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The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2115 Topics

srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Startup script scheduler flagsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 18, 2019 Changing --scheduler-threads=<i> is a good idea if you would like to limit the amount of schedules that are processed at one time, and the rest would be queued up. So if you just want to decrease the amount that would execute at one time down from 3 (default threads) that would be a good way to change that.As of version 6.18, the unlimited pool is set separately from the above via the --unlimited-scheduler-threads=<i> flag. In previous versions --unlimited-scheduler-threads was ignored and the pool was set to the same number of threads as --scheduler-threadsscheduler-query-limit=<i> flag (default: 10) : If a dashboard that has 20 tiles on it is scheduled, 10 would be queued.*Note that this limit is PER node, so in the first flags case, if there are 10 nodes, then there would be 30 threads available, etc. This content is subject to limited support.                  

840
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can Looker connect to a git subfolder?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 22, 2017 No - it can only connect to a repository.Possible error messages:Internal error 'no such service https/tcp' when running test This content is subject to limited support.                  

840
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
asked in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why is it necessary to domain whitelist when user attributes values are set to hidden?

Hidden user attributes tend to be passwords or tokens so allowlisting URLs restricts where those passwords or tokens can be sent. You wouldn't want someone doing something like, I'm going to use this user attribute on a schedule to a random place so that I can see the value of it. 

0
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is LEXP?Knowledge Drop

Last tested; Jun 4, 2021 LEXP stands for Looker Expressions. It is a special syntax created by Looker that is used for Table Calculations, Custom Fields, and Custom Filters. We have a doc that outlines the general usage of expressions, and another doc that has a list of all functions that it currently supports.Why do I need to know this?The value here is to know that the overlap exists between Table Calculations, Custom Fields, and Custom Filters. Not all functions are available in all 3 locations, but many are.For example, once you learn a new Table Calc, you can most likely apply it to a Custom Filter or Custom Field as well! For example, if you encounter an issue in Custom Fields, then you should consider that the bug may affect Table Calculations as well! This content is subject to limited support.                  

840
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What does the Ordinal Scale Type visualization setting do?Knowledge Drop

Last tested; Jan 13, 2021 The short explanation is that with Ordinal Scale Type setting, data is plotted along the x-axis as evenly-spaced, discrete entries, regardless of relative distance between data points. (https://docs.looker.com/exploring-data/visualizing-query-results/column-options#scale_type)The longer explanation:Let’s say you have a dataset like the following, where you have a gap in data from December 26th to December 27th (December 25th has data as shown in the data table, it looks empty here because it is a small number for the scale of this visualization).If you would like to show your data over the full timeframe that the data was collected, you can use the “Automatic based on Data” Scale Type (as shown above), or the “Time” Scale Type. However, if you do not want to show this gap, the Ordinal Scale Type will only plot the data from the data table. This content is subject to limited support.                  

840
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
chris.seymourLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

If there are raw results but "Hide No's" is hiding all the rows, does a schedule with "Send if there are results" send?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 22, 2018 As of version 5.8, schedules using the "Send if there are results option" and "Apply visualization options will NOT send the look if the "Hide No's from Visualization" table calc option is hiding all of the rows. The Admin - Scheduler panel will show the message `no delivery - data required but not present`—just as if there were no data in the results at all. This content is subject to limited support.                  

840
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Announcing the Looker User Guide: your resource for getting the most out of Looker

This content, written by Shanann Monaghan, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Jun 14, 2018. The content is subject to limited support.Whether you are brand new to Looker, or an expert in LookML, Looker now has a single destination to find all of the content, training and resources you need...the ! Here is a breakdown of everything you have access to. User guide homepage If you are new to Looker, start here. The is broken into three goal based pathways. Collectively, they will guide you through all you need to know to get started with Looker. The pathways View: Learn how to use Looker to view dashboards, reports and more. Build: Learn how to pivot and filter data, create custom visualizations, and share dashboards with your stakeholders. Develop: Learn how to connect to your database and get started writing LookML, our SQL-derived development language. Once you’ve selected your pathway, you're free to browse through Looker's curated content and learn more about the aspects of Look

840
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

BigQuery Standard SQL + Looker

This content, written by Lloyd Tabb and Erin Franz, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Sep 28, 2016. The content is subject to limited support., we were excited to announce our support for Google BigQuery. At Looker, we love learning about advancements in database technology because our architecture fundamentally depends on it. The more flexible and powerful databases become, the more flexible and powerful Looker is. We were particularly psyched to explore BigQuery because it’s been powering Google’s internal data culture for more than a decade. When Google introduced BigQuery to the public, the first thing that grabbed us was its unique multi-tenant setup, which means that your database essentially never runs out of storage and never gets slow. This is ideal for Looker, as our LookML modeling language is dependent on querying data sources directly. Another key tenet of Looker’s philosophy is making data available to everyone in an organization, allowing everyone to be their own an

840
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do large HyperSQL internal dbs cause problems?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 4, 2019 HyperSQL is an in-memory database. That basically means it needs to be loaded into memory to do its thing (store configuration, users, and other metadata). More specifically, the instructions to create the database (DDL, i.e.: data definition language) are persisted to disk. At startup, the script loads this into main memory and constructs the database in-memory. On a busy instance this database can grow in size, which leads to performance issues, Java memory pressure, and extremely long startup times. A concrete example is if more than the recommended 60% of main memory is allocated to the Looker java process, then the internal backend might be pinched to acquire the amount of main memory it needs to do its thing.https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-mgmt/migrating-to-mysql This content is subject to limited support.                 

830
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What happens when a null is concatenated with a value?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 Just like arithmetic operations on a list, a null will make the entire result null. This content is subject to limited support.                  

830
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
david.chiaramonteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why are we seeing "Result set for email cannot exceed 7.5/15 megabytes"?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 28, 2019Before version 5.14, the maximum file size that could be sent via the scheduler was 7.5MB. As per our docs here, After 5.14, 15 megabytes is the maximum. There's a feature request you can comment on for bigger limit. This content is subject to limited support.                   

830
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
1 year ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

There must be at least 750 MB of free space in the temp directoryKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 29, 2020 Looker requires at least 10GB of free disk space and for reference, we provision 50GB root partitions for our EC2 legacy instances by default.If possible, run df -h (which will display the summary of available and used disk space usage of file system). It should show the filesystems that marks off partition of their data. We should typically look for the directory /home because that is the directory where Looker is uploaded.The output should look something like so: /dev/mapper/vgsystem-lvhome 2.0G 1.8G 264M 88% /hom This indicates that there is 264M free in the /home/ volume out of 2G. This means everything in the Looker user’s home directory (and any sub-directories from there, like the Looker one) only has 2 gigs to work with, which is not very much, so you will need to upsize in order to be able to run Looker. This content is subject to limited support.                  

830
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
1 year 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.                  

830
sidney.junior
Looker Staff
1 year ago
S
Looker Staff
swhiteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

tmp directory getting too largeKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 10, 2019 If your instance is hosted by Looker, the .tmp directory is cleared on startup.If you host your own instance, and this directory gets too large, you can safely delete certain files in .tmp when the instance is shutdown.Admins may want to add something like this to their startup scripts:rm -rf ~/looker/.tmp/jruby* ~/looker/.tmp/looker-tmp* This will clear the .tmp folder of unneeded files on startup. This content is subject to limited support.                 

820
S
Looker Staff
1 year ago
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can we use Angular for the extension framework?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 7, 2020Angular is not supported right now. In theory, any application framework can be used to build an extension, but we highly/strongly recommend React. Potentially, you could use a converter like this, but our engineers suggest it would not be an optimal development process. With React, we provide a build setup that is guaranteed to work. We cannot guarantee this with other JS frameworks right now. This content is subject to limited support.                  

821
markjuan458
6 months ago
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Multiple Embed SessionsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 8, 2020 Q: If an embed user uses multiple sso_embed URLs, will we create multiple sessions for them? A: No, only one session at a time.  If force_logout_login=true it will start a new session, otherwise it will stay on the existing session.Q:  Is it possible to have multiple sessions with different users across multiple tabs in a browser? A: No, because of cookies. This content is subject to limited support.                  

810
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

SAML Authentication Failed first time logging inKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Oct 5, 2018 If group to role pairing and auth requires role is on, a user will not be able to authenticate to Looker for the first time unless they are in a SAML group and that group is listed under the group to role pairing in the Looker SAML setting. This content is subject to limited support.                  

810
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Boxplot error message: "Can only combine like series on a single axis."Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 10, 2019 If you see the above error on a boxplot visualization, change the chart type to line and go to Edit Visualization -> Y. We shouldn't have extra Y-axis in the line visualization configuration. Boxplots can only have a single Y-axis value. The boxplot inherits the config we had on the line visualization.Also, check if the Y-axis is showing the 5 measures or "stacked" - it needs to be the 5 measures you want to check. This content is subject to limited support.                  

810
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Replace commas in a list field with carriage returns using liquidKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 26, 2020 Say you have a field that shows up like a, b, c but you want it to display in a single row asa b cYou can use a Liquid for loop with the split function to achieve this!html: {% assign items = your_dimension_here._value | split: ", " %}{% for item in items %}{{ item }}{% endfor %} This content is subject to limited support.                  

810
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
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.                   

810
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I change a model/explore of a Look?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: March 21, 2021  If you want to change only the model or explore of a Look, you'll need to use the share URL of the explore and change the relevant parameters. Keep in mind that the same fields, etc need to be available in your new model/explore.1. Click "Explore From Here".2. Click the gear, then select "Share".3. Copy the Expanded URL and paste it somewhere else like your browser. Don't hit it yet, or it will turn into a shortened URL!4. Change the relevant parts of the URL. The URL takes the form:https://HOSTNAME.looker.com/explore/MODEL_NAME/EXPLORE_NAME?fields=...5. Hit the URL, then save the explore as a Look.     This content is subject to limited support.                

800
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is there a Table Calc function that lets me reference a specific row value (row index)?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 Yes!index(expression, n) will return the "Nth" row defined by the expression. This content is subject to limited support.                   

800
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I find how many lookless tiles my dashboards have in system activity?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 5, 2018 Go to the dashboard explore (explore/system_activity/dashboard) and select Dashboard - ID, Dashboard Element - Count, and Look - Count. The difference between the two counts is your number of lookless tiles in each dashboard. This content is subject to limited support.                  

800
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do our new account set up/activation emails take new users to a log in page instead of the new account set up page?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 30, 2020 This is happening because you likely have SAML/Google OAuth/LDAP/OIDC enabled for your instance. That means Looker expects all users to authenticate through SAML.To get around this, you'll need to enable the alternate login option (Help Center article) and then add the login_special_email permission to the role of the new user. Once those changes are made, the activation email will take users to a new account set up page which prompts them to add their first name, last name, and a password. This content is subject to limited support.                  

800
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

For scheduled PDFs, why do some PDFs timeout < 30 mins but others can successfully run after 60+ mins?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 26, 2017 You can see this behaviour because the render timeout (in most cases) will only run after the underlying query runs and completes.For example:Underlying query runs and completes in 20mins After 20 minutes, the PDF Renderer has 30 minutes to successfully complete. In Total, when viewing Plans in Admin, the PDF schedule can say successfully run in ~ 45 mins, where total time is [Query time] + [Render time]So, the entire schedule can compete or fail and the overall time can be &gt;30 mins.And, then in unique scenarios:If dashboard has a default filter Underlying query does not run PDF render starts running In total, when viewing Plans in Admin, the total time is based on Render time onlySo the entire schedule can complete or fail, but the overall time will be &lt; 30 mins. This content is subject to limited support.                  

800
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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