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The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2115 Topics

Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What's the difference between memory cache, local cache, and remote cache?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 29, 2020 These are the three locations where we'll store the cached values.Memory cache: the RAM of the local node Local cache: the disk of the local node Remote cache: the disk of a different node of the clusterFor a better explained context, a cached object can live in the process memory or as a file on disk or - in the case of a cluster- on a node that's remote to the current process, but it all refers to the same basic thing: a cached value of some sort (typically query results).Our code looks at memory first, because it's the fastest.  if the value is not there, then we ask the cache index where the value resides.  if it's on the node asking the question then the code can get the value from a file on disk (in the .cache dir). If it's not on the local node then an https request is made to a remote node. Once the value is copied from the remote node, it's stored in the current node's local (file) cacheNote that that last point means that you absolutely can have dupl

5990
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 can I create a new project via the API?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 8, 2018 Use the create_project call on the projects endpoint. https://docs.looker.com/reference/api-and-integration/api-reference/v3.0/project#create_project This content is subject to limited support.                    

571
srikar_24
12 days ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Error: Refusing to run query with large limit [LIMIT] that Looker cannot stream incrementally. Please choose a smaller limit or remove table calculations.Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 1, 2019 Queries that don't pass the streaming test can't be downloaded with an unlimited row limit.There was a legacy feature that allowed this but it was completely removed in 5.4You can read more about how this legacy feature worked prior to 5.4 here: https://community.looker.com/general-looker-administration-35/legacy-feature-allowing-unlimited-downloads-looker-4-14-4987 This content is subject to limited support.                   

2550
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

Escaping quotation marks in stringsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 In the suggestions parameter and filter fields you can escape double quotes (") with a backslash.Example:"14\"/16\" Frame" -> 14"/16" Frame This content is subject to limited support.                  

11170
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 type: distance returning Unknown or Inaccessible Field?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 24, 2018 With type: distance, if you're feeding the dimension with location dimensions in a different view, the sql_latitude and sql_longitude of the location dimension must be explicitly scoped in order for it to substitute correctly.TL:DR-- Use ${TABLE}.latitude or ${view_name.latitude} in the type:location instead of just ${latitude}, or you'll get the error.Exampledimension: shipping_distance {type:distancestart_location_field: distribution_centers.distribution_center_locationend_location_field: users.user_locationunits: miles}​dimension: distribution_center_location {type: locationsql_latitude: ${distribution_centers.latitude} ;;sql_longitude: ${distribution_centers.longitude} ;;} This content is subject to limited support.                   

370
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 Looker adding apostrophes to my data in CSV downloads?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 25, 2018 Check the General Settings Page for the Block Formulas and Macros in CSV Files toggle.If fields start with the following special characters, then this feature will snap into action!=, -, +, or @ >When this is enabled, Looker will add a 'character to any cell value that begins with a special character (=, -, +, or @) when generating a CSV file. This disables all macros in Looker-generated CSV files.https://docs.looker.com/admin-options/tutorials/managing-bizusers/bizuser-features#preventing_injection_of_malicious_code_into_csv_files This content is subject to limited support.                  

1910
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

Euro (€) Currency not exporting decimal point to Excel .iqy correctlyKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 8, 2017 Problem:When exporting currency measure to Excel .iqy file,Basically the "." is treated as thousand separator.. so "€4555.956" is converted to "€4555956".Solution:In the Excel Settings:Excel Options > Advanced:Disable "Use System Separators" Set "." as decimal separator and "," for thousand separatorJust a note, in the .iqy url, make sure to apply the argument apply_formatting=false. This content is subject to limited support.                   

110
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

Will deleting a dashboard make it immediately inaccessible?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 1, 2018 The quick answer is no! A user with the dashboard open in a tab will be able to access that dashboard until they do a browser refresh, or navigate away from that page. At that point they will see the "Dashboard you requested could not be found" screen.Note: While the tab/live session is active, the user will be able to Clear Cache & Refresh the dashboard with no problems. An Admin may need to disable then reenable users in order to ensure that users can no longer see the dashboard. This content is subject to limited support.                   

40
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 isn't my dimension field showing up in the Custom Filter suggestion list?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 21, 2020 One scenario where this can happen is when you have a dimension of type: zipcode. This type is not currently supported in Custom Filters. A workaround is to create a new Dimension of Type: String and reference the zipcode dimension.Another type that doesn't show up is the day_of_week timeframe of a dimension group. A workaround is to use day_of_week_index instead​ This content is subject to limited support.                  

960
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

For Action Hub Integrations, what does "Works with any query" mean? How is that different that "Works with field tagged ..."Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 25, 2018 Things to keep in mind:Works with any query/dashboard = You can use the integration simply through the send modal, no LookML tags needed. Works with any queries tagged “x” = The underlying Look/Explore query requires a field(s) with specified ‘tags’ parameter. Works with any fields tagged “x” = You can use the integration the from cell/row level. More details can be found on Docs This content is subject to limited support.                   

90
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 I set a query limit for an individual user?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 14, 2020 No, the per user query limit startup option will apply to all users on an instance. This content is subject to limited support.                  

610
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

Image (PNG/PDF) download says "Query Failed: Must query at least one dimension/measure"Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 21, 2017 Image downloads are based on Production. It's is possible that you are in Development Mode.While in Dev Mode, you may have saved a Look or Explore and then you defined at least one dimension or measure, BUT, you have yet to deploy to production. Therefore, while in Dev Mode and without a deployment to production, your Looks do not yet exist and are not available to download as a PNG/PDF.This is usually fixed with deploying to production and then reattempting the download. This content is subject to limited support.                  

1250
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 don't I see the Edit button on my User Defined Dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 10, 2018 If a user or a group of users aren't seeing the Edit button in the top right of a User UDD, then most likely the user/group only has View folder access. Meaning they can view content in this Space, but cannot Manage Access, Edit. See this doc for more descriptions on the folder Access permissions and how to add / edit the permissions.Chat Tip: This can occur both in the standard use case (users with Looker accounts) and in SSO Embed. For SSO Embed, the SSO user and/or SSO group that is generated in the script will need to be added to the folder permission as needed. This content is subject to limited support.                  

3230
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 isn't my date field being timezone converted in the WHERE clause?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 23, 2018 This question comes up from time to time and the answer is that the pattern is expected at the moment. For example, both code blocks below have Looker generated SQL for a date field. The SELECT statement has a convert timezone directly on the date field, but in the WHERE statement the convert timezone is on the date from the filter (i.e. is on the day 1-21-2018)A way to think of what is going on is as follows:The user has asked, essentially, “in my timezone (LA / PST) what events happened on 2018-01-21"? In the database timezone (UTC), that means “What events happened between 2018-01-21 08:00 - 2018-01-22 08:00? This is the reasoning for the WHERE statement.And then, Lookers converts in the SELECT because we don’t want to show the UTC time, instead we want to show the user the user specific query timezone (LA / PST). This is the reasoning for the SELECT statement. MYSQLSELECT DATE(CONVERT_TZ(order_items.returned_at ,'UTC','America/Los_Angeles')) AS `order_item

2741
i-plotnikov
6 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

PDT Troubleshooting and use of "Rebuild Derived Tables & Run"Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 12, 2017 You might get often faced with questions like:Why is my PDT data wrong? Stale? Why is my PDT data not rebuilding? How can I force a rebuild?It can be tempting to simply use the option to Rebuilding Derived Tables & Run and manually force a rebuild. But, while that may solve your issue, using this option can have larger implications and impact your instance performance.Below are an "Order of Operations" for troubleshooting PDTs. These options may point to an underlying error or reason for the stale PDT data without the need to manually override and rebuild.Check the PDT Panel in Admin -- Are there any listed errors or warnings indicating a failed PDT build? -- Are there any warnings that the database connection failed? -- Any issues with accessing the temp table/scratch schema?Review any relation between the PDTs and your ETL -- If there is still an issue or discrepancy with your data, then the issue may be tied to PDTs and yours ETL and that can attribute

3520
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 see recently run schedules?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 20, 2018 You can view recently run schedules in the Admin panel under Scheduler History. Link to our Documentation here. This content is subject to limited support.                   

80
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 a user know which `model-user-X` directory is their dev branch?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 6, 2019 For a given directory called models-user-X directory, X is the user's ID.You can check user ID in Admin > Users, and the user can also see their model directory name by clicking their user icon in the top right corner and clicking Account:  This content is subject to limited support.                  

120
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 SSO embed System Activity content?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 16, 2018No, because the see_system_activity permission is not available in the list of embed permissions. Add your use case to this feature request and +1 if you'd use this feature. This content is subject to limited support.                   

210
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

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.                   

740
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 I make the `value_format` syntax change conditionally?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 15, 2018 Yes, you can use the following syntax to conditionally format using value_format. This can be done in LookML OR it can be done in the EDIT menu in the Visualization. Note there are extra \ characters in the LookML version to help escape use of " characters.Warning: value_format only takes three different conditions for evaluation. If you add a fourth it will not evaluate properly.LookML Usemeasure: count {type: countvalue_format: "[<1000]0;[>=1000000]0.00,,\"M\";[>=1000]0.0,\"K\""} EDIT UI Menu UseValue Format (UI field):[<1000]0;[>=1000000]0.00,,"M";[>=1000]0.0,"K" For more tips on common value_formats, you can refer to this Docs page here. This content is subject to limited support.                   

360
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 Admin users view the rendering queue?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 22, 2017 No, users cannot see the rendering queue.The rendering of PDFs and PNGs is handled by a separate process called Chromium which happens outside of the Looker UI.There is a Feature Request for being able to see rendering queue in the Admin panel. This content is subject to limited support.                   

170
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

Getting this Google Cloud Storage error: "Couldn't load form..."Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 29, 2018 Couldn't load form: Could not send webhook to "https://actions.looker.com/actions/google_cloud_storage/form". {"success":false,"error":"Internal server error."} (Webhook ID: cd0aa2cbf1521f77004514fa17f1c51c)  This error most likely means that the private_key entered was not copied correctly from the API json output from Google Cloud PlatformSample Output from GCP:Input those as follows: This content is subject to limited support.                  

320
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

Interactive API docs page UnresponsiveKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 7, 2018 ​Try using the endpoint with a response format that has less data (if possible). The API call is probably sending back more data than the browser can handle. The Interactive API Docs page is nice for super lightweight testing but isn’t meant to process much data.You can also try running this from the command line to see if it works. This content is subject to limited support.                  

230
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 BigQuery OAuth connections work with GCP IAM?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 26, 2020 BigQuery customers have the option of using OAuth for BigQuery connections. (The other option is service accounts). These connections are "directly integrated" with GCP Identity and Access Management (IAM). This provides user-level authentication (OAuth) and authorization (IAM). Every query is run as if that user was running the same SQL when directly logged in to the BQ console.Key features and constraints of OAuth + IAMUsing OAuth as the authentication mechanism ensures that IAM permissions are enforced per user. Every query is run as if that user was running the same SQL after they logged in to the BQ console. Examples of per-user security controls include: Only having access to the correct datasets Only having access to the correct authorized views Applying row level controls implemented using authorized views Per-user caches are available Per-user BQ resource limits are available PDTs and shared caches are disabled under per-user authentication This

4591
Q
3 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Rank across pivots with table calculationsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 29, 2019 We are able to create Rank across pivots with a number of table calculations.Assuming that we have two dimensions, brand and status, and one measure, let's call it count. We created an explore, in which we have the dimension brand, we pivot on status and have the measure count and now we want to find the brands with the highest count for each status. So how do we get from this: To This: So for this we can use two nice table calculations. The first one is really obvious. We are going to use the rank function on the measure.rank(${orders.count},${orders.count}Now we got the rank in each pivot, but we don't get them to get displayed in the right order. So we need a second one to achieve this. Introducing the lookup function...lookup(row(),${calculation_1},${products.brand})This allows us to get the value of the brand dimension where the row number matches the rank that we previously created. Therefore we will get the brand that is ranked 1 in each pivot into the

13261
sergio_pestanaWarren
1 year ago

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