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The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2110 Topics

Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How does an empty view_label (view_label: "") or label appear in the new field picker?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 19, 2021 Prior to the new explore field picker (in 7.18 and previous), using an empty view_label (e.g. view_label: "") on a join or field would default to the the name (or label) of the Explore.In the new field picker (in 7.20 and forward), any fields from a join or field that has a view_label: "" appear to be missing from the field picker, as they now default to be hidden from the field picker, rather than nested under the label of the Explore name / main view name. The fields are still accessible by searching in the field picker search bar, but this isn't intuitive to users since we cannot see them.This change will remain as is, as it now aligns the behavior between a blank view_label and a blank field label.To work around this, users should update their view_label: parameters to reflect the actual label/name of the view they'd like for these fields to be nested under in the field picker. This content is subject to limited support.                   

561
S
1 month ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What gets stored in the internal Looker application database?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 5, 2020 Essentially, everything about the Looker application! With one big exception - LookML is stored in a file directory and remote git repo.Metadata about users, permission sets, folders, content, schedules, etc. are all stored in the internal application database. This content is subject to limited support.                 

560
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I make a static PDT?Knowledge Drop

Last tested; Jul 6, 2017 This is not recommended - if you have static values, they should be a non-persisted derived table or written to your database.That said, you can use sql_trigger_value: SELECT 1 ;;. This value will never change so the PDT will never be rebuilt unless the SQL is changed or someone requests a manual rebuild. This content is subject to limited support.                  

560
sam
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I fix broken tiles on a lookless dashboard without the content validator?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 1) Go to the broken dashboard, select 'Get Dashboard LookML' from the gear icon2)) Grab the LookML.3) Paste the LookML into a new dashboard in the model4) Update the LookML to correct any renamed objects (dimensions, measures, models, filters, etc.)5) Navigate to the LookML Dashboards space and open the dashboard6) Use 'import to space' to re-create a new UDD with the fixes applied. This content is subject to limited support.                  

560
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I get a measure to listen to one filter and not another?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: June 2020 If you use a filter field, then you can specify which measures should listen to that filter field using templated filters.This Help Center Article explains it well; here are the code examples from that article.filter: status_filter { type: string}dimension: status_satisfies_filter { type: yesno hidden: yes sql: {% condition status_filter %} ${status} {% endcondition %} ;;}measure: count_dynamic_status { type: count filters: { field: status_satisfies_filter value: "yes" }}This content is subject to limited support.                

560
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

How to overcome the restrictions of multi-pass SQL

This content, written by Ani Jain, was initially posted in Looker Blog on May 14, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.There is often a misconception that multi-pass SQL queries result in faster performance. Multi-pass SQL by itself is not necessarily a good or a bad feature. It all depends on the analytics solution’s architecture and whether it requires multi-pass SQL to achieve certain results. In legacy analytics tools, the common paradigm is to run multi-SQL queries (in a ‘pass’) and then join the results based on some common dimensions. Data warehouse tables are often offered at some level of dimensionality to produce reports. These legacy analytics tools were designed for older, expensive databases, so most of the analysis/query processing was handled by the analytical tool. Some aging tools use a ROLAP (Relational Online Analytical Processing) engine that executes SQL directly against a relational database. This allows users to take advantage of an underlying data mod

560
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
3 months 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.                  

560
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Do we have any limitation of size to store a user attribute value type string?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 14, 2020 it looks like the max size of a user attribute is absolutely massive. From the code, it looks like it's 16777216 charactersThat said, I'd definitely suggest caution since storing massive strings is probably going to lead to performance issues down the line (or maybe even immediately) since these values will likely have to be stored in memory wherever they go This content is subject to limited support.                  

560
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
11 months ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What does history count by source in System Activity mean?If you are looking at an explore like this that count represents the number of queries run from each source - the count matches the query run count measure in this situationKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 1, 2020 If you are looking at an explore like thisthat count represents the number of queries run from each source - the count matches the query run count measure in this situation  This content is subject to limited support.                  

560
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Other Buckets Using Table Calculations

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. You can create ad hoc custom groups for dimensions without using logical functions in Looker expressions or developing CASE WHEN logic in sql parameters or type: case fields when the Custom Fields Labs feature is enabled and you have permissions to create custom fields.You can also create ad hoc custom bins for numeric type dimensions without needing to use logical functions in Looker expressions or needing to develop type: tier LookML fields when the Custom Fields Labs feature is enabled and you have permissions to create custom fields.When you are building a chart or table off a high-cardinality dimension, you might want to lump all low-frequency dimensions into an Other bucket to avoid cluttering your output. Referencing the :total of a measure in a table calculation makes other bucketing possible without the need for any LookML coding.Starting off with a count of events on our Looker instance: T

550
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
5 days ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

BIGQUERY (Error): Failed to retrieve data - Not found: Files /gdrive/id/..etc.Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 This error can pop up when connecting to/querying from google sheets, and possibly means the sheets file isn't shared with the service account.Below are some steps you can follow to check for this:Go to IAM & Admin Copy the Service Account Email you use for the BigQuery connection (should look something like ****@.iam.gserviceaccount.com) Share the spreadsheet with the above service account emailSource:https://help.looker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023623234-Live-Spreadsheets-in-Databases This content is subject to limited support.                  

550
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Starting Looker Web Application looker ERROR! You are running Java Version (OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM) which is unsupported. Please ensure that you are running Oracle Java 8 update 161+ or higher.Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 26, 2019 As the install docs say, you needed to use Oracle Java. This stackoverflow article might help you move over.UPDATE: We support OpenJDK 8 181+, however our Startup Scripts have a check that looks for 'java version' as opposed to 'openjdk version', so if you switch to Open JDK,  update the line in your startup script from this:JAVA_VER=$(java -version 2>&1 | sed 's/java version "\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\..*"/\1\2/; 1q') to this:JAVA_VER=$(java -version 2>&1 | sed 's/openjdk version "\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\..*"/\1\2/; 1q') This content is subject to limited support.                  

550
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why isn't "PNG visualization" showing up as an option in the 'Download' modal?Knowledge Drop

  Last tested: Sep 2109To send or download data in image-based formats, such as PNG or PDF files, Looker requires a rendering software. So, the option only appears if you have the rendering software installed.The rendering software that is currently used is Chromium . This is automatically installed for Looker-hosted customers. If you have a self-hosted instance, you can follow this docs page to set it up on your instance.Then the option should appear.There is one corner case in which the png option might not appear even after installing Chromium: trying to download a Lookless tile while not having the explore permission. This is by design.  This content is subject to limited support.                

550
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Render error: Page not loaded within 300000 msKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 10, 2020 This error generally means that Looker tried to have the Chromium process load a page in order to capture its contents in a PDF or PNG, but the page did not fire the DOMContentLoaded event within 5 minutes. This most commonly happens when loading the actual content (dashboard, look, etc)Other than unexpected issues, the main culprit of this in the past has been certain outbound requests being black holed, so they hang indefinitely while the page is trying to load until this timeout is hit. Looker will use localhost for requests*, but it’ll also make requests to some external servers (e.g. ping.looker.com, google-analytics.com, etc).If you are an on premise user, check if you are allowing all outbound traffic. If not, you can load the dashboard, look or explore you're trying to render in the UI and look at the network tab in the Chrome dev tools. You should try to curl every URL that isn't your host URL (so in the example below, everything that doesn't start wi

550
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

In what timezone does the table calculation now() return?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jul 3, 2018 In databases that support timezone conversion, now() returns the time in the timezone set in the Query Time Zone property of the database connection for the explore.In the case that the database does not support timezone conversion, now() returns the time in the timezone of the Application Time Zone in the general settings admin page. This content is subject to limited support.                 

550
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

SQL processing and data analysis with the EAV model

This content, written by Mike Xu, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Dec 9, 2014. The content is subject to limited support.Much of the world's data is stored in an . The EAV model is a commonly used in scientific research, medicine, healthcare, and popular open source and commercial software platforms such as Magento and Drupal. The key advantage of the EAV Model is that cannot handle and . It was designed with the intent of getting data in, with the tradeoff of being difficult to get data back out. To overcome these tradeoffs, this article will cover how to effectively analyze EAV data. If you are not fully familiar with the structure and pros/cons of the EAV model or need a quick refresher, here's an . In order to fully work with EAV data for traditional analysis and reporting, we will transform the EAV tables to an by creating tables for their associated entities. Directly querying EAV data to analyze cohorts, funnels, and time series is tedious and challenging. These queri

550
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
3 months ago
sidney.junior
Looker Staff
sidney.juniorLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Example: Changing embedded looks filters with Javascript EventsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 21, 2019 This is meant for anyone who needs are looking for a working example and an explanation on changing filters of embedded private looks with javascript events. Link here:https://gist.github.com/SidneyJrLooker/47b69a4ffe7cc7ef903765a51a442e6dIf you want to test it, you will need to host your html file on your localhost.Documentation for making changes to the iframes with javascript events: https://docs.looker.com/reference/embedding/embed-javascript-events#making_changes_to_the_iframe This content is subject to limited support.                  

550
sidney.junior
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

My Custom Map Layer is set up correctly, but Measure values are not showing up on my Map. Why?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 28, 2017 A possible reason for this is that the Custom Map Layer property key names have to match the corresponding Dimension string fields.For example,TopoJSON LookML Dimension "dma1":"New York, NY" New York NY Where "dma1" is the Property Key that is mapped to the custom map layer definition. The Property Key is configured correctly, but if the respective strings do not match then the map will show blank.User either needs to add a " , " to the LookML Dimension values, or remove the " , " from the TopoJSON "dma1" values. This content is subject to limited support.                   

550
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

You're not normal

This content, written by Daniel Mintz, was initially posted in Looker Blog on May 11, 2016. The content is subject to limited support.One of the trickiest things about being human is that you only get to see the world from one perspective. This is relevant not just for the reasons that , but also because it makes putting yourself in someone else’s shoes really hard. And it’s not getting easier. As we’ve gained tools to reach larger and more diverse audiences, putting yourself in their shoes has simultaneously gotten much harder and much more critical. After all, if you’re only fashioning tools for members of your village, you understand intuitively how they’ll be used. But when your potential audience is global—living in contexts and locations you can’t even dream of—you’re far from an average user. And yet, while potential audiences are growing, the world each of us inhabits online has only shrunk, thanks to what my friend Eli Pariser calls the . When I was writing emails for MoveOn

540
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
3 months ago
Ellio
Looker Staff
EllioLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I check to see if auto refresh has been enabled/updated on a dashboard in the log files?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 11, 2018 A change to a dashboard's auto refresh setting will look something like this in the log files:UPDATE "DASHBOARD" SET "REFRESH_INTERVAL" = '1 hour' WHERE ("ID" = 1) Note: the "ID" refers to the dashboard ID. This content is subject to limited support.                  

540
Ellio
Looker Staff
11 months ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Stable PDT name not showing up with publish_as_db_viewKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 23, 2020 Did you add the publish_as_db_view parameter after the table has been built and pushed to production?If so, the stable name will not show up.It'll only show up once the table has been rebuilt, so setting the publish_as_db_view_parameter as yes is not enough. You will either have to make a change to the sql code to get the regenerator to rebuild table or hit the Rebuilt Derived Table and Run button in the Explore.Creating the PDT with publish_as_db_view for the first time will allow for the stable view, but adding the publish_as_db_view onto a PDT that is already built won’t until the next rebuilt. This content is subject to limited support.                   

540
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Jiro
Looker Staff
JiroLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

"Unlimited Download" not possible in UI for unstreamable resultsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 9, 2020 To reduce the amount of user initiated instance crashes, the ability for users to download unlimited unstreamable results has been removed from the UI since version 4.14.Things you can do for the UI:Make the query streamable (i.e turn table calculations into measures and remove pivots - check the streaming section on the What are all the Row Limits in Looker? article) Select up to 100,000 rows in the custom download limit Developer can set a custom maximum on the command line with --max-unstreamed-limit startup option. This content is subject to limited support.                   

540
Jiro
Looker Staff
1 year ago
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT in js consoleKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 31, 2020 This error in the console usually does come up a lot with local ad-blockers. https://www.keycdn.com/support/how-to-solve-err-blocked-by-clientTry disabling Adblock.If you want to keep Adblocker on, you can also allowlist the domain. This content is subject to limited support.                  

540
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
11 months ago
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
jamesnestlerLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What happens under the hood when you hit "reset connection" in Project Settings?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 7, 2020 When a user hits 'Reset Connection’ in Project Settings, Looker executes a function called revert_repo() calling two jgit commands, reset and clean:resetCommandBy default, reset simply changes the `HEAD` the current branch is pointing at. The `HEAD` reference is found with a call that returns the reference id of the most recent commit to master.When Looker performs the reset, it uses the parameter `--HARD` to reset both the HEAD and the index of the current working directory. You will recall that the index defines where different commits are on the git tree. Therefore, this reset --HARD essentially updates all references in the git tree, ensuring the map is accurateSource: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Reset-DemystifiedcleanClean removes all untracked files. In the context of git reset, this means that after the tree has been updated, all files not appearing on the tree will be removed.Why does this `magically` solve git problems?If resetting the con

540
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

Creating actionable customer segmentation models

This content, written by Dan LeBlanc, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Jun 27, 2019. The content is subject to limited support.What is customer segmentation? Customer segmentation is a way to split customers into groups based on certain characteristics that those customers share. All customers share the common need of your product or service, but beyond that, there are distinct demographic differences (i.e., age, gender) and they tend to have additional socio-economic, lifestyle, or other behavioral differences that can be useful to the organization. What type of information is used in customer segmentation Any information you can acquire about individuals can be used to create a customer segmentation. Direct-to-consumer brands and B2B companies are at a distinct advantage because of the amount of information they can obtain about their customers just from their transaction data alone. Basic data types typically include: Geography (billing info, shipping info (if applicable), bro

540
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
3 months ago

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