Looker Connect Training

Help Center

Documentation

Community

Cloud Certifications

The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2115 Topics

Eric_Lyons
Looker Staff
Eric_LyonsLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Admin PermissionsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 29, 2020 What abilities do admins possess that developers with maximum permissions not have?This is not an exhaustive list, but some examples of abilities Admins have that others do not:Managing users create/edit db connections manage authentication methods, session settings, Admins also have access to all models and folders. This content is subject to limited support.                  

670
Eric_Lyons
Looker Staff
1 year ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is the difference between Most Recent Query Run At Date vs Most Recent Query DateKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 17, 2020 Most Recent Query Run At Date is the most recent query run per query ID. Essentially, it finds the most recent date that the query was run.Most Recent Query Date takes the most recent date of the History ID.So for instance, if the Most Recent Query Run at Date says 2020-11-06 but the Most Recent Query Date says 2020-10-02, this suggests that the History ID of that query was created on 2020-10-02, but the query was ran most recently on 2020-11-06.Reminder: The query ID is a unique combination of SQL text, connection and other fields. It's created the first time a SQL query is ran on a connection. The query ID can be linked to many History IDs This content is subject to limited support.                  

670
mandy.chan
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

670
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months 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

670
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months ago
shivanisankar
shivanisankarNew Member
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why are my Quick Start Pivots not Showing Up?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 9, 2021 Even if you have a value in the pivot subparameter of your query parameter, queries with pivots need to have the pivot defined in both pivots AND in dimensions.Example:query: orders_by_brand_name { dimensions: [products.brand, products.category] measures: [products.count, order_items.order_count] pivots: [products.category] description: "Orders by brand name" limit: 500} You can see that products.category is included in both the dimensions and pivots subparameter. This content is subject to limited support.                  

660
shivanisankar
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can Looker support large custom map layers?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 23, 2019 You bet! Even though you probably don't want to load a topoJSON larger than 5mb directly into the IDE (or the browser), there's a straightforward way to utilize large map layers in Looker, only downloading the bits you need at any given time to keep things manageable.Procedure is outlined here:  This content is subject to limited support.                  

660
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

Custom filter for this month vs the same days of last month.Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 4, 2021extract_days(${query.created_date}) <= extract_days(now()) AND diff_months(${query.created_date}, now()) <= 1 This content is subject to limited support.                  

660
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
jamesnestlerLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why can't I download `content` as `format`?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 11, 2019 All content in Looker has slightly different allowed download formats. All downloads are contingent on having appropriate permissions. These are distinct from 'sending' and 'scheduling' content.Dashboards:PDF CSVLooks:Text CSV / Excel JSON HTML Markdown PNGExplores:Text CSV / Excel JSON HTML Markdown PNGMerged Queries:Can only be downloaded after saving to a dashboard. Must download the entire dashboard This content is subject to limited support.                  

660
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ryan.bouquet
Looker Staff
ryan.bouquetLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

PDTs not Dropping from Scratch SchemaKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 27, 2020 Check that the cron string for the connection is valid. If it is incorrect, then the reaper and regenerator will not run on scheduled intervals, and the schema will fill up with manually run PDT builds.This will appear in the logs as reap connection [connection name] caught exception Bad Vixie style specification [erroring part of cron string] This content is subject to limited support.                  

650
ryan.bouquet
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
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.                  

650
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
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.                

650
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does extends override a parameter if the same parameter is defined in both the original and extending version?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 13, 2018 If a LookML object is explicitly defined in both places, then the object from the extending dashboard/view/explore gets used.For example, if we have suggestions: yes in a base view and in an extended view we specify suggestions: no, then the extended version "wins" out.Note: link: does not extend in the way discussed aboveSource: Docs This content is subject to limited support.                  

650
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

Error: Upload to SFTP host [address] failed due to error: IOError. message: connect(2)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 13, 2020 If you encounter this error message when scheduling to send to SFTP, confirm that the address is correct. For example, in the past this error occurred because the user entered the address sftp://domain.com/path/, when it should have been sftp://sftp.domain.com/path/. This content is subject to limited support.                  

650
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 are my drills on running_total showing only that row?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 6, 2020 running_totals are post-generated after the query is run, and so when we drill, we only see the results generated for that row in the backend SQL Query rather than what we're seeing on the front end.There is a way to create a drill though through the html/link parameter with some URL hacking!These are the steps I followed for this workaround: "Build out" the explore you want in the drill modal. i.e if the user clicks on the running_total and they want the drill to show ID and User Name, build out a new explore with just ID and User Name. Apply a Custom Filter to this new Explore; since running_totals capture the current month and all months before it, we'll want to translate that into the filters for our drill. I set matches advanced on the date field and set two place holder date values: Once you have the explore built out and have the generic filter, click the Gear by the Run button, select "Share" and grab the "Expanded URL". Take the expanded URL and decode

650
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Aleksandrs_Vederniko
Looker Staff
Aleksandrs_VedernikoLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to test if Fileshare (NFS/EFS/GFS) is correctly mounted and accessible from all nodes in the clusterKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 3, 2020 run ps -ef|grep java|grep looker from CL on each node. Verify that --shared-storage-dir path is the same on each node.   Test the ability for nodes to write and other nodes to read from the shared storage using path found in step 1. You can do this by creating a file from node1 with touch /mount_path/file.txt For example, if the path to the shared storage directory from step 1 is /lookershare/modelshare , then command will be touch /lookershare/modelshare/file.txt Once you have created a file from node1, try to see in node2 & all other nodes in the cluster can read it with ls -ltr /mount_path/file.txt   Loop through all nodes in the cluster This content is subject to limited support.                   

650
Aleksandrs_Vederniko
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Putting the hack in hackathon: the winners of Looker_Hack : London

This content, written by Scott Sirowy & John Kaster, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Jul 18, 2019. The content is subject to limited support.Note: This is one part of a two-part series on Looker_Hack : London, hosted in May 2019. This post is focused on highlighting the winning projects and the rockstar developers that built them. The second post is about the tools we used to make the Hackathon such a success, which you can find on our . Following the success of our first last October at , we wanted a way to show some #LoveLookerLove to the folks across the Atlantic. To do this, we decided to fly out to the UK, meet more of our innovative Looker customers, and host our first Hackathon event in London. Why a hackathon? Hackathons are a great way to quickly build projects and solutions that can help teams meet specific business goals. For Looker specifically, hackathons provide an avenue for our engineers, designers, and product managers to meet developers and understand how

650
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months 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.                   

650
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 does query killing work via the API?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 7, 2019 Here are some facts about queries are killed via the API:Only admin API users can kill queries via the API You can kill a query with the kill_query() endpoint, which requires us to know the query_task_id (not the query_id) Only async query tasks can be killed. To be able to kill a query, it has to have been created using create_query_task() Queries run via synchronous run_query() or run_inline_query() cannot be killed Closing an API connection does not kill the query like it does in the front-end This content is subject to limited support.                  

650
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 are some emails greyed out in the admin->users page?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 26, 2019 A greyed out *email credential* means one of two things:1. the user is disabled2. external auth is being used and the user does not have the login_special_email permissionAnything related to the external auth system would be shown using a credential of that system ie a SAML credential, etcExample:Looker is using email/passwordUser gets created, has email credentialLooker switches to external auth- option 1: user has login_special_email, email credential remains valid (black), user logs in using external auth, user now has two valid credentials, email credential and external auth credential (both are black)- option 2: user does not have login_special_email, email credential is no longer valid (greyed out), user must use external auth system, user logs in through external auth and gets an external auth credential (black), the email credential though used to merge by during the user's first external auth login remains greyed out due to lack of permission This con

650
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is Chromium used for in Looker?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 1, 2019 Chromium is an open source version of Chrome, and it is what Looker uses to render PNGs/PDFs. Chromium can be run in headless mode, meaning it will start up on the Looker server without having a user interface to interact with and can be controlled remotely. Each time a render job is run, Chromium is started in headless mode and used to try to take a screenshot of the Looker content. This content is subject to limited support.                 

640
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Build vs. buy: choosing the right embedded analytics solution

This content, written by Erik Kuld, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Apr 27, 2019. The content is subject to limited support.Your customers expect data. They already get it in their day-to-day lives: they know when that package will arrive, how much screen time they spend on which apps, and how many Twitter followers they have. When they use your product, they expect the same level of access and analysis into your data. And it's bigger than adding a dashboard in your product — it's about embedding an experience with data that surpasses your competitors, delights your customers, scales with your product growth, and maybe even creates a new revenue stream. All while minimizing the cost of maintenance going forward. The promise of embedded analytics tools for growth Let’s say you are a technology leader. You’ve been tasked with growth. It’s your initiative. You also have valuable data that your customers or partners would really want. So, you set out to explore embedded analytics s

640
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months 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.                   

640
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Lan
Looker Staff
LanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What happens to a schedule of a user after the permission `send to email` is taken out from that user?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 22, 2021 Scenario: "Someone has the permission and sets up an alert, now the permission is taken away, and we want to know if the alert will be working".After the permission send_to_integration is removed from the user, the schedule will not be sent. There will be an error "User missing permission to send to specified destination." for that schedule job in Admin > Schedules History The schedule will not be stopped, it will be triggered to be sent out. However, every time it will show an error in Admin > Schedules HistoryThe reason for the behavior is that every time Looker is sending out a schedule, it will run both a query to a "Schedule" table inside the database to "trigger" a schedule, and then another query to the "User" table to check for permission.Examples from checking the schedule to move it to different stages{"duration":"0.000059","sql":"SELECT * FROM \"SCHEDULED_JOB_STAGE\" WHERE (\"SCHEDULED_JOB_STAGE\".\"SCHEDULED_JOB_ID\" = 12603)","t":"2021-02-22

640
Lan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Just-in-time data science. Rapid transformation and experimentation.

This content, written by LLoyd Tabb, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Feb 10, 2014. The content is subject to limited support.Experimentation leads to discovery. Data “science” is about experimenting with data. In the data “lab,” the experiment is a transformation. And it is key to discovery Data captured in the wild, from a transactional system or event log, typically needs to be transformed before it’s useful for analytic purposes. With traditional ETL techniques, transforming and normalizing data as it moves into an analytic data store can be cumbersome and limits its future usability. A much more flexible approach is to bulk-load data into the analytic data store and then transform it at query (discovery) time, or very near query time. Looker is a highly adaptable environment for creating and deploying SQL-based data transformations—so that the results of your experiments are delivered within minutes, instead of days. What’s the best way to think about your data? Imagine you’

640
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months ago
Aleksandrs_Vederniko
Looker Staff
Aleksandrs_VedernikoLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Error starting Looker: Java::JavaLang::ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsExceptionKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 28, 2019 The ErrorWhen trying to start up a self-hosted Looker after an update, the following error is shown:2019-03-26 16:18:14.441 -0400 [ERROR|007d0|db:looker] :: Java::JavaLang::ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 5: SELECT * FROM `setting` WHERE (`key` = 'license_key') LIMIT 12019-03-26 16:18:14.444 -0400 [ERROR|007d0|main] :: Error starting Looker: Java::JavaLang::ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 52019-03-26 16:18:14.490 -0400 [WARN|007d0|ruby:stderr] ::  Possible SolutionsUpdate backend mysqlMySQL 5.6 doesn't work as of for a commit we've implemented, you need to upgrade it to 5.7.(MARIADB) turn off query_cache_typeLooker changed the Mariadb driver to connect to the internal database starting in version 6.4. A similar error is cited here. After checking output of user's show variables & comparing it to ours in master , we noticed that:THEIRS OURSquery_cache_type ON query_cache_type OFF  So in some cases after changing that setting on the Mysql DB side to match ou

640
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