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The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2111 Topics

sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to prevent committing changes when there are LookML errors (Code Quality)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 10, 2017 If you want to make sure that your production LookML has no errors, you can enable Code Quality in Project Settings.Cite Docs.Starting in 5.22, users have the option to allow committing with warnings but still prevent committing with errors. This content is subject to limited support.                  

760
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
nathaniel.thompson
Moderator
nathaniel.thompsonModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Will changing the default value in a Dashboard filter update the filter values for existing schedules on that Dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 18, 2019 No, the default values for the filters on the Dashboard set at the time the schedule is created are the values that will be applied to the schedule (until they are changed manually in the schedule). Changing the default values for the filters on the Dashboard after the schedule is created will not update filters for existing schedules.To apply the new default values to a schedule, you can either create a new schedule with the same settings (save for the filters) as the old one, or manually update the filter values on the older schedule.You can add your vote to allowing a schedule to automatically inherit a saved Look default filter values here. This content is subject to limited support.                   

760
nathaniel.thompson
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

"Create API Keys for a user." Can we expect the user to have the same permissions in the UI as in the API?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 8, 2017 Yes. API sessions authenticated with API3 keys of a given user will always have exactly the same permissions as the user account the keys belong to. If the user can do it in the UI, then a script authenticating with API3 keys of that same user can do it via the API.Note that changes made to user permissions will immediately affect API sessions using that user's API3 keys. Permissions are rechecked with every API call.In case we only want to give the user API credentials being a non-Looker user, we could also set a "blank" user and generate the keys there and share these credentials with the person to authenticate. This content is subject to limited support.                  

760
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
evelyn.shen
Looker Staff
evelyn.shenLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Refresh frequency of lookerFetchDataKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 26, 2020 Please know that the method outlined in https://help.looker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001288508-Exporting-Data-to-Google-Sheets is not supported by Looker Support. lookerFetchData is a custom function created by an internal user. It's best to recommend using the Google Sheets Action (https://help.looker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044002214-Looker-Actions-Google-Sheets) instead. Per Zach: Google scripts by default only refresh when the sheet page refreshes. Any Google scripts would need another script or function in sheets to have it refresh at any other rate. This content is subject to limited support.                  

760
evelyn.shen
Looker Staff
1 year ago
scott.siegel
Looker Staff
scott.siegelLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Mixed Content Error TroubleshootingKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 31, 2018 Scenario:If your instance is self-hosted and is embedding Looker in an iFrame, and is receiving the following error:Mixed Content: The page at '' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure resource ''. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS. Possible Causes:You have a load balancer (ex. Nginx) that is managing your SSL certificatesTroubleshooting:Remove the -- no-ssl startup option https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-install/looker-startup-options Replace the no-ssl startup option with--ssl-provided-externally-by=<s> Replace the <s> with the host and port of their external SSL provider Make sure you have the = sign! Check your nginx settings against what we recommend here: https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-install/sample-nginx-config. In particular, we have had customers set configured to set request headers that tell Looker what happened when forwarding the request as X-For

750
scott.siegel
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What happens when you push a PDT to production?Knowledge Drop

  Last tested: Sep 2019 1. If there is a previous version of this PDT in production, the existing production table will be dropped by the reaper2. If there is a version of that PDT in dev mode, the dev mode PDT will become the production PDT.3. If there is not a dev mode version of that PDT, a new PDT will be generated by whichever happens first:a) a user queries the PDT via an explore/look/dashboardb) the PDT is triggered the next time the regenerator checks trigger valuesNote: if the PDT takes more than an hour to build, explore queries that use this PDT will time out while waiting for this PDT to build. The PDT build will NOT timeout as long as there are no settings on the database that would cause the query to timeout.Chat tip: If you generate the table for a new PDT in dev mode by querying it, then push to production after it is built, users can immediately query that table without a build timeout. This content is subject to limited support.                

750
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can you do nested if in liquid?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 Yes! Source though it may be less confusing if move one of the conditions into a new field like a yesno:{% if template == "index" or template == "page" %}{% assign correct_template = true %}{% endif %}{% if correct_template and settings.slideshow_enabled %}<div class="container main content">...</div>{% endif %}  This content is subject to limited support.                  

750
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
chris.seymourLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Status code 000 after starting LookerKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 9, 2020 A status code of 000 means no HTTP code was received. You may see this response when hitting the alive endpoint after starting a Looker instance because it takes a few minutes before the Looker instance is ready to receive HTTP requests. Note that running systemctl status looker may show that the Looker instance is active even if it is not yet ready to receive HTTP requests. This content is subject to limited support.                   

750
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
1 year ago
W
Looker Staff
wonkyoung.park
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why does my explore take so long to load?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 19, 2021 Does the explore in question have a lot of fields and joins? If so, the current advice is that we should reduce the number of fields and joins in an explore until it's "small" enough" but we don't have a specific target.One thing to note is that hiding some of the fields with the hidden parameter or the fields parameter would not help much because our backend would still have to do a lot of work to gather all the data from all the LookML files referenced in the explore. This content is subject to limited support.                  

750
W
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I reuse my LookML code? (Reusing Code with Extends)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 For more information on Extends and how to reuse your LookML code, review the documentation here.But how does Extends work? What if there is the same parameter on my new file?At a high level, Looker performs a object-by-object comparison and the new file takes precedence if the same object exists on both files. The steps are:COPY: A copy is made of the defined LookML object that is being extendedMERGE: The copy is merged with the defined LookML object that is doing the extendingRESOLVE CONFLICTS: If a LookML object is defined in both places, the object doing the extending is usedFINISH: The new LookML object can be used within the model just like any other LookML object This content is subject to limited support.                  

750
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is the maximum frequency at which I can send schedules/alerts?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 13, 2020 1 every 5 minutes in the UI1 per minute with the APIThe other option we may have is setting a dashboard to refresh every 5 seconds. This will rerun with new queries to the database every 5 seconds, but requires the dashboard being open somewhere, and won't send an alert.There is a huge caution on this workaround because you need an incredibly performant database to handle this type of query load.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

750
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is it possible to turn on SAML but prevent Looker from creating users for a specific group/set of users even if they already have an account within the IDP?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 26, 2020 Yes!This can be accomplished using the SP Entity/IdP Audience (documentation) setting in the Admin > SAML settings. You can assign this field to only specific people within the IdP to be allowed to log in to Looker. If a user attempts to log in that does not have this value assigned, the authentication with fail and the user will not be able to access Looker. This will also prevent them from creating an account until they are assigned this value and can successfully authentication.Usually this is done through groups on the IdP side but different providers have different terminology. The Audience field is how they specify the group name in the Looker settings. This content is subject to limited support.                  

750
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

A step-by-step guide to building and delivering embedded analytics

This content, written by Sharon Zhang, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Sep 10, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.There’s no question that analytics can be beneficial to your organization’s growth and success. Embedding analytics into your product can create new revenue streams. You can use data or analytics to create opportunities for upsell. You can even offer it as an entire new feature set or product line. But even with the benefits of rolling out a productized analytics offering being as immense as they are, the task of actually building one can be daunting. After helping deploy more than fifty embedded analytics projects, I’ve seen all the common concerns to this challenge. Most of my customers worry about the people and financial resources required to build out the offering, the time it will take to implement, and how quickly user needs change. One of the questions I hear most often is ‘Can we adapt quickly enough as customer needs evolve?’ The answer is yes.

750
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
4 months ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is there a limit to the number of recipients I can send a schedule to?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 24, 2018 Nope, there's no limit. Tip: The email box accepts comma-delimited-values for ease-of-use.⚠️ Highly unrecommended to use "Run as recipient" as this would result in A TON of queries being run.However, there might be a limit on SMTP server, for example, 1000 on Sendgrid  This content is subject to limited support.                  

740
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do you use an alias parameter with a dimension_group?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 6, 2018 You just alias the dimension group itself, not the individual fields. So if you had a dimension_group: oldname {} and want to rename it to newname, you can set the alias like:dimension_group: newname {alias: [oldname]} This content is subject to limited support.                  

740
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I customize the setup/welcome email when you add a new user?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jun 24, 2019 This can be done from the Admin > Custom Welcome Email Page!The subject mentions Looker and is NOT customizable. The email is completely static - no Liquid or other dynamic-ness. Several HTML tags are not allowed (and they aren't the same ones we sanitize in LookML). Fortunately, they will be auto-stripped rather than ignored so it should be clear if a tag isn't allowed. This content is subject to limited support.                  

740
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Relative paths in html for embedKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 18, 2020 If you use a relative path in an html parameter (ex. html : <a href="/dashboards/etc) embeds using this parameter will error. It will work fine in a link parameter.This is because Looker adds the /embed for the link parameter when it sees a relative URL, but doesn't do any extra processing for the html parameter.It may be possible to workaround this in an html parameter, by using liquid to determine if a user is embed or not (perhaps by using a particular user attribute value for embed users) and adding /embed to the path accordingly  This content is subject to limited support.                  

740
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why is my alert icon not showing on hoverKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 25, 2020 Check if you have the required permissionshttps://docs.looker.com/admin-options/settings/roles#create_alertsotherwiseYou might be in dev mode!!! This content is subject to limited support.                  

740
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I have a 'label' field and a 'value' field for suggestions?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 1, 2020 This is a feature request: For suggest filters, have a 'label' field and a 'value' field.There is a workaround using sql_always_where and liquid. The example is for Redshift, you should adapt the code below for your use case.explore: accidents {...sql_always_where: 1=1{% if accidents.accident_lookup._is_filtered %} AND accidents.id = CAST(RTRIM(SPLIT_PART({% parameter accidents.accident_lookup %}, ' <id ', 2),'>')as int){% endif %} ;;}view: accidents {sql_table_name: faa.accidents ;;dimension: accident_lookup_dim {hidden: yessql: ${accident_number} || ' <id ' || ${id} || '>' ;;}parameter: accident_lookup {suggest_dimension: accident_lookup_dim}...} There are limitations with the above workaround. The underlying value still shows up in the filter textbox after you select it, and it only works well for "single value" filters. This content is subject to limited support.                   

730
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

If a user within a group email address unsubscribes from a schedule, will the affect other recipients in this email group?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 7, 2020 Yes, this will unsubscribe all recipients in the group email from the schedule. This is mentioned in Docs, and there is a Community post on handling/monitoring unsubscriptions.​ This content is subject to limited support.                   

730
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

5 Ways Looker makes Firebase Analytics Data in BigQuery Useful

This content, written by Ernesto Ongaro, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Nov 22, 2019. The content is subject to limited support.The best apps today use a data-driven approach to make them successful. Knowing which segments of users stick around and get the most value (and in turn give you the most revenue) shouldn’t be a guessing game, it should be an exact science. Millions of modern apps are written in Google’s backend application development platform, Firebase. Firebase contains over 18 tools to help application developers build, improve, and grow any app. If you’ve used apps from Venmo, The Economist, or The New York Times, then you’ve used Firebase. There are a few moving pieces here, so let’s introduce them. Cloud Firestore is a database to store your application events, where they can then be analyzed in Firebase Analytics. Firebase Analytics offers some great out of the box functionality, but a lot of growing companies run out of runway with it, and their analytical que

730
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
4 months ago
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
noah.kawasakiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to set an embedded dashboard filter name as a saved variable with JSON.stringify()Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 24, 2018 When using embedded Javascript events you might use JSON.stringify() to pass a string into the postMessage() function.Example function that takes in filter and value and tries to pass them into the JSON inside of JSON.stringify()function updateFilters(filter, value) {var iframe = document.getElementById('looker');var update_request = JSON.stringify({"type": "dashboard:filters:update","filters": {filter : value}})iframe.contentWindow.postMessage(update_request, "https://{{ domain }}")} This will not work, the value variable will be turned into a value like "Sweaters", but the filter will turn into "filter" and not the name of the filter on the dashboard like "Category"To get both the key AND the value passed in, we need to add this data into the JSON differently...filter_name = "Category"var object = { "type": "dashboard:filters:update", "filters": {}}object['filters'][filter_name] = value... This will go into the filters hash of object, and then set "Category"

730
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to limit the date query range within 100 daysKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 8, 2019 Sometimes admins might want to limit the number of days their users can query to save the datawarehouse cost, for example, they want their users can only query no more than 100 days of range. The solution is using sql_always_where with date_start and date_end liquid parameters:sql_always_where:(orders_1.created_at<=COALESCE({% date_start orders_1.created_date %}, {% date_end orders_1.created_date %}) AND orders_1.created_at > date_add(COALESCE({% date_start orders_1.created_date %}, {% date_end orders_1.created_date %}), interval -100 day)OR orders_1.created_at>=COALESCE({% date_start orders_1.created_date %}, {% date_end orders_1.created_date %}) AND orders_1.created_at < date_add(COALESCE({% date_start orders_1.created_date %}, {% date_end orders_1.created_date %}), interval 100 day));; For example, when we query "is before 2019-08-01", this is the generated sql:WHERE ((orders_1.created_at < (TIMESTAMP('2019-08-01')))) AND ((orders_1.created_at

730
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is it possible to make the domain in the url of a `link` parameter dynamic, based on the user's instance environment (i.e. prod, dev, etc. )?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 25, 2019 Simple CaseIn the url of a link parameter, you can omit the instance name and Looker will fill in the instance name with the instance you're on when you click the link. So you can just use /dashboards/123 .User Attribute WorkaroundIf you want something dynamic that isn't just the current instance name, we can use a clever workaround.There is no liquid variable that can make the domain of a link dynamic, but you can workaround this by creating a user_attribute with the same name on each instance, but assigning it different default values. You will not assign this user attribute to anyone, but always use the default value. In the link parameter, you will hardcode the default value of the user attribute for each instance, like this:https://{{ _user_attributes['instance_hostname'] }}/dashboards/123 This content is subject to limited support.                 

720
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What are some benefits to using OIDC?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 14, 2019 It's Secure:It's more secure than OAuth alone, since it has more robust authentication methods built on top of OAuth 2.0 authorization methods. It's OAuth + the stuff you'd need to make OAuth a good authentication client, all in one! Out of the box!It's Flexible:There are some nifty tricks in ODIC. One example of this is that in the API call, one of the values returned for each key is a key id (kid) which can be used to quickly determine if the crypto key has changed - basically, this gives us automatic key rotation.There are also different ways to pass information (front end vs back end), and you can choose which you want to use based on how your application is set up! More on that here: https://www.onelogin.com/blog/openid-connect-explained-in-plain-english   This content is subject to limited support.                  

720
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago

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