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Previously internal product knowledge now available for you to explore!

  • 1,741 Topics
  • 303 Replies

1741 Topics

Dean_Hicks
Looker Staff
Dean_HicksLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Error: cannot extends [lookml_parameter] due to mis-matched property valuesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 1, 2020 There are several variations to this error, but one common one is when a user extends viewA in viewB, then extends both viewA and viewB in viewC. In this case, the extends logic seems to conflict. They shouldn't need to extend viewA in viewC in this case because they are already extending viewB (which extends viewA) there. This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
Dean_Hicks
Looker Staff
1 year ago
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.                  

120
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Do schedule filters override dashboard filters?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 10, 2018 Yes! The filters on a schedule will override any filters applied on the dashboard if the filter is on the same field.This gives you the advantage of having a single copy of the dashboard, but the ability to schedule it to multiple people, each with different filter values. This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
romain.ducarrougeLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Quick Start card truncation rulesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 3, 2020 In Looker v7.18 Explores have added the option to display Quick Start queries, which allow the user to click on these to load pre-defined queries on the explore to get started in there analysis faster.As these Quick Cards can populate the Explore space, they are displayed in card format. These cards contain various items, title and description for example.The rules for truncating the content in these Quick Start cards is as follows:Tool tip only displays if the description needs to be truncated Tile height is determined by the tallest tile (all other tiles inherit this height)Extra rules: All tiles have a maximum and minimum pixel height. Minimum is 115px tall. Maximum is 135px Tall. All tiles have a width of 160px.If you have a title with 1 line, the description can be max 4 lines If you have a title with 2 lines, the description can be a max of 3 lines If you have a title with 3 lines, the description can be max 2 lines If you have a title with 4 lines, the d

120
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
1 year ago
margaret.abercrombie
Looker Staff
margaret.abercrombieLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why Can't I Schedule System Activity ExploresKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 28, 2020 The ProblemI gave my user permission to the see System Activity and they have permission to schedule Looks, so why can't they send System Activity data?A SolutionThe user has the see_system_activity permission, but the system_activity model set was not included in the user's model set.This role allows the user to see the System Activity model, but none of the permissions listed apply to the user's access to the System Activity model. Once the System Activity model is added to the model set for the role, the user should be able to schedule System Activity data! This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
margaret.abercrombie
Looker Staff
1 year ago
kevin.dunn
Looker Staff
kevin.dunnLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why is the PDT Event Log - Action Data column null?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 26, 2020 If pdt_event_log.action is like 'trigger%', 'regenerate%', 'reap%', that row is deleted after 5 days. But if the pdt_event_log.action_data contains any data at all after 5 days, action_data is overwritten with NULL for that row. This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
kevin.dunn
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How does a user know which `model-user-X` directory is their dev branch?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 6, 2019 For a given directory called models-user-X directory, X is the user's ID.You can check user ID in Admin > Users, and the user can also see their model directory name by clicking their user icon in the top right corner and clicking Account:  This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is there a way to tell the difference between a devmode PDT and a production PDT from looking at `looker_scratch`?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 18, 2017 There isn't, but dev mode PDTs will not appear in the Admin > PDTs panel. So you could cross reference that list with the tables in the scratch schema This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I use the mobile app while allowlisting IPs in Looker?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 7, 2021 Not natively. If you allowlist specific IPs in Looker, then the IPs of mobile phones won't be able to reach Looker. Mobile IPs are temporary (change every few days) so allowlisting the phone IPs isn't a sustainable workaround.Workaround: Use a VPN on their phone to connect to a static IP that can be allowlisted.Feature Request to comment on: https://portal.feedback.us.pendo.io/app/#/case/60895 This content is subject to limited support.                   

110
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why aren't my logs showing up in the admin/logs window?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 What to do when admin/logs is showing a blank screen instead of the usual code feed?The first thing to check is whether the logs are being written to the looker/log directory. To check this:cd into the looker/log directory run tail -f looker.logIf logs aren't printed, they are possibly not being written or being redirected to another location. Looker needs the logs to be in the looker/log directory to make the admin/logs window work, so they will need to be both written and stored in that directory. This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is the `POST webhooks/projects/[project]/deploy` call I see in logs?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 29, 2020This is the call Looker makes when creating and pushing a new branch This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I use Self-Signed Certificates with Lookerbot?Knowledge Drop

  Last tested: Jan 2019 The source of truth to answer this question is the lookerbot repo. It says:If your Looker instance uses a self-signed certificate, Lookerbot will refuse to connect to it by default.Setting the NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED environment variable to 0 will instruct Lookerbot to accept connections with invalid certificates. Please ensure you have thouroughly evaluated the security implications of this action for your infrastructure before setting this variable.This should only impact on-premise deployments of Looker. Do not set this environment variable if Looker hosts your instance.  This content is subject to limited support.                

110
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

This key will be valid until ACTION_HUB_SECRET is changedKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 24, 2020 If you are seeing this error when setting up a self-hosted action hub, even though you have changed the ACTION_HUB_SECRET, check if you restarted the Action Hub server after changing that variable.Environment variables, like ACTION_HUB_SECRET, are loaded into the server at start. This means a restart of that server would be required to load up the changes This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Action Hub query never completesKnowledge Drop

  Last tested: Sep 2019If a query runs forever in Action Hub, it might be because it's too large or because there are multiple streaming queries.Try reducing size and load and see if it goes through.Self-hosted customers might also experience issues sending/scheduling data via Action Hub and some streamed destination if your repo is not public. You might try : Making your repo public. Switching to a Looker-hosted instance.   This content is subject to limited support.                

110
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do I see `No Results` after installing a Marketplace block?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 1, 2020 After a user has added a marketplace block and try to run the query, they may see No Results when querying.One thing to check is to see if the schema name is correct. To find the schema name, you can look under the connection listed in the Update Configurations modal and search for the specific dataset. When you run Select 10 against the table, it should append the schema to the table name and you'll be able to compare schema names. This content is subject to limited support.                   

110
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do I have multiple (or zero) copies of my LookML dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 2020 You'll get a copy of the LookML dashboard for every model you include the dashboard in. If you don't see your LookML dashboard, you need to include it in some model. Lines like include *.dashboard can lead to models including unintended dashboards! This content is subject to limited support.                

110
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
chris.seymourLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I seeing "Looker instance is not configured for backups" on the Admin - Backup page?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 24, 2018 This means that the instance is on a MySQL internal db, and the product doesn't do S3 backups for MySQL.If you are Looker-hosted, we automatically create backups using a process outside of the Looker app, so you don't need to worry about this message.If you host your own instance, you'll need to create your own backups. This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
1 year ago
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
chris.seymourLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does the "Send Test" button listen to "Send if there are results"?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 22, 2018 No. The "Send Test" button will always send the look, whether or not you have "Send if there are results" or "and results have changed since last run" selected.If you want to test whether these options are working as expected, you should save a schedule that runs in the next five minutes. This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
1 year ago
andrew.rose
Looker Staff
andrew.roseLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I enable SSL for a connection to a MySQL internal DB?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 18, 2019If you host your own instance, yes, you can. In the looker-db file that contains information about the MySQL connection, add the line "ssl: true" to enable SSL. This content is subject to limited support.                   

110
andrew.rose
Looker Staff
1 year ago
A
Looker Staff
adina.katzLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When "New Account Notifications" is on, will I get notified when new embed users are created?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 22, 2019Nope! New Account Notifications are only sent for non-embed accounts. This content is subject to limited support.                   

110
A
Looker Staff
1 year ago
W
Looker Staff
wonkyoung.park
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

JS Console: "dashboards cached_results miss for id your_dashboard_id"Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 20, 2020 Problem: You're seeing dashboards cached_results miss for id <your_dashboard_id> in the JS console on an embeeded dashboardExplanation: No need to be alarmed. This message is harmless. It's logged by the front-end code whenever the /cached_results endpoint was not used to accelerate the dashboard load and that endpoint is never used for embedded dashboards.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
W
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Welcome to Looker link not allowing user to set passwordKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 19, 2020If a user clicks the "Activate" link on the "Welcome to Looker" user setup email and is brought to the regular login page rather than the setup password page, check if the instance is using email authentication. If another authentication type is being used, Looker will expect that type of login, unless the user also has alternate login credentials This content is subject to limited support.                   

110
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
scott.siegel
Looker Staff
scott.siegelLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I getting the error Java::JavaLang::ClassCastException: [Mentions BigQuery]Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 7, 2018 You may be getting this error because Looker's SQL Runner is unable to return Arrays in the query results. If the column is a type Array and is in the Select statement, users may encounter the error Java::JavaLang::ClassCastException:When using arrays, it may be necessary to UNNEST or convert Array to String. A couple functions that can solve for this error are:Google BigQuery UNNESTThe UNNEST operator takes an ARRAY and returns a table, with one row for each element in the ARRAY. You can also use UNNEST outside of the FROM clause with the IN operator.Converting Arrays to StringsThe ARRAY_TO_STRING() function allows you to convert an ARRAY<STRING> to a single STRING value or an ARRAY<BYTES> to a single BYTES value where the resulting value is the ordered concatenation of the array elements.See Google Documentation here for more information:https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/standard-sql/arrays This content is subject to limited support

110
scott.siegel
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sarah.tayeri
Looker Staff
sarah.tayeriLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

I host my own instance - can I update to a specific patch (not just the latest)?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 2, 2020No, you can only update to the latest patch in a given minor release. This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
sarah.tayeri
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why are my Two Factor (2FA) codes not being accepted?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 18, 2018 This is most commonly caused by the time on your phone and the time on Looker being out of sync. Try changing your phone time to **Automatic** or increasing the Drift time in the Looker 2FA panel. This is discussed in the setup doc.In the past, increasing drift time to '210' has worked This content is subject to limited support.                  

110
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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