I just realized that KNIME lacks the ability to render an Interactive View to HTML or any other kind of sharable format… I can create some nice interactive visualizations, but I can’t just quickly share it with them.
I have always included interactive HTML files with my static emailed reports for my clients working in Alteryx. I use these for things that don’t make sense to put on a server such as “one off” custom interactive views meant for a single decision maker / small group or a data snapshot that only has use for a brief window of time. They can be viewed offline, dropped in as slides for presentations, avoid user restriction hassle and are easily shared by the client.
I have seen a few posts referencing “work arounds” with temp files, but none of them have worked on my end. (Nor are they a single clean sharable HTML with embeded data points)
I also wanted to add that I don’t believe that standalone interactive html rendering would impact KNIME server. It is somewhat limited in it’s use case to simpler presentations because of HTML size and performance issues.
In fact, I would say that opening more users and organizations to interactive dashboards would likely drive more demand toward server as companies are more likely to see the possibilities and benefits of API connections, data refreshes, advanced user controls and resource intensive granular calculations in the user interactions.
I have found plenty of 1 off manual options for 3rd party HTML chart rendering outside of KNIME. There are also paid services that I could integrate via API with my KNIME workflows.
It is a shame to not be able to render a simple standalone interactive HTML chart or dashboard which is already built directly in KNIME. Obviously this is a limited use kind of thing. Standalone HTML is only useful for basic summary visualizations because it is only feasible to embed limited data. Server would still be needed for complex dashboards requiring full data detail.
A much better solution would be to just allow us to send the interactive view to BIRT which already includes an HTML rendering option and would also enable us to further customize an interactive HTML report! A simple “Send Interactive View to Report” node would do it.
That would simplify the development on the KNIME side to just embedding the underlying data along with the JavaScript code, and leave the heavy lifting on the BIRT reports side where it belongs. You could even set (and allow the user to adjust) an “embedded data size limit warning” into the node to help guide users toward only using simple summary level data to avoid browser loading and performance issues when sharing.
