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Previously internal product knowledge now available for you to explore!

  • 1,744 Topics
  • 406 Replies

1744 Topics

molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I update/reset my git repository through the API?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Nov 26, 2019Yes, using the update_project endpoint, but you must be in Development mode!Note: If configuring a bare repo using the API, docs may say Call update_project setting git_remote_url to nil...But in that case the call to update_project should actually set git_remote_url=null This content is subject to limited support.                  

270
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I getting "error": "uh oh! Something went wrong." when hitting the deploy webhook?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jun 5, 2019 This can happen if the project has a deploy webhook secret set. Try removing the secret. This content is subject to limited support.                  

6440
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why does production code not match dev after pushing to production (dev says up to date)?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: May 6, 2019If the project is set up to use Pull/Merge requests, we need to set up the deploy webhook to trigger when pull requests are accepted.More Resources:Help CenterDoc  This content is subject to limited support.                  

350
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to use and troubleshoot access grants / field permissionsKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Mar 12, 2020 Documentation for full reference about access_grantAccess grants allow developers to restrict access at the explore, join, view and field level. Access is tied to user attributes. Access grants DON'T restrict dev access in LookML - they DO restrict access in Explore field pickers and queries. SYNTAXAccess grants are built in the model file.You can define the permission like this:access_grant: privileged_departments {user_attribute: departmentallowed_values: ["hr", "finance"]}Allowed_values use OR logic - any of the values allow access. Access grants are applied at the explore, join, view or field level. You can call the access grant with the required_access_grants parameter. Ex:view: view_name {required_access_grants: [privileged_departments]Required_access_grants use AND logic - you must have allowed values for all grants to have access. GOTCHASThis means that combinations of required_access_grants are an intersection of grants, not a union. If you have requi

4570
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When do you see "Revert Uncommitted Changes" vs. "Revert to Production" in the git menu?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Feb 21, 2021You will see "Revert Uncommitted Changes" in the git actions menu when you've saved changes, but haven't committed them yet. You will see "Revert to Production" when you've committed changes.* You will see both if you've committed some changes and saved others.*Note: Revert to Production only shows in your personal "dev-" branch. Check out the full command list for git actions. This content is subject to limited support.                  

14820
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I break or invalidate cache?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 10, 2018 On a given explore or dashboard, you can click the gear in the top right, and then "Clear Cache and Refresh".On the Admin > Datagroups page, you can refresh all the cache associated with a datagroup.There is no way to break ALL cache at once; the best you can get is to clear all datagroups. Ideally, you have datagroups for every model and/or explore. This content is subject to limited support.                 

920
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
lauren.boltz
Community Admin
lauren.boltzCommunity Admin
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do Nulls Still Appear in My Measures After Wrapping the SQL: Parameter in Coalesce()?Knowledge Drop

Example a measure of type: average (or Sum/Count/etc) is producing Nulls in an Explore. I want to display 0 instead of Null. measure: my_measure {type: averagesql: ${orders} ;;} A gut instinct may tell us to wrap the sql: parameter in a coalesce()function:measure: my_measure {type: averagesql: COALESCE(${orders},0) ;;} However, Nulls will still display for this measure in the results table.Why?The coalesce is occurring before the aggregation. The average will return Null for values where there are no rows, so the inner coalesce never has a chance to operate.How do we show 0 instead of Null?We'll need to create a new measure of type: number (which does not perform any aggregation) to wrap the measure in a coalesce(): measure: my_measure_coalesced {type: numbersql: COALESCE(${my_measure},0) ;;}  Now, the measure will display 0 in place of any Null that is returned! But a pivot is forcing the nulls... Then we won't be able to use the above approach, because the nulls are coming through to

9371
i-plotnikov
1 month ago
lauren.boltz
Community Admin
lauren.boltzCommunity Admin
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Overriding User Attribute Default for Admins or Unrestricted Access GroupsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 17, 2019 At first thought, it might make sense to assign a blank value to override any default value input for user attribute values in the User Attribute page in the Admin Panel. However, if we assign blank override values for Admins or Unrestricted Access groups, Looker will interpret the blank as a value not having been assigned to a user. In this case, any default value specified will override the blank. In cases where using access filters to restrict data access amongst users with  user_attributes , while allowing certain users or groups all access, we can set user attributes as such:To give an admin or other user access to all non-null values of a string field, set the user attribute data type to String Filter (advanced), and use a value of %. To include null values, set the user attribute to %, NULL. To give an admin or other user access to all non-null values of a number field, set the user attribute data type to Number Filter (advanced), and use >0 or NOT N

2150
lauren.boltz
Community Admin
1 year ago
milli.koch
Looker Staff
milli.kochLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Variable not found "parameter"Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Sep 6, 2019 ProblemThis error usually indicates that the {% parameter parameter name %} liquid variable is being used somewhere where it's not accepted.SolutionSince the _parameter_value variable is accepted in more places than parameter parameter name (notably the html, link, and sql_always_where parameters) it's usually safe to say you can use this instead.thissql_always_where: {% if parameter_name._parameter_value == 1 %} ... instead of thissql_always_where: {% if parameter parameter_name == 1 %} ... Additional resourcesAnother potential cause of the error is the incorrect use or reference of templated filters in derived tables. See the Templated Filters and Derived Tables Community Post for more troubleshooting tips and information. This content is subject to limited support.                

9510
milli.koch
Looker Staff
1 year ago
jon.allen
Looker Staff
jon.allenLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to build a dynamic link parameter for different dashboard ID between dev and production environmentsKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jun 25, 2020 ProblemUsing relative links (/dashboards/410) vs. absolute links (https://abcdefg.looker.com/dashboards/410) will correct for differences in the base domain, but will not accommodate for differences in dashboard ID between dev and production instances.SolutionIf a dashboard was moved from one instance to another using Gazer, the dashboard ID may be different, but the dashboard slug will remain the same. So we can use the slug in place of the id directly in the link.For example you can do gzr dashboard cat 410 --host myinstance.looker.com and get:{"content_metadata_id": 2997,"description": "This is Katie's cool dashboard","hidden": false,"id": 410,"query_timezone": null,"readonly": false,"refresh_interval": null,"refresh_interval_to_i": null,..."favorite_count": 0,"last_accessed_at": "2019-06-28 15:23:00 +0000","load_configuration": "cache_run","lookml_link_id": "girls_at_looker::WB_TEST","show_filters_bar": true,"show_title": true,"slug": "KoDXRuaeLDQCuQ0rt4iH

5282
Mahesh
4 months ago
kevin.dunn
Looker Staff
kevin.dunnLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I manually deploy with advanced deploy? (Hitting the advanced deploy webhooks)Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Feb 10, 2021 In Looker 7.12, a new endpoint was created that allow users to deploy a specific commit or branch to production. While we encourage setting up these webhooks inside of the remote repository, there are three methods of manually deploying using advanced deploy: Using the deployment manager:The deployment manager, released in Looker 7.20, allows users to deploy specific commits from the UI. Hitting the webhook directly:Users can choose to either deploy the head of a branch:<HOST_URL>/webhooks/projects/<PROJECT_ID>/deploy/branch/<BRANCH_NAME>Or a specific commit SHA/Tag (which can be found in commit history/remote repo.<HOST_URL>/webhooks/projects/<PROJECT_ID>/deploy/ref/<SHA_OR_TAG> Advanced Deploy requires that a webhook secret be set in order to use these webhooks, so we cannot just paste them manually into the URL. Instead, we can use a curl request to pass the webhook secret into the header of the request:For deploying a sp

3360
kevin.dunn
Looker Staff
1 year ago
emma.ware
Looker Staff
emma.wareLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I create a blank text tile on a dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 3, 2019 Some users want blank tiles on a dashboard for spacing. The desired behavior isn’t immediately possible, but we can do a workaround with HTML. We can create an empty paragraph using<p></p>This will appear as a blank text tile. This content is subject to limited support.                  

2120
emma.ware
Looker Staff
1 year ago
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
jamesnestlerLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to: Multiple user attribute values (OR logic)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 20, 2019 Use a String Filter (advanced) user attribute type and input the user attribute values with the following syntax:'value1','value2' Each value should be wrapped with single quotes and delimited with a comma. Make sure there are no white spaces between the values. This content is subject to limited support.                  

5012
masutaka.net
4 months ago
bryce.heltzel
Looker Staff
bryce.heltzelLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can we set up pull requests on git outside of our VPC/VPN?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jul 26, 2018 The ProblemWe want to set up pull requests for Looker! However, we can’t use the webhook in GitHub because our Looker instance is behind a VPC. Is there another way to do this? THE SOLUTIONYou must set up a git server within the same VPC as Looker.  This content is subject to limited support.                

1050
bryce.heltzel
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When do you see "Revert Uncommitted Changes" vs. "Revert to Production" in the git menu?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Feb 21, 2021You will see "Revert Uncommitted Changes" in the git actions menu when you've saved changes, but haven't committed them yet. You will see "Revert to Production" when you've committed changes.* You will see both if you've committed some changes and saved others.*Note: Revert to Production only shows in your personal "dev-" branch. Check out the full command list for git actions. This content is subject to limited support.                  

380
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does the order of LookML dashboard parameters matter?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 Within the same tag/section, for example, filter, does not matter. You can freely order your parameters and it will all be the same.For the best readability, let's make sure we follow the default order as the documentation: https://docs.looker.com/reference/dashboard-reference#filters This content is subject to limited support.                  

250
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Detailed Steps to "More Powerful Data Drilling" & how to get vis configs for custom drillingKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 15, 2019Enable the “visual drilling” labs feature. In the `drill_fields` parameter within the definition of a measure we’d like to drill into, we select only the fields we want to see in the drill modal. Go to the explore and drill into the measure. We should be seeing some default visualization in the drill modal. Click “Explore from Here” in the drill modal itself. In the explore that we’re taken to, we modify the visualization so that it becomes exactly what we want. This can be choosing a different type of chart, changing the colors, adding grid lines, etc. Once we have the visualization we want, go to “Share” on the explore and copy the expanded url. Paste the expanded url into a URL decoder (https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/) and hit “decode”. Copy the decoded url, paste it into a JSON string escaper (https://www.freeformatter.com/json-escape.html), and hit “Escape”. Copy the part of the escaped output that’s after the `&vis={` and before the `}&f

5001
S
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to filter yesterday and same day of last two weeks in custom filter, and limit these days to week daysKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 if(#if today is between Monday and Saturday(mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01), now()) + 1, 7)+1)>1 AND (mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01), now()) + 1, 7)+1)<7,${orders.created_date} = add_days(-1, trunc_days(now())) OR ${orders.created_date} = add_days(-8, trunc_days(now())) OR ${orders.created_date} = add_days(-15, trunc_days(now())),  #if today is Mondayif((mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01), now()) + 1, 7)+1)=1,${orders.created_date} = add_days(-3, trunc_days(now())) OR ${orders.created_date} = add_days(-10, trunc_days(now())) OR ${orders.created_date} = add_days(-17, trunc_days(now())),  #if today is Sunday${orders.created_date} = add_days(-2, trunc_days(now())) OR ${orders.created_date} = add_days(-9, trunc_days(now())) OR ${orders.created_date} = add_days(-16, trunc_days(now()))))   If today is Tuesday - Saturday, then yesterday will be week days If today is Monday, then we have to use -3, -10 and -17 to get Friday If today is Sunday, then we have to use -2,

4420
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I find the top 5 XYZ order count of each {timeframe}Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 28, 2019 You may be tasked with this kind of question:“Which are the top 5 states in terms of order count for each month in our history?”Can I answer this question in Looker and clearly visualize it? Yes, definitely you can! We will solve it with table calculation:Select the month and states dimension and the orders count measure. We will pivot on the state dimension.To find out the top 5 states, we will use two functions: pivot_row() and large(): using large() we can get the nth biggest value of a list, and pivot_row() can provide us the list of the values in each row. When we get the 5th largest value of the list, we then compare the measure with the 5th largest value of the row, if it equals or greater than this value, then we show it, otherwise we let it show null. Don't forget to hide the original measure from the visualization. if(${orders.count}>=large(pivot_row(${orders.count}), 5), ${orders.count}, null) In the visualization, we turn off “plot null values”

5080
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does the Content Validator check Lookless Tiles?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 As of version 5.10 the answer is YES! The workaround pre-version-5.10 is:Convert the UDD to a LookML Dashboard Using the "Get Dashboard Lookml" option in the cog in the top right Paste it into a dashboard file and save Find & Replace what you need to change in the elements (tiles) Save and view the dashboard Convert it to a UDD by copying it to a space 

70
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Custom Filter for "Year to Date on Last Year to the same date Last Year"Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019In custom filters:((extract_years(now())=extract_years(${download_stats.timestamp_year})AND ${download_stats.timestamp_year} <= now())OR(((extract_years(now())-1)=extract_years(${download_stats.timestamp_year})AND ${download_stats.timestamp_year} <= add_years(-1,now()))AND(extract_months(${download_stats.timestamp_date}) = extract_months(now())ANDextract_days(${download_stats.timestamp_date}) <= extract_days(now()))ORextract_months(${download_stats.timestamp_date}) < extract_months(now()))) This content is subject to limited support.                  

7701
S
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can percent_of_total type measures be referenced in number type measures?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 No they cannot: As mentioned here https://docs.looker.com/reference/field-reference/measure-type-reference#percent_of_totalpercent_of_total measures are calculated after data is returned from your database. This means that you should not reference a percent_of_total measure within another measure; since they might be calculated at different times, you may not get accurate results. It also means that percent_of_total measures cannot be filtered on.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

270
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I change the visualization of my drill fields? What criteria does Looker use to set which a visualization will be used in a drill set?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 6, 2019 It's not possible to choose a visual drilling type via the UI, but there are implicit rules that say what the visualization will be. There is a feature request requesting ability to change them at will.WorkaroundYou can use the method in this Help Center article to hard code the viz type for drilling on a field: https://help.looker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023589613--More-Powerful-Data-DrillingThe Rulesif a dimension is the primary key OR (the first column is a dimension AND it’s name is id) OR (the first dimension’s name is _id) if there is only 1 record then “single_record” viz otherwise we’ll choose a “table” if the first dimension contains “albersUsa” data and there’s only 1 measure column then the type should be “looker_geo_choropleth” if any of the dimension contains location data then go for “looker_map” if any of the dimension contains map layer data and any measures/dimensions are numeric then go for “looker_map” if there’s no dimensions or measures

7801
Brigitte_Reda
4 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does value_format round or truncate values?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 12, 2019 Value formatting rounds values!So for example, rounding 24.45 to 1 decimal place will result in 24.5 .(Truncation, on the other hand, would result in 24.4 .)  This content is subject to limited support.                 

1770
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I make a link in a field open in a new tab?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 For the link parameter there is no way currently to have the link automatically open in a new tab.Note that absolute links open in a new browser tab, and relative links in the same browser tab, as documented here.For the html parameter the answer is yes. You can use the target="new" attribute to make a link open in a new tab:html: <a target="new" href="https://www.google.com/">Link to Google</a>;; This content is subject to limited support.                 

8410
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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