Looker Connect Training

Help Center

Documentation

Community

Cloud Certifications

Looker 4.22 Release Notes

  • 7 September 2017
  • 9 replies
  • 191 views
cutler
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Anticipated Deployment Dates


Release Rollout Begins: September 10, 2017

Release Final & Download Available: September 21, 2017





Release Highlights



In addition to general tweaks and enhancements, this release comes with new and improved features in the following categories. Read on for more detail.





Preparing for Release


Please take notice of items marked with a ⚡ as they indicate changes to existing functionality and may require your attention. For more information see Features by Section below.





Notable Features


Required Filters for Dashboards


You can now require a Filter value to exist before a Dashboard can be run by any user. Ever forget to add a filter on a lookup Dashboard or a time period on your company performance dashboard and had to wait for all the unneeded computations to complete before realizing where you went wrong? Maybe you just got unexpected results? No more!



Send Once for Explores


Just send it! Instead of building and saving a Look just to email a quick exploration to your colleagues or yourself for record keeping you can now send to email, S3, SFTP, or a webhook directly from the Explore page. Keep your Spaces clean by only saving the Looks you want to come back to again and again. Learn more.



Browse Menu Navigation


Now you can quickly jump to your default Space, your personal one, or your organization’s top-level Shared Space right from the navigation bar. Favorited and popular content are also at your finger tips, avoiding the need to wait for each page to load as you navigate through Spaces.




Features by Section


Dashboards and Visualizations


- **Required Filters for Dashboards.** Dashboard filters can now require a filter value input before the Dashboard is run. [Learn more.](https://docs.looker.com/dashboards/adding-filters-to-user-dashboards#requiring_a_filter_value)
- **Timeline Visualization improvements.** Added the ability to plot multiple events on a single line and introduced a legend option. [Learn more.](https://docs.looker.com/exploring-data/visualizing-query-results/timeline-options)

Platform and Administration



  • SQL Runner

  • Added the ability to sort SQL Runner results.

  • You can now execute DDL statements via the SQL Runner. Learn more.

  • Instance administration


  • Authentication. Added support for OpenID Connect, including group-to-role and User Attribute mapping. Learn more.


  • Access. Added the a Help menu option to manage Looker Support access to your instance. By default access will remain the same. With the support_access_toggle permission developers can also manage access. If support does not currently have access to your instance this will not change that. Learn more.


  • Usage. Added edit links from certain i__looker fields to edit pages in the Administration Panel. Learn more.

  • Legacy Features.


  • ⚡ Removed the Legacy Drill Behavior feature.

  • API

  • Added a content_metadata_id for Look and Dashboard lookups.

  • Powered by Looker

  • Added parent-to-iFrame JavaScript events for updating Look and Dashboard filters.


LookML and Development




  • Dynamic grouping, aggregation, and user-inputted variables. Introducing the parameter liquid variable, which allows users to insert a string or number into LookML, providing for more flexible Looks and Dashboards. Learn more.


  • ⚡ Improved the LookML Validator to better identify when fields have duplicate declarations of the same parameter. This may surface previously ignored errors.


  • Statistics in Table Calculations. [beta] Added 55 new Calculations to allow for statistical analysis. Learn more.


Content Management and Discoverability




  • Browse menu navigation. The Browse menu now has links to Spaces and the Popular, Favorites, Recently Viewed pages for quicker navigation. Learn more.


  • Lookless Dashboards. [beta] Dashboards can now be composed of Tiles, which are not backed by Looks, can be created directly from an exploration without the need to save a Look, and live exclusively on the Dashboard. Simplify Dashboard creation and content management! Learn more.


Scheduling and Downloading




  • Just send it. Added an Explore option to send data or visualizations without having to create a schedule. Learn more.

  • Updated the Scheduler History page to include information about Datagroup triggers.


Dialects




  • Exasol. Added support for medians and percentiles. Learn more.


General Tweaks and Bug Fixes



  • Dashboards, Visualizations, and Explore

  • Fixed an issue where scrolling caused map legends to flip when reverse color scale was enabled.

  • Fixed an issue where the Save button could be obscured when editing the styling of an embedded Dashboard.

  • Fixed an issue where y-axis names didn’t appear with pivoted data.

  • Fixed an issue where public Looks containing Conditional Formatting did not load.

  • Fixed an issue editing a Look could result in an error.

  • Fixed an issue where searching for collapsed dimension groups did not properly expand them in the field picker.

  • LookML

  • Fixed an issue where not all timeframes were included by default for dimension groups.

  • Fixed a couple of issues related to LookML generation and database columns that start with _.

  • Fixed an issue where an empty action declaration caused a 500 error.

  • Fixed an issue where valute_formats could display minus signs when they shouldn’t have.

  • Scheduling and Downloading

  • Fixed an issue where filtered scheduled emails did not properly link back to a filtered version of the original Look.

  • Fixed an issue where new Google Spreadsheets public URLs led to a 404.

  • Fixed an issue where downloading a PDF could generate an Unexpected Document Error.

  • Administration

  • Fixed issues related to timezone conversions and Oracle SQL.

  • Fixed an issue where users could not connect to a User Attribute-determined host.

9 replies

M

Hi Looker team! I’m excited about Statistics in Table Calcs! Is there anywhere on Discourse already that I can read about this? Thanks!

rufus
Rank
Userlevel 3

@Maya_Simon glad to hear you’re excited for the new release. We just updated our Functions and Operators doc to include the 55 new table calculation functions. Enjoy!

J
Userlevel 1


More detail on these?

cutler
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

@Jay_Stricks we’re working on getting official documentation on these up, but here’s a quick overview:


parameter works in much the same way as a Templated Filter’s condition variable does, except that it doesn’t require an equality statement; it just inserts the value.


The JavaScript events look something like this:


dashboard:run 

Triggers the Dashboard to run



dashboard:filters:update

Updates specified Dashboard filter(s) with specified value(s)



look:filters:update

Updates specified Look filter(s) with specified value(s) and runs the Look
brayden
Userlevel 3

Hi all, does anyone have an example of Timeline Visualization Improvement?

romain.ducarrouge
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge

Hey Brayden,

Here is an example of the updated Timelime visualization, created from the Looker Learn Instance!

Leland_Robbins
Userlevel 1

Great update–excited about parameters.


Question there: can you inject the parameter name into the eventual measure? So it doesn’t say something generic in the datatable/vis (e.g. dynamic sum) but rather the actual name of the parameter selected?

cutler
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

You can use label_from_parameter to insert a value into a field’s label, not quite the same as renaming it, but pretty close!

cutler
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Ignore my previous comment @Leland_Robbins, turns out there was a (not so) secret option I was forgetting about! I edited above to keep from misleading folks.

Reply


Terms of Service