ;-)

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