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Although the purpose of Looker is to empower business users to explore data, sometimes a user can misunderstand the meaning of dimensions, measures, and Explores, leading them to make incorrect queries that result in incorrect content. For example, a user may see a measure called Orders Count and assume it's a count of orders, when in fact it's a count of products in a given order. Any query the user makes based on that misunderstanding is likely to result in misleading content. How can Looker administrators ensure that all content is approved as accurate and credible before it goes into an organization-wide shared folder?
The most basic way to ensure that content is created accurately is to add descriptive labels when needed, such as for fields, models, views, and Explores. For example, we can use a label to rename Orders Count, referenced above, to Count of Products per Order. We can add descriptions to fields and Explores to include more detailed notes about their purpose along with instructions for their use.
Another way we can ensure the purpose and definition of fields is by using Looker's API to create a data dictionary. Business users can use the dictionary as a reference as they explore and build new content.
You can also use the Looker Data Dictionary from the Looker Marketplace if your admin has enabled certain Labs features.
We can also add another level to ensure that Looks, dashboards, and similar types of content are correct and approved for use before they are made available for wider use. The solution below outlines a workflow that is recommended by Looker's professional services team:
We recommend that you periodically check the usage of approved content to ensure that only active content is saved in shared folders. The Content Activity System Activity dashboard can be used to track content usage. The Unused content folder will also display inactive content. You might want to delete unused content or relegate it to an archive folder so that it doesn't take up space in the shared folder.
NOTE: Only users with admin permissions may access the Unused content folder. Only admins or users with the see_system_activity
permission may access System Activity pages.
Be proactive about fixing any errors that may appear on approved content over time (for example, errors caused by renaming or deleting fields), so that all approved content maintains accuracy as a source of truth. You can leverage the Content Validator to resolve content errors. For more information, check out the Content Validator documentation.