Looker Connect Training

Help Center

Documentation

Community

Cloud Certifications

The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2115 Topics

mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How does Looker check for dependencies between PDTs?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 28, 2020Looker does this by parsing derived table sql, sql_step, etc, looking for the ${view.SQL_TABLE_NAME} as well as required derived tables in the query of each NDTs to collect dependencies and build a directed acrylic graph. This content is subject to limited support.                  

820
mandy.chan
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

Japanese character is garbled when we run the queryKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 18, 2020 The ProblemThere was an issue that the query which is filtered with Japanese character returned no result even though there is. We realized that Japanese character is garbled when we run the query with Japanese character as the following screenshot. Therefore none of the data matched with the filter value.Also, they set the global character set as "latin1" and created the database. This character set could be caused the character garbled issue.A SolutionNote: This is a solution which we solved with Amazon Aurora Database.Check the global character parameter set in RDS console. A.Check which parameter group is assigned to your database B.Check if the following five parameters are set to utf8mb4. If not, change them to utf8mb4. •character_set_client •character_set_connection •character_set_database •character_set_results •character_set_server C.Restart the RDS in order to reflect the new setting.   Double check with the following command if the global character

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

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.                  

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 Blog Archives

How to chat with data

This content, written by Dillon Morrison, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Dec 1, 2016. The content is subject to limited support.Big news, the - our chatbot - is live in Slack’s . We launched the Lookerbot in April and have watched it spread like wildfire among our customers. Since we last , we now have hundreds of organizations using the tool daily. For companies like Buffer, Jet.com, and Docker, Lookerbot lets them slack their data making it easier for everyone in the company to be data driven. The Lookerbot’s inclusion in Slack’s App Directory means more people can now find Lookerbot and see what it can do. The success of Lookerbot proves how important accessing data wherever you need it - in a slack conversation, on a warehouse floor, or powering an application - is becoming. To make informed decisions based on data, it can’t just be buried deep in some dashboard. This is what we are most excited about here at Looker. Shifting the paradigm away from what is traditionally

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

Why Would you Use SAML with Looker?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jun 24, 2019 It's Standardized:Loads of applications will understand it, regardless of the provider because there’s a standardized protocol that all SAML works off of (think of a world where there’s one SQL dialect instead of several slightly different ones that work off the same ideas).It's Secure:SAML is used to provide a single point of authentication at a secure identity provider, meaning that user credentials never leave the firewall boundary, and then SAML is used to assert the identity to others. This means there are fewer places for identities to be breached or stolen. SAML also provides a strong layer of security by leveraging Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to protect the asserted identities against attempted attacks.It's User-Friendly:SAML provides the ability for users to securely access multiple applications with a single set of credentials entered once. This is the foundation of federation and also of single sign-on (SSO). Using SAML, users can seamlessly acc

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

Can you create a top-level folder other than the shared folder?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Sep 6, 2019 No, the shared folder will always be the root folder, and there isn't a way to change that at the moment.Best practice is to make the shared folder view-only so that you can add accessibility as you go down the tree. See docs for open and closed folders. 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

Why is my table calc not calculating properly in merged results?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 18, 2018 This may be due to ambiguous column names. IF several columns having the same name in merged results, the table calc does not know how to pick which one, and chooses the first one by default.NOTE: The ambiguity problem persists if there is a table calc used in either of the source queries. 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

BIGQUERY (HowTo): Accessing all datasets in a BigQuery ConnectionKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019When setting up a BigQuery connection in Looker you have to choose a dataset in a project to create the connection, however, all datasets in a project should be available regardless of what dataset you put in your connection. 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 Blog Archives

Delivering democratized data to customers and employees at Good Apple

This content, written by Erin Franz, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Jul 1, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.Good Apple set up shop in 2008 with a mission to help organizations drive successful and scalable marketing programs. From day one, their marketing methodology has been rooted in data-driven decision making. Mark Sturino, Director of Analytics, reaffirms this by noting that Good Apple only recommends media buying strategies to its clients when results are measurable: “We don’t do it if we can’t figure out the outcomes.” Growing Pains For years, the Good Apple teams relied on spreadsheets for getting data and preparing reports. While measurement, analytics, and media have always been Good Apple’s core skills, the agency lacked sufficient technical resources to do the heavy lifting necessary for gaining deeper insights. As they acquired more clients, Good Apple found themselves facing issues commonly encountered by many digital media agencies: Explosion of da

800
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Render error: Chromium was not able to render the page to PDF in 300000ms.Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 18, 2020 The ProblemThis error means that after the queries finished running on the page and was ready to render, the process of saving the finished page as a PDF either failed or was still processing after 5 minutes of trying to create the PDF. This will often happen if the dashboard is really large or has a lot of data, and Chromium struggled to save the full page. The SolutionIf you notice slow performance in your browser when viewing the dashboard, it may be that you need to make the dashboard smaller. If you host your looker instance, you may need to allocate more resources to the server so that Chromium has enough memory and CPU time to run without hanging.There is also an experimental feature called Render Long Tables, which can reduces the dashboard PDF rendering times for dashboards containing tables with many rows. This content is subject to limited support.                  

790
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I access, develop or extend the System Activity model?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 12, 2020 No, at this time users cannot access, develop or extend the system activity model.There is a feature request open for comment for this functionality. This content is subject to limited support.                 

791
IanT
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
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&gt;&amp;1 | sed 's/java version "\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\..*"/\1\2/; 1q') to this:JAVA_VER=$(java -version 2&gt;&amp;1 | sed 's/openjdk version "\(.*\)\.\(.*\)\..*"/\1\2/; 1q') This content is subject to limited support.                  

790
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ryland.wolff
Looker Staff
ryland.wolffLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why isn't my measure plotting with a built-in map layer?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 10, 2020 Does your map look like this:It looks like we have a map_layer properly defined. And we can even see our values populated in the legend of the visualization, but nothing populating for the states. The LookML looks legit like this:dimension: state {type: stringsql: ${TABLE}.state;;map_layer_name: us_states} If we see this behavior, we should double check for whitespace in the underlying field. We can do this in the Explore by adding an `ends with` filter like the following:Since we still have results, we know we have trailing whitespace in the State field which is preventing us from mapping the State values to the map_layer property_key.The solution is to make a change in the underlying database or wrap the field in a TRIM() function like so:dimension: state {type: stringsql:TRIM(${TABLE}.state);;map_layer_name: us_states} Then we should see these values plot as expectedAnother case is for when we are filtering on the information that does match with Full count

790
ryland.wolff
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

790
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I filter on a list of numbers in user attributes?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 2020 Yes, you need to use the “number advanced” filter rather than simple number filter. Then you can enter a comma separated list of numbers like you would in a matches (advanced) filter with a Looker filter expression. This content is subject to limited support.                

790
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

How top engineering organizations build their big data stacks

This content, written by Tristan Handy, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Dec 7, 2015. The content is subject to limited support.Today, technology companies are pushing the boundaries of using data to build products and optimize businesses. These companies have been built from the ground up with data at their core. Often, they rely on data—and sophisticated data infrastructures—for their products and revenue models to function. Amazon, Netflix, Pandora, and Spotify are famous for their use of algorithms to determine customer preferences and serve up recommendations for songs, movies, and products. Uber has built an ever-changing, at-scale solution to the traveling salesman problem that all CS101 students know and love. And Buzzfeed is in the process of disrupting 150 years of journalism on the back of social sharing, native advertising, and analytics. This article examines how eleven different high-growth technology companies use data to power their businesses by reading what they

790
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I seeing multiples of the same query running simultaneously?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 11, 2020 If you run a query, and then run a query with identical SQL, then Looker pulls the results from cache.If you run two queries at the same time with identical SQL, Looker realizes this and consolidates them into one request to your database. You may notice both queries appear to be "running" in the Looker UI but only one will hit the database.One common example is if you have the same query on a dashboard but with different visualization types. This content is subject to limited support.                

780
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I seeing Deploy Failed JGIT FetchCommand failed: unknown host?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jul 3, 2018 There are a couple of possibilities:The Looker server can't resolve the name for the git service host. The Looker server can't connect to the git service host via ssh. Use Test Connection to get more information about which step in the connection the error is coming from. This content is subject to limited support.                

780
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does changing the default color palette change visualizations colors?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 24, 2020 Yes! But if you tweaked any part of the color palette, the vis no longer is attached to the default palette, so those custom colors will stay. This content is subject to limited support.                  

780
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Having Default Label Value that's Based off a ParameterKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 10, 2020 If we're having our label for a field be based off a parameter value, sometimes we might want to have our Label have a Value that's set in the Field Picker that's different from the parameter's actual value. In order to accomplish this, we can use "field._in_query" to have this behavior here. The code will look something like this:label: "{% if view_name.parameter_name._in_query %}{% parameter parameter_name %}{% else %}Default value that Loads in Field Picker{% endif %} This way, Default value that Loads in Field Picker, will be the label of the field when it loads in the Field Picker but when the parameter is selected, the label in the visualization will be set as the parameter's value.Note that only the label in the visualization will change dynamically with the parameter. It is not possible to have the label in the Field Picker or the results table in the Data section change dynamically when you adjust the parameter value. This content is subject to limite

780
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ian
Looker Staff
ianLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Rebuilding PDTs with dependenciesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 30, 2019 If you hit "rebuild derived tables and run" from the explore page, it will rebuild the entire dependency chain. That means if I have a child PDT that is based on a parent PDT, if I am querying the child and hit rebuild derived tables and run, it will rebuild both the parent and child.If you REALLY want to rebuild a child table without triggering parent tables to rebuild you can make a change to the child PDT code and push to production (this can be arbitrary like a space for example) This content is subject to limited support.                  

780
ian
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Aleksandrs_Vederniko
Looker Staff
Aleksandrs_VedernikoLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What does `--scheduler-query-timeout` flag control?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 10, 2018 This is NOT a query timeout for when the query is actually executing. What this is, is the amount of time, once a scheduled job is changed to executing, that it will wait to get a connection to the database, and if it can't get a connection to START the query, then it hits this timeout and fails out.EXAMPLE: So imagine you have a connection pool of 5 set in the connection settings, and I kick off a dashboard with 5 queries that each take 20 minutes to run. Now say a schedule gets kicked off, because the connection pool is full, the query gets queued to get a connection, if it hits scheduler query timeout waiting to get one of those connections, it'll fail.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

780
Aleksandrs_Vederniko
Looker Staff
1 year ago

Badges

  • Friendly Face
    sbrylowskihas earned the badge Friendly Face
  • Helpful
    carriehas earned the badge Helpful
  • Community Star
    carriehas earned the badge Community Star
  • Friendly Face
    carriehas earned the badge Friendly Face
  • Community Star
    Dawidhas earned the badge Community Star
Show all badges
Terms of Service