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The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2114 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.                   

851
S
6 months ago
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
noah.kawasakiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why is my reference line giving an incorrect number on a pivoted query?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 18, 2018 Reference lines calculate based on the first column visible in a visualization in the returned dataset. So a max, min, average, or median will be based on the data in one column only, and not on every data point for that row.You can do some table calculations to manipulate this behavior, but the exact functionality you'd want still might not be possible. (Ex: You want a stacked bar chart of pivoted data, so you make a table calc to horizontally total up values from each pivot for the sake of making the reference line work. However, now the total table calc will also show in he stacked bars.)Here is the request to the product idea related. This content is subject to limited support.                  

850
noah.kawasaki
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.                  

850
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
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.                  

850
evelyn.shen
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

Data science with Looker: part I

This content, written by Haarthi Sadasivam, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Apr 11, 2017. The content is subject to limited support.Looker isn’t just a . It’s a full data platform, which means you can use it as part of a . Looker is great for cleaning data, defining custom metrics and calculations, exploring and visualizing data, and sharing findings with others across your organization, including scheduled data deliveries. For many types of analysis, you can efficiently complete your entire workflow in Looker. But for more there are specialized tools that are going to work better for the remaining 20% of your workflow. Looker writes SQL, and while SQL is great for a lot of things, you’re not going to use it to run a clustering algorithm or build a neural network. Because of these limitations, data scientists usually turn to Python or R and run them in a dedicated Data Science Environment (DSE) like R Studio or Jupyter Notebooks. A typical workflow may look like this: Before a

840
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
7 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Scheduler PrioritiesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 10, 2019 There are three types of schedule threads that determine schedule order:Scheduler jobs - default of 10 at a time Renderer jobs - default of 2 at a time Unlimited scheduler jobs - default of 3 at a timeThe scheduler, unlimited scheduler and renderer all have their own queue that is first-in first out. However, since the scheduler will need to wait on the renderer to finish for certain jobs (since the render stage is part of the execution of the schedule) there can be situations where render jobs back up before all 10 scheduler jobs back up, causing schedules to execute slightly out of order depending on the format. Unlimited jobs will have to wait for the previous unlimited job to complete.Separately, any one-time "Send" or "Test" will be given a higher priority than regularly scheduled jobs and will get to skip the line for whatever queue they are in. Currently, there is no way to change priority. This content is subject to limited support.                  

840
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I break or invalidate cache?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 10, 2018 On a given explore or dashboard, you can click the gear in the top right, and then "Clear Cache and Refresh".On the Admin > Datagroups page, you can refresh all the cache associated with a datagroup.There is no way to break ALL cache at once; the best you can get is to clear all datagroups. Ideally, you have datagroups for every model and/or explore. This content is subject to limited support.                 

840
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

How we turn customer data into revenue

This content, written by Brian Lafaille, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Mar 30, 2016. The content is subject to limited support.The question I often hear from customers is… “How does centralizing all my data turn into actionable, tangible business value?” Put more simply… “How is centralizing my data going to keep customers around (retain revenue), or cut costs (make my team more efficient)?” It’s a great question. On the Customer Success team at Looker, we leverage our centralized data warehouse and custom metrics in a number of different ways, but all with the same resulting outputs expected of the question above— we want to keep our customers happy and we want to be more efficient. Here are a few of the ways the Customer Success team leverages our centralized data to turn raw numbers into tangible business value. Retain revenue: Data as a forecaster Having a pulse on your customer health is critical to a Customer Success organization. But, the notion of ‘Customer Health’ is

840
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
7 months ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can we use Bitbucket on a port other than 7999?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Mar 7, 2021In version 7.6+, yes you can use another port in the git URL for BitBucket connections!Pre-7.6, only port 7999 can be used when connecting BitBucket.You can technically select "custom git server" instead, but then you lose the ability to use pull requests and view links to BitBucket.     This content is subject to limited support.                

830
sam
Looker Staff
1 year 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.                  

830
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
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.                   

830
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
paola
Looker Staff
paolaLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I create an Embed user from the API?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 1, 2020Yes, as of Looker 6.24, there is a create_sso_embed_url API endpoint. Once the embed URL is created, accessing it will create the embed user. This content is subject to limited support.                  

830
paola
Looker Staff
1 year 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"

830
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
1 year ago
milli.koch
Looker Staff
milli.kochLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I track which users have unsubscribed from schedules?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 11, 2019 We can use the event_attribute explore to view unsubscribe events. The following URL will display user unsubscribe events by date. System Activity:/explore/system__activity/event_attribute?fields=event.created_time,user.name,event_attribute.value,event_attribute.name&f[event.category]=scheduler&f[event.name]=unsubscribe&sorts=event.created_time+desc&limit=500&query_timezone=America%2FLos_Angeles&vis=%7B%7D&filter_config=%7B%22event.category%22%3A%5B%7B%22type%22%3A%22%3D%22%2C%22values%22%3A%5B%7B%22constant%22%3A%22scheduler%22%7D%2C%7B%7D%5D%2C%22id%22%3A0%2C%22error%22%3Afalse%7D%5D%2C%22event.name%22%3A%5B%7B%22type%22%3A%22%3D%22%2C%22values%22%3A%5B%7B%22constant%22%3A%22unsubscribe%22%7D%2C%7B%7D%5D%2C%22id%22%3A1%2C%22error%22%3Afalse%7D%5D%7D&origin=share-expanded There's also a community post here. This content is subject to limited support.                   

830
milli.koch
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Access to font at ' S3 bucket' from origin 'https://ait.dev.att.com' has been blocked by the CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resourceKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 20, 2020 If you are seeing this error on your JS console for your embed contentThe solution is to set on the S3 bucket settings: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/cors.html the configurations to accept it.We've had users that confirmed it worked after enabling the AccessHeader to include everything * instead of Authorization and removing the <ExposeHeader>Access-Control-Allow-Origin</ExposeHeader>Note that it might take a while to see the changes as things might get cached in the browser This content is subject to limited support.                  

830
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How long must a Looker-hosted instance be unresponsive to trigger an automatic restart?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 6, 2020 Short version5 minutesLong VersionLooker sends a request to check for availability every minute, and the request is given 15 seconds to timeout. Once 5 subsequent requests time out or fail, automatic restarts kick off This content is subject to limited support.                  

830
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
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.                  

830
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Morgan
Looker Staff
MorganLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

"Key is already in use" when resetting git connectionKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Dec 27, 2018 The ProblemWhen you reset a git connection, Looker provides the same deploy key as it did the first time the git connection was set up.The SolutionIf you're not changing remote git repositories, this means you don't need to re-add the key. It's already in your remote git repository settings.If you're trying to migrate from one remote git repo to another, then this collision can be solved one of two ways:Reset the deploy key on the Looker side. (This option is only available in Looker 5.0+) Delete the deploy key on the remote Git provider side on the repository that you're migrating from. This can be found in the repository settings page. This content is subject to limited support.                  

830
Morgan
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.                   

820
nathaniel.thompson
Moderator
1 year ago
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
jamesnestlerLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why are there commits from a `Lookering` user in my Github repo?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 5, 2020 You may see something like this in your commit history:And be curious that some random Looker github user has access to their Git repo.The TLDR:Lookering is Looker's github user, that initializes branches and does other branch maintenanc-ey stuff. Lookering does not have access to the Git repo, it merely makes commits and merges in certain specific cases.The Long Version:In Github, actions aren't really performed by a user per se, in fact it's not necessary to even have a user account to make a commit. What ties actions taken by a user to that user account is the email address included in the request header. You could include any user's email in your commit header, and have the commit show up as that user, or include none at all. Point is, the Lookering user doesn't actually have access to your Git repo, rather the email address was simply included in the header.https://help.github.com/en/github/committing-changes-to-your-project/why-are-my-commits-linked-to-th

820
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is cache_only_miss in the system activity History explore?Knowledge Drop

Last tested:  May 14, 2020 Looker has a feature that will fetch results from the cache if they existed before the page has fully loaded. If the cache only check does not find any results, we’ll mark that as a cache_only_miss.If we do find things in the cache there will be a complete record with a results_source of cache.If there is a miss (cache only miss) the queries will be executed again (without the cache only requirement) and the queries will be run from the database. This content is subject to limited support.                 

810
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Weekly Rollup CalculationKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 17, 2020 Like many people out there, you like to automate processes and cringe at the idea that is "manual." Contrary to popular belief, also like many people out there you like to create weekly rollup ranges in you Explore. Well by golly do I have a solution for you.The Dirty:(${week_field} >= add_days(-1 * mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01), now()) + 1, 7), now()) AND ${week_field} <= add_days(28,now()) AND (extract_years(${week_field}) = extract_years(now())))OR(${week_field} <= add_days(-1 * mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01),now()) + 1, 7), now()) AND ${week_field} >= add_days(-28,now()) AND (extract_years(${week_field}) = extract_years(now())))To-Note: Order of the two filter conditions doesn't particularly matter here. The only substitutions necessary are swapping out week_field for your week date field.The first filter condition calculates for 4 weeks from now. Whereas the second calculates for weeks prior to now. Within each calc we are comparing a week fi

810
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I migrate System Activity Dashboards?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 13, 2020 YESScenario:I have a System Activity Dashboard that I've created on one of my instances and I want to migrate that over to another instance.How to (LookML Dashboard way [not gazer]):Access the System Activity Dashboard and get a copy of the lookML version of the dashboard Navigate to your other instance and go into the IDE of one of your existing projects Add the lookML dashboard file Paste your dashboard lookML from step 1 into this file Navigate to your model file and add an include statement to include dashboard lookML file. Go back to the LookML Dashboard file and click the upside down triangle and we should be able to see a View Dashboard option. Another way to access your newly migrated System Activity Dashboard is to access it from the LookML Dashboards Folder (All Folders > LookML Dashboards) Steps 4-6:Explanation:As you'll see when we get the LookML Dashboard file for our System Activity Dashboard, the model that it's based off is called system__ac

810
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.                  

810
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why doesn't my dashboard have a "Run" button?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 2020If Run on Load is “On” for a dashboard, and there are no filters on the dashboard, we do not show the “Run” button or the "Stop" button. This content is subject to limited support.                 

810
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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