As Looker is not officially posting updates here anymore then I thought to still share it as this is one of the best places for customers to give feedback about new updates.
I have listed first the official highlights provided by Looker and then added unofficial highlights by roles, which is something I share usually to our own users.
Emoji meanings:
🧪 - This feature is still in the labs/beta phase.
💰 - This feature comes with an extra cost ( E.g. Whitelabel menu page)
- This feature only works with Google products ( E.g. Mobility Data Block with BigQuery only)
Let us know what do you think about those updates?
Expected Rollout Start: July 19th, 2020
Expected Final Release and Download Available: July 30th, 2020
Highlights provided by Looker:
⚠ Breaking Changes
- Removal of Legacy features: IDE folders and .strings files for localization
- New LookML validation warnings
- Athena driver update
- The password reset function will lock after too many failed login attempts.
- SnowFlake Unquoted Database legacy feature is disabled by default
Redesigned IDE (out from Beta)
Check out the new IDE in your LookML projects.
🧪 Upgraded Explore Field Picker
Introducing a redesigned Explore UI through the Upgraded Explore Field Picker Labs feature.
🧪 The Looker Extension Framework
Introducing the Looker extension framework, available with the Extension Framework Labs feature, which is enabled by default.
Unofficial highlight by user groups:
Regular user (Browse menu):
- No updates this month.
Power-user (Explore):
🧪 A new labs feature, “Upgraded Explore Field Picker”, includes a smarter search, additional field context, new quick-start options, and enhanced view and management of selected fields.
The Radial Gauge visualization, available through the Looker Marketplace, now supports the ability to trellis by row or pivot and control the number of gauge rows and columns.
Source queries are no longer dropped when a merged result is created. 🤩
🧪 The New Dashboard Experience experimental Labs feature now offers a few new settings for parity to regular dashboards:
- The option to Run on load in the dashboard settings
- Newly created LookML dashboards now default to Newspaper Layout instead of the Tile Layout
- Keyboard shortcuts can now be used on a dashboard upgraded to dashboard (beta)
- The ability to move a dashboard to the trash
Developer (Develop):
- The LookML Validator will now issue a warning for aggregate table names greater than 255 characters. In addition, the aggregate table LookML generator will no longer generate names longer than the maximum allowed characters.
- The LookML Validator will now render a warning if there are multiple entries of the following:
derived_tableparameters within a view file,queryparameters inside anaggregate tablewithin a definedexploreparameter, ormaterializationparameters within anaggregate_tablewithin a definedexploreparameter.
Admin (Admin):
- For query-level custom actions, you can now specify a user attribute to control an individual user’s ability to send or schedule data to the action’s destination.
- A new beta labs feature, Extension Framework , has been introduced. This new feature allows developers to build custom JavaScript applications and tools on top of Looker with no need to set up their own stack for building.
- A new deploy API endpoint and webhook allow users to deploy to production from any git SHA, tag, or head of branch reference. It requires opting into an Advanced Deploy Mode where deployments can only be made via API/webhook. This will be helpful for developer and staging instance setups, eliminating the need for multiple repos.
💰 New Elite System Activity provides improved performance and longer retention of historical data.
💰 The term Look will now be hidden when the Hide Look Whitelabel setting has been enabled.
