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Previously internal product knowledge now available for you to explore!

  • 1,744 Topics
  • 407 Replies

1744 Topics

david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
david.chiaramonteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is the chromium_pid_files directory, and why is it empty?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 4, 2019 The chromium_pid_files directory in the looker directory contains any process IDs for actively-running Chromium rendering processes. It is used to kill old processes that were running during a shutdown when Looker is started back up.It's totally fine if this directory is empty, it just means that Looker isn't processing any render jobs currently! This content is subject to limited support.                  

220
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Peggy_Beard
Peggy_BeardMember
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does a clustered environment help with scheduling?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019Requiring lots of concurrent schedules is a great use case for a clustered environment. Each node will have its one schedule limit. So, for example, So if there is the default 3 schedule threads in a 3 node cluster, there can be 9 concurrent schedule threads. This content is subject to limited support.                  

220
Peggy_Beard
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do we fix a blank timezone in Looker-generated SQL?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 11, 2020 There is a known issue where disabling user-specific timezones can cause this to a Look that was created when user-specific timezones were enabled.Either enabling user specific timezones or creating the look from scratch with user-specific timezones off should solve the problem. This content is subject to limited support.                  

220
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Lan
Looker Staff
LanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can we do merged results on system activity queries?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 16, 2020Yes, but only people with appropriate permission could view the query. This content is subject to limited support.                   

220
Lan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can you SSO embed System Activity content?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 16, 2018No, because the see_system_activity permission is not available in the list of embed permissions. Add your use case to this feature request and +1 if you'd use this feature. This content is subject to limited support.                   

220
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 we assign groups to the Users space?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 6, 2019 Short answer would be no, there is a request for this functionality here: Make user folders private by defaultA colleague have suggested a workaround in the link above for the following use case:You want your users to explicitly share content with any other user (not a closed system), but not have users be able to search / see Content in User spaces, without explicit permission to see it. Essentially you need an all users group, but that all user's group never to be added to User Spaces.Automatically add every user to a manual All Users Group (e.g., E Users), however you are using Google Authentication and cannot automatically add a group. (API or manually instead) Have your other defined groups (Marketing, CS, Finance) all added to another group E Users. This gives everyone the ability to see the other users, but not their spaces unless explicitly added. This is what you will be using because you already have these user groups. This content is subject to limit

220
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
S
Looker Staff
swhiteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

tmp directory getting too largeKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 10, 2019 If your instance is hosted by Looker, the .tmp directory is cleared on startup.If you host your own instance, and this directory gets too large, you can safely delete certain files in .tmp when the instance is shutdown.Admins may want to add something like this to their startup scripts:rm -rf ~/looker/.tmp/jruby* ~/looker/.tmp/looker-tmp* This will clear the .tmp folder of unneeded files on startup. This content is subject to limited support.                 

210
S
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I get a user's Looker User ID if I only have their SAML/LDAP ID, API token, embed external_user_id, etc.?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 4, 2018Yes, you can! We have a whole list of APIs that let you return a user by different types of credentials. This content is subject to limited support.                  

210
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can a sql trigger value return more than 1 row, and 1 column?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 16, 2019 According to docs, the sql_trigger_value will only consider the first row and column in the SQL you write. It is recommended to have your trigger value return only 1 value, to prevent confusion and protect non-streaming SQL dialects from loading large result sets into memory.If you really want more than 1 column considered by your sql trigger value, you can concatenate the columns, which will cause it to trigger if there is a change in any of these columns. This content is subject to limited support.                 

210
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is a Gravatar?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 21, 2020 Gravatar is how we populate a user profile picture in Looker. Once you have a Gravatar set up, it will show up in the top right of the page. To navigate to the set up, you can click the link above or go to "Account" in the top right hand corner. This content is subject to limited support.                  

210
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does Looker support IdP initiated Login?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 2019Yes! Normally, authentication is initiated by the SP (which calls out to the IdP), but Looker additionally supports IdP initiated Login for SAML, according to Docs.Um, what are those acronyms?An IdP is an "identity provider". In the context of Looker, this is a third party authentication manager like SAML, LDAP, or Google Auth.An SP is a "service provider". This is a super broad term, but in the case of authentication it refers to Looker, as Looker provides a web service. This content is subject to limited support.                 

210
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Morgan
Looker Staff
MorganLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does the scheduler listen to cache?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 22, 2017 Yes, a scheduled query will behave the same way as a normal query.In addition, a schedule may use the render cache. This content is subject to limited support.                   

210
Morgan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

sdk[object Object] (node:node_number) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: Error: ESOCKETTIMEDOUTat sdkErrorKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 29, 2020 (async () => {const sdk = LookerNodeSDK.init31();const dashboards = await sdk.ok(sdk.all_dashboards("id, title"));console.log(dashboards);})(); when running the above, you could see the error on the article's title because you had the wrong base url in the API settings. This content is subject to limited support.                  

210
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Jira/Fivetran Custom PermissionsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 27, 2019 Jira has multiple ways in which you can provision users access to see projects and issues. Permission can be provisioned at the user level, group level, project role level, or custom field level. All of this information is stored in multiple tables and include different join relationships depending on which type of permission has been assigned.The following code can be used in a sql_always_where parameter in explores to limit each user from seeing issues/projects that they do not have access to seeing in JIra. SQL_ALWAYS_WHERE:${issue.id} in( --reporter - issue level; field: issue.assigneeSELECT i.id as issue_idFROM jira.issue iINNER JOIN jira.project p on i.project = p.idINNER JOIN jira.permission_holder ph on p.permission_scheme_id = ph.permission_scheme_idINNER JOIN jira.user u ON i.reporter = u.idWHERE ph.permission_id= 'BROWSE_ROJECTS' AND ph.type='reporter' AND u.email = '{{ _user_attributes['email'] }}'group by 1UNION--current assignee - issue level; fi

210
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Git Error: Pull Production Failed Fetching from origin: Merge of revisions `commit hash1`, `commit hash2` with base `commit hash3` using strategy recursive resulted in: Failed. Pull incompleteKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 19, 2020 If a user is running into this error message, have them:commit any change (can be a comment or a new line) then pull from productionFull error message is usually:Pull Production FailedFetching from origin:Merge of revisions ddbacf28c84dcb493d0c4dc7ccb901cc60c00e34, 0a32809129aa7bae0de5430026a23a824b3c88fd with base d0de05f89c9b7e122dcdb121d0f6e4ec21b9d42a using strategy recursive resulted in: Failed.Pull incompleteThis content is subject to limited support.                   

210
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Do access grants cascade or apply to fields that reference a field with an access grant?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 19, 2020 No, access grants do not have cascading restrictions. Therefore with the existing functionality, every object needs to be explicitly defined with an access grant.If we have the below LookML and do a sum on a dimension that has an access grant, we'll see the same results when we delete the required access grant from the dimension. So we will need to define the required access grant for both fields to correctly restrict the information.dimension: dim1 {required_access_grants: [sensitive_info]type: numbersql: ${TABLE}.col1 ;;} measure: sum_of_dim1 {type:sumsql: ${dim1};;} This content is subject to limited support.                   

210
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What roles are LDAP/SAML users given?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 12, 2019 If "set roles from groups" is enabled, "LDAP/SAML users are given roles according to their "group to role mappings". Basically, you set a role in Looker to map to a LDAP/SAML group.If "set roles from groups" is not enabled, then it gives the "default role" and "default group" as specified to ALL new users.Reference: Looker-SAML setup guide, Looker-LDAP setup guide This content is subject to limited support.                  

210
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Getting a branch you've created on Github, into LookerKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 19, 2020 QUESTIONI've created a branch in Github, and am now wondering how I would be able to get that branch into Looker.ANSWEROne possible solution is to merge that branch with a shared branch that was created in Looker and pull from remote. This content is subject to limited support.                   

200
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Will changing a users' information on the LDAP side cause any problems in Looker?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 2, 2018 It depends on whether the attribute changed is an ID Attribute in your Looker LDAP settings.If this is not changing on the LDAP side, then the user will not be affected. In this example, changing a user's email would be fine because their ID Attr is cn .If they instead changed the cn , then upon the user's next login, a new user would be created. You would want to update the LDAP credentials in Looker, but since that isn't possible, you'd instead want to delete their LDAP credentials, make sure they have email credentials matching their LDAP email, and then merge by email. This content is subject to limited support.                  

200
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
jon.allen
Looker Staff
jon.allenLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why does i__looker (or System Activity) show cache runtimes as being the same as the original query's runtime?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 5, 2020 The History view's "Runtime in Seconds" will always represent the original query's (the query that was cached) runtime. So this is why you're seeing the cache Result Source queries have the same runtime as the query Result Source queries. The only way to really tell how long it takes for a query to return from cache is through logs.This content is subject to limited support.                 

200
jon.allen
Looker Staff
1 year ago
A
Looker Staff
adina.katzLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What timeframe is the "Average Build Duration" of a PDT calculated on?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 24, 2019 We only keep data in PDT System Activity explore for 30 days. This means that the "Average Build Duration" only considers the most recent 30 days. This content is subject to limited support.                   

200
A
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I pass the query timezone in a dashboard link?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 17, 2020Yes!We can add a query parameter to a dashboard link like this&query_timezone=America/New_York to specify which timezone we want the dashboard to run in. If that is not specified it will run in the user-specific timezone by default. This content is subject to limited support.                  

200
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
romain.ducarrougeLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why are my filter suggestions showing up several times?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: May 10, 2018 The ProblemWe are seeing the suggested values for filters appearing fine in the Explore, but once a value was selected in the filter the suggestions were still listing this particular value.The ReasonThe data in the underlying table may not be cleaned. Instead of a string being "string" it might actually be " string", with whitespaces. The SolutionTry adding a TRIM() to the code for the field!sql: TRIM(${TABLE}.columnname);; This content is subject to limited support.                 

200
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why aren't I seeing the "Configure Git" button on a new project?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 14, 2020 You need the deploy permission in order to Configure Git for a new project. This content is subject to limited support.                  

200
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Action hub admin panel is empty or missing optionsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 25, 2018If you see there's an empty list, or if an option doesn't appear that you expect to see, click refresh button on the page and see if all the items show up. This content is subject to limited support.                   

200
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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