How to: Project Administration (without LookML development)

[craig_juergens]

Authored for Looker version 22.8 in June 2022

Imagine you have joined a new company as a Looker admin. Your Looker project has over 100 end users and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately the project you have inherited is a little out-of-control; too many user licenses deployed, dashboards take too long to run, some subscriptions are failing, etc. The list below will give you some easy steps you can take right away (no significant development effort required) to gain control of your project(s) and provide an immediate benefit to your end users.

1. Use Looker’s built-in Unused Content tool to isolate and delete content that has not been accessed within X number of days. The utility is available here: https://your_domain.looker.com/browse/unused. This tool is particularly helpful because you can start by deleting content aged over 12 months then move to 9 months, 6 months, etc. Removing aged content makes navigation easier for end users, speeds up Content Validator, helps reduce volume in error logs, and gently forces users to move toward new architecture. Note: Admins can recover content from the trash.
2. Empty your Trash of all items that have been in Trash for more than 1 month. This is available here: Folders > Trash. This will further reduce the size of your project.
3. Use Looker’s built-in User Activity dashboard (available under Admin > User Activity) to identify users who are not engaging with the platform. If you are within your license count, invite all these lapsed users to a training session. If your instance is over-deployed, you can disable these users with no consequence.
4. To reduce reporting volume on a day-to-day basis, review your subscriptions here: Admin > Instance Performance. Dashboards with a large amount of tiles or that run very frequently (either through subscriptions or with auto refresh enabled) should be reviewed and/or deleted. You can isolate subscriptions that failed recently here: Admin > Schedule History. If you address your failures regularly, you will quickly learn the weaknesses of your project.
5. If your project is particularly large and/or old, consider deleting user accounts that have not attempted a login in >500 days. Looker officially recommends never deleting accounts but if your company is large and has some turnover, you can accumulate hundreds of disabled accounts very quickly. Any content left in these old users’ personal folders will be moved to Trash. Again, this can be recovered by an Admin if needed (and placed in the appropriate Shared Folder).

If you execute the steps above consistently for a few weeks, you should gain an understanding of the current state of your project. Administration is an ongoing task that is never “done” but will provide lasting benefits to both developers and end-users of your application. If you would be interested in hearing more in-depth project administration/cleanup strategies, please comment below.

Thank you