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Technical Tips & Tricks

Previously internal product knowledge now available for you to explore!

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Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I update my dashboard with a new custom slug using update_dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 10, 2021 Yes, we can update the dashboard with a custom slug but please note dashboard slugs are required to be 22 characters long.If we try to use the update_dashboard endpoint with a slug that's less than 22 characters, we'll see the following error message. # Node SDKconst dashboard = await lookerSDK.ok(lookerSDK.dashboard("123"))const test = await lookerSDK.update_dashboard("123", {slug: "slugtest"});# Results in this errorerror: {message: 'The first argument must be one of type string, Buffer, ArrayBuffer, Array, or Array-like Object. Received type undefined',type: 'sdk_error'}, This content is subject to limited support.

2542

4 days ago

MichaelMember

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Important: Supportability of Knowledge Drops

We will not be updating Knowledge Drop content, nor do we guarantee that everything is up-to-date. The timestamp published on each Knowledge Drop denotes when it was last verified. We have spent years building up this treasure trove of insightful Looker tips, tricks, and how-to’s, but given how quickly Looker has evolved, we never expected this content to stay bleeding-edge forever. Think of these Drops as point-in-time insights that were once important enough for us to document. That said, there’s a TON of extremely valuable and useful pieces of Looker knowledge here! We hope it inspires you to explore, learn, and engage with your fellow community members! If you have questions on these articles, please reply on the post for Community help! Plus, if you’re looking for officially supported resources, you can always visit our Help Center and review our Docs.

20511

4 days ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why isn't my date field being timezone converted in the WHERE clause?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 23, 2018 This question comes up from time to time and the answer is that the pattern is expected at the moment. For example, both code blocks below have Looker generated SQL for a date field. The SELECT statement has a convert timezone directly on the date field, but in the WHERE statement the convert timezone is on the date from the filter (i.e. is on the day 1-21-2018)A way to think of what is going on is as follows:The user has asked, essentially, “in my timezone (LA / PST) what events happened on 2018-01-21"? In the database timezone (UTC), that means “What events happened between 2018-01-21 08:00 - 2018-01-22 08:00? This is the reasoning for the WHERE statement.And then, Lookers converts in the SELECT because we don’t want to show the UTC time, instead we want to show the user the user specific query timezone (LA / PST). This is the reasoning for the SELECT statement. MYSQLSELECT DATE(CONVERT_TZ(order_items.returned_at ,'UTC','America/Los_Angeles')) AS `order_item

1961

4 days ago

ismailLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

I want to move/copy a dashboard to an embed user's folder but I do not see their folder listedKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 26, 2020 The ProblemAdmins would like to copy dashboards to Embed User folders rather than recreate the dashboards for each Embed Use case but cant see the Embed User Folders when they use the copy modal in User spaces.Workaround:Navigate to All Folders -> Embed Users Folder Set as your default FolderWhen copying/moving a dashboard, the Embed Users folder (and the user folders contained within) are now accessible from the copy/move modal. This content is subject to limited support.

1831

6 days ago

davidsLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Looker Multistage Development Framework (Dev->QA->Prod)

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. Starting in Looker 7.12, you can deploy any Git commit SHA, tag, or branch to production with Advanced Deploy Mode. This helps consolidate repositories in multi-environment developer workflows, where each environment points to a different version of a codebase. It also gives greater control to one or a few developers or administrators over the changes that are deployed to production.IntroductionThis article provides a comprehensive development framework for managing the promotion of LookML code and content across multiple Looker instances and is intended to aggregate various resources into a cohesive walkthrough, provide a deeper understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple Looker instances, and present a best practice framework for a development strategy. In This ArticleWhy Have Multiple Looker Instances? Release Management Is a Development Instance Necessary? Benefits and

25604

6 days ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Other Buckets Using Table Calculations

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. You can create ad hoc custom groups for dimensions without using logical functions in Looker expressions or developing CASE WHEN logic in sql parameters or type: case fields when the Custom Fields Labs feature is enabled and you have permissions to create custom fields.You can also create ad hoc custom bins for numeric type dimensions without needing to use logical functions in Looker expressions or needing to develop type: tier LookML fields when the Custom Fields Labs feature is enabled and you have permissions to create custom fields.When you are building a chart or table off a high-cardinality dimension, you might want to lump all low-frequency dimensions into an Other bucket to avoid cluttering your output. Referencing the :total of a measure in a table calculation makes other bucketing possible without the need for any LookML coding.Starting off with a count of events on our Looker instance: T

2942

10 days ago

mikhailxuLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Shared Filters on Single Value Charts Performance Technique

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. This is a technique for loading dashboards with single value tiles that have the same WHERE clause.Instead of making a single query using filters for each Look and a single measure or dimension, this example returns an entire row with every single value desired:From this single query, we can create multiple single-value visualization tiles for our dashboard. In this example we will call it Single Value Dashboard.We can do this by: Hide every dimension and measure, except for the desired field we want to show in the Look: Save the Single Value visualization in the same Dashboard, for each measure and dimension: Then our dashboard will produce the different tiles or Looks (according to how you saved each visualization) off the same Explore query: This greatly reduces the load time used in running parallel queries on the database which uses the same WHERE filters, so it improves performance

2561

11 days ago

paolaLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I check datagroup trigger values?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 15, 2020 The Admin > Datagroups page displays the current datagroup value.If your Looker instance is self-hosted and you would like to check previous values, you can do so in the logs by running:grep 'UPDATE' looker.log | grep 'datagroupname' | grep 'trigger_value' Replace datagroupname with the name of the datagroup you're looking for.You can also see the trigger value in System Activity > PDT Event Log, but it only has data up to the pruning schedule, so only the past few days of data will be shown. This content is subject to limited support.

771

12 days ago

milli.kochLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How does caching work for downloads?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 11, 2019 Results in TableWhen downloading the same number of rows as the Explore the download query will run against the Explore cache until the cached results are invalidated.All Results/CustomWhen downloading a different number of rows than are returned in the Explore the SQL query is changed, so the download will run against the database.What about subsequent downloads?This is still unclear. Most testing seems to suggest that download queries are not stored in cache, however there have been user reports of stale data being returned in downloads with the same row limit as previous exports so the answer to this may be circumstantial. This content is subject to limited support.

711

13 days ago

molly.lippsettLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Git Workflow Using One Repository Across Multiple Instances — Development, Staging, and Production

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. Starting in Looker 7.12, you can deploy any Git commit SHA, tag, or branch to production with Advanced Deploy Mode. This helps consolidate repositories in multi-environment developer workflows, where each environment points to a different version of a codebase. It also gives greater control to one or a few developers or administrators over the changes that are deployed to production. MotivationBy setting up a Git workflow across multiple Looker hosts, we can create a dedicated development environment for developers to work in, all while shielding users from being exposed to any experimental code. All development and code review is done in a development or staging environment, and once changes pass your team's quality assurance, they are deployed to staging or production as desired.This article describes two different methods of setting up a workflow among multiple instances, depending on whether you

3511

16 days ago

samLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I stop or change the order of my PDT builds?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 2021ProblemI have several PDTs building, and I want to either: Pause a PDT from building Control the order of my PDT builds (maybe I want a certain one to always build first) ExplanationThe order of PDT builds is arbitrary except when dependencies are involved. So there isn't any UI for pausing a PDT or changing the order of PDT builds (here's a feature request to +1 if you'd like to see this feature).WorkaroundsTo pause trigger checks for an entire connection:You can use the PDT Maintenance Schedule to control when Looker sends trigger queries to that database.It's a cron string, which means you can get a full pause by setting the date to something in the future. For example, if today is the 2nd and you want to pause all trigger checks you could set the cron task to 0 * 31 12 * for "every hour on the 31st of December".To pause trigger checks for one PDT:You can comment out sql_trigger_value or persist_for for a given PDT and push it to production to stop it from bui

3341

17 days ago

samLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I merge user attribute values from multiple groups?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: March 2021 Background: Groups are given user attribute values. For example, group_USA might be given the value for the “country” user attribute as “USA”. With an access filter, users in that group will get WHERE country = “USA” for their queries.The issue: If a user belongs to two groups, like group_USA and group_UK, each with different “country” user attribute values, this user will not inherit both user attribute values. Other types of permissions are additive with groups, but user attributes are not: one will “win out”.To solve the scenario where someone would need access to both countries, you might think you need to create a user attribute for each combination of user attribute values. While that would work, managing all the combinations might get unwieldy. The following pattern is an alternative.1. Create a user attribute for each possible individual value. Ex: a user attribute for every count2. Create a group for each user attribute.3. Assign groups to user attribut

4654

19 days ago

VincentLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I use `hidden` on a join?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Mar 5, 2021 No, you can use hidden only at the explore and field level (documentation).BUT, there are workarounds. Method 1: use fields: [] instead on the join (documentation). This will effectively do the same thing as hidden would because it tells Looker to not bring any fields into the explore. Caveat: If any current content uses fields from this join, the content will break because the fields are no longer in the explore.For example:join: foo {fields: []} Method 2 (better way): use an empty view_label parameter in the join (documentation).For example:explore: orders {join: users {type: left_outersql_on: ${orders.user_id} = ${users.id} ;;relationship: many_to_oneview_label: ""}} Will show up as this in the explore: This content is subject to limited support.

8521

19 days ago

chris.seymourLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What does "async socket check failed" mean in the logs?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 25, 2019 Basically there is a connection between the client browser and Looker server that Looker periodically checks. Whenever it fails, an async socket check failure happens, and Looker says “no need to keep running a query if nobody is waiting for it. Terminate db session”Note that in response to the async socket check failure, Looker will initiate a kill command to the database; for example, for Snowflake Looker will initiate CALL SYSTEM$CANCEL_ALL_QUERIES(#{sick_query_data[:connection_id]}) . This does NOT mean that Looker is initiating the timeout—as noted here, Looker does not timeout queries once they have been sent to the database. While Looker may be initiating the CANCEL_ALL_QUERIES command, it is only doing so in response to a closed connection between the UI client and the Looker server (supported by the socket check failure in the logs being first in the sequence of events).tl;dr: there’s usually something client-side responsible for this failure. Network

781

20 days ago

molly.lippsettLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

"Imported content is empty" in Google Sheet or showing wrong dataKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 17, 2019 If you are exporting a Look publicly in a Google Sheet and use user attributes in your LookML, the public export will use the default value of the user attribute. This may be different that the exporter's user attribute value.If you have no default value set for the user attribute, with the =ImportXML function like "Imported content is empty"The error with the =LookerFetchData function is more helpful and lets you know about the lack of default value in the user attribute. This content is subject to limited support.

2661

20 days ago

jaxLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Using parameters to find the top N items versus the rest of the population

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. The Looker parameter field lets you inject a value directly into the SQL.Various Looker pages describe how to use this feature:The Templated filters and parameters documentation page, which discusses creating the field and applying the user input The parameter reference page for this field type and its allowed_value subparameter The Field parameters page, which includes the parameter field type and shows which LookML parameters can be subparameters of the parameter field The Liquid variable reference documentation page, which mentions the {% parameter %} Liquid variable The Dimension, filter, and parameter types documentation page, which indicates the LookML type parameter values that can be used with parameter fieldsIn this article, we discuss how to use parameter to let users find the top N items versus the rest of the population in Explores. The problemUsers often want to find out the top n perfo

560

21 days ago

jaxLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Dynamic schemas with the same data format using parameter

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. The Looker parameter field lets you inject a value directly into the SQL.Various Looker pages describe how to use this feature:The Templated filters and parameters documentation page, which discusses creating the field and applying the user input The parameter reference page for this field type and its allowed_value subparameter The Field parameters page, which includes the parameter field type and shows which LookML parameters can be subparameters of the parameter field The Liquid variable reference documentation page, which mentions the {% parameter %} Liquid variable The Dimension, filter, and parameter types documentation page, which indicates the LookML type parameter values that can be used with parameter fieldsIn this article, we discuss how to use parameter to dynamically select from multiple schemas with the same data formatThe problemSome schemas that are identical in structure. This is of

170

21 days ago

samLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why can't I access chat?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: April 2021 If you don't see the chat option in the Help Menu:Permissions: Anyone with the develop permission can come on chat. This means that admins have this capability too. Check if the user is missing the develop permission.License type: If you have a partner license type you will not have chat access starting April 1st 2021. As for trials, trials which were initiated after Jan 5th 2021 will not have chat feature toggled on. However, the trials that were initiated before that are being turned off in a phased manner. If you see the chat option in the Help Menu, but clicking on it doesn't bring up the chat widget:Browser extensions: If you do not see the chat option in the help menu, but clicking it does not bring up the chat widget, check in incognito mode. Often times we've seen extensions such as Ghostery cause issues with the chat window not showing up in the past.Firewalls: There could be something in your network blocking the Zendesk domain. Besides firewalls, you

7082

25 days ago

paolaLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can you format dates in table calculations?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 If you have a date field with values such as "2021-01-01", you can use excel formatting to display the date as January 1, 2021. You can also use this approach to only display the month name, such as "January", etc.Excel uses the date January 1, 1900 as serial number 1. This means that January 1, 2008 is serial number 39448. In a table calculation, you can use the diff_days(start_date, end_date) function to return a number between your date field and January 1, 2008. Once you have that number, you can add 39448 to it.Given the above, this is the exact formula which can be used to allow the date to be formatted using the custom format syntax:diff_days(date(2008,01,01), ${orders.created_date}) + 39448 Once we have this defined, we can use the table calculation "Custom..." formatting option to display our dates as January 1, 2008.Outcome in the Explore UI:The available formatting options can be found here. This content is subject to limited support.

6621

25 days ago

samLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

30 Day Windows: Periods Starting from Today

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. The ProblemWhen we want to look at our data in terms of 30-day periods, we can use Looker's built in month timeframe for dimension_group fields. However, this can pose a problem, as not all months are the same length. Also, in cases where the current day is in the middle of a month, the data for that "period" is incomplete. The goal in this case is to get a period for every 30 days (i.e., past 0-30 days = 1, past 30-60 days = 2, 60-90 days = 3, etc.), starting from today and moving backwards, by which to group our data. The SolutionIn Looker, we can achieve this pattern by placing a SQL function in the SQL: parameter of a dimension. For example, let's say that we have a date dimension_group called created:dimension_group: created { type: time timeframes: [time, date, month, raw] sql: ${TABLE}.date ;; }Then, all we need to do is create a new dimension of type: number to capture the number of days

1661

26 days ago

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Technical Tips & Tricks

How are files sent to SFTP and S3 buckets named?Knowledge Drop

Can I update my dashboard with a new custom slug using update_dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Why isn't my date field being timezone converted in the WHERE clause?Knowledge Drop

I want to move/copy a dashboard to an embed user's folder but I do not see their folder listedKnowledge Drop

How can I check datagroup trigger values?Knowledge Drop

How does caching work for downloads?Knowledge Drop

How can I stop or change the order of my PDT builds?Knowledge Drop

How can I merge user attribute values from multiple groups?Knowledge Drop

Can I use `hidden` on a join?Knowledge Drop

What does "async socket check failed" mean in the logs?Knowledge Drop

"Imported content is empty" in Google Sheet or showing wrong dataKnowledge Drop

Why can't I access chat?Knowledge Drop

Can you format dates in table calculations?Knowledge Drop

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