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The Kitchen Table

The Kitchen Table

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ruth.mcelroyLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

"Model already configured"Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 20, 2019 From the Manage LookML Projects page, if there is more than one model with the same name you will get this error message "Model already configured"If there is only one model in the project under this name:What HappenedSomeone made a first model >configured it >made a second model with same name >deleted first model from project >can't configure second project as model already existsFIXDelete configuration of the first model in manage lookML Projects, then configure the second model. This content is subject to limited support.

ruth.mcelroyLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to hide explores included from model filesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 17, 2021 The ProblemAll of our explores are being included when we include a model file in another model file, but we only want to use some not allA SolutionUser refinements to hide these explores. Example if we have model_1;connection: "model_1_connection"explore: sales{} Then we have model_2 where we want to include model_1 but hide sales explore for this model;include: "/models/model_1.view.lkml"connection: "model_2_connection"explore: +sales{hidden: yes} This also works for explores with lots of joins and parameters added to it as the refinement will only update the conflicts which in this case is hidden: no (the default) now has a conflict of hidden: yes which is in the refinement so is used instead in this model. example if sales was larger in model_1 ;connection: "model_1_connection"explore: sales{label: "Sales information"sql_always_where: ${sales.refund} = false;;join: users{sql_on: ${sales.id} = ${users.sales_id};;}join: orders{sql_on: ${users.order_id} = ${o

ruth.mcelroyLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

value_format not coming through in exploreKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 9, 2020 The ProblemUser has added value_format to their field which is correct but no changes on the explore sideA SolutionThey most likely have not set the type of their dimension at all or have not set it to be numeric. Make sure they have defined type: number for that field as per our docs;To apply Excel-style formatting to measures via value_format, make sure the measure is numeric and not of type: string.https://docs.looker.com/reference/field-params/value_format This content is subject to limited support.

ryan.bouquetLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How are query limits affected by clusteringKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 23, 2019 Let's assume that we have 3 nodes. When a user logs into a clustered environment, they'll hit a load balancer that forwards them to a node in a round robin fashion. New users and schedules are auto-distributed across nodes.For the per-user-query-limit, a user can still only simultaneously query 15 queries at once because Looker does not distribute connections across nodes.For the max connection, there is still 70 connections per node. This content is subject to limited support.

ryan.bouquetLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How Do I Show Only the Totals Row?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 4, 2019 ProblemI want to only show my totals row in the visualization, not any of the other data.WorkaroundsNot janky: change groupingThe easiest workaround is to change your grouping. Totals are just the measure values run without grouping by any dimensions. So if you remove the dimensions from your explore, then the measure values should show you the same value as the total.Mildly janky: use table calcsYou can usually get the total to show up in its own row by using table calcs. Just use {fieldname:total} for the field which you want to show the total for. Then you can "hide from visualization" for all of the other fields so that the total is the only field you see. You might then want to limit the displayed rows to 1.Very janky: limit displayed rowsThis is an unsupported workaround, and while it is very cool it is not guaranteed to always work. Also, it only works with Table type visualizations. First, enable "Limit Displayed Rows" in the visualization settings. The

ryan.bouquetLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I escape a string starting with "-" in a Filter Expression?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 29, 2019 Filter expressions read in the character "-" to mean NOT, so filtering on a string value starting with a dash will actually return all results EXCEPT the specified string.To get around this we can escape the string with a carat. For example: "-value" will become "^-value". This will then filter correctly for strings with the value "-value". This content is subject to limited support.

ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Render error: RendererAuthenticationHTTPException or LOGIN_HTTP_ERRORKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 27, 2020 For this error type, the RendererAuthenticationHTTPException error will appear in the schedule history or the PDF/PNG download page and LOGIN_HTTP_ERROR will appear in the logs.DescriptionWhen rendering with Chromium, Chromium will first check that the Looker instance is available by navigating to /alive. Then, it will login as the Looker user rendering the content with a one-time login token at /login/ephemeral and then load the dashboard or look to be rendered.This error means that when logging in as the Looker user at /login/ephemeral the page did not redirect to a page with a 200 response. In other words, something went wrong when trying to log the user in.TroubleshootingA couple things to check:What page is the user redirected to if they login for the first time? Is that page valid? Broken homepages or default spaces/boards that return a 404 will cause this error. Are there errors in the JS console on any/all pages for that user, including the homepage? T

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.

ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What does RendererNoCliprectFoundForElementError mean?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 24, 2019 The "nocliprect" error means that when Chromium polled the page for the size of the visualization element there was no visualization element present. Also worth pointing out that when we render individual dashboard tiles (AKA the Images of Visualizations option) that we convert each tile into it's own explore and capture the output from that. This error often comes up when there are no results in the rendered content.This error will appear as Uncaught (in promise) Error: Incompatible element passed to getClipRect in the logs. This content is subject to limited support.

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.

ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What timezone do alerts send in?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 2, 2019 Up until 6.18, all alerts would send in the server timezone. For all Looker-hosted customers this will mean the times will be in UTC.After 6.20+, it will send in the users' specific timezone. If they do not have user specific timezones enabled, alerts will use application timezone. This content is subject to limited support.

ryland.wolffLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why does my Percent of Total (percent_of_total) measure show up as null?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 11, 2019 ExplanationA percent_of_total measure is basically a table calculation, which means it's not run on the database. Therefore, if the row limit is hit, the total can't be properly calculated.SolutionIncrease the row limit to the max (5000).If you have more than 5000 rows, then this will require a derived table instead. This content is subject to limited support.

ryland.wolffLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do type: yesno fields work?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 25, 2020 A yesno field will only evaluate a single thing. If we have a boolean coming in from the database, we can set the yesno field to something like this: dimension: yesno_fieldtype: yesnosql: ${TABLE}.boolean_database_column ;; When that database column is true, we get a "Yes", and when it is no we will get a "No". However, we will also get a "No" if the row is null, since it does not meet the single evaluation of the boolean being true. This can become tricky if we are using this field in a filtered measures. That is, we may get cases where the row does not meet the criteria, but is also not a false value on the DB. A better solution if there are null values is a LookML CASE statement. This content is subject to limited support.

sarah.tayeriLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why is my aggregate table not being used?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 16, 2020 The following needs to be true in order for Looker to use the aggregate table on an explore query:The Explore query’s fields are a subset of the aggregate table’s fields (see: Field Factors). Or, for timeframes, the Explore query’s timeframes can be derived from the timeframes in the aggregate table (see: Timeframe Factors). The Explore query contains measure types supported by aggregate awareness (see: Measure Type Factors), *or* the Explore query has an aggregate table that is an exact match (see: Creating Aggregate Tables That Exactly Match Explore Queries). The Explore query’s time zone matches the time zone used by the aggregate table (see: Time Zone Factors). The Explore query’s filters reference fields that are available as dimensions in the aggregate table, *or* each of the Explore query’s filters matches a filter in the aggregate table (see: Filter Factors).The SQL tab should include a comment explaining why an aggregate table wasn't used. Use the tro

sarah.tayeriLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Github IPs to allowlistKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 5, 2021 To integrate git pull requests with any LookML projects, you will need to add to the allowlist the range of IP addresses from which your Git provider makes outbound requests.For github we'll use the IPs listed under "hooks" here: https://api.github.com/metaIn the allowlist settings, we should use "both" for the type setting (both UI and API). This content is subject to limited support.

scott.siegelLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Mixed Content Error TroubleshootingKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 31, 2018 Scenario:If your instance is self-hosted and is embedding Looker in an iFrame, and is receiving the following error:Mixed Content: The page at '' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure resource ''. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS. Possible Causes:You have a load balancer (ex. Nginx) that is managing your SSL certificatesTroubleshooting:Remove the -- no-ssl startup option https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-install/looker-startup-options Replace the no-ssl startup option with--ssl-provided-externally-by=<s> Replace the <s> with the host and port of their external SSL provider Make sure you have the = sign! Check your nginx settings against what we recommend here: https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-install/sample-nginx-config. In particular, we have had customers set configured to set request headers that tell Looker what happened when forwarding the request as X-For

srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

"There are new commits in at least one of your remote dependencies."Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 3, 2020 if the project manifest has remote dependencies you would need to click update dependencies first. This creates a file that makes sure that the dependencies are up to date.If the remote dependency is updated you will get a new prompt to update your dependencies. This content is subject to limited support.

swhiteLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

INFOBRIGHT: Derived Tables in InfobrightKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 5, 2019 Looker doesn't support PDTs in Infobright.If you want to have DTs (ephemeral, not persistent), you will need to use a workaround where the SQL query is written in the sql_table_name parameter:view: derived_table {sql_table_name: ( SELECT * FROM table ) ;;dimension: id {...}...} This content is subject to limited support.

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.

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.

srinija.godavarthiLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Hiding folders in the IDEKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 17, 2020 There's currently no way to hide folders in the IDE, but a workaround is to "tag" the current version on github, and then delete the files, then if you want to see the old files you could navigate to the tag.https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18216991/create-a-tag-in-a-github-repositoryOnce you have a tag, called for example "last-rev-with-old-lookml" then you can look at the files a https://github.com/ACCOUNT/REPO/tree/last-rev-with-old-lookml so you could bookmark that and keep it as a reference for example. This content is subject to limited support.

Taylor_O_MearaLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What to model in-database (or in-ETL) versus in LookMLKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 1, 2020 This article: How do you decide what to model in dbt vs LookML? gives an outline. Substitute dbt for any other ETL or database-layer transformation tool. The key points are that LookML is best for modeling query-time transformations in an iterative way. LookML is best for Query-time transformations. Query-time transformations are good for: giving maximum flexibility for the end users. The article section "Should I calculate metrics in dbt or Looker?" explains how there are infinite combinations of any data set: don't try to predict every combination and constrain your end-users with pre-built tables. Give them a GUI to combine pieces on their own. Before you model something in the database, ask yourself, "Will this limit the end users' freedom to get the details they need?" Query-time transformations are not ideal for: computationally heavy calculations that are frequently required. For example, maybe 2 tables are always joined together, and it would make sen

Taylor_O_MearaLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to increase dashboard text tile widthKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 11, 2020 The ProblemDashboard Text tile width cannot be edited, and the default width is surprisingly narrow. Even with HTML inside of the text tile. There is a feature request you can vote for on our feedback system: Adjust text box widthA SolutionThere are two possible workarounds:Create LookML object with HTML parameter, and display it on dashboard as a single tile visualization. Use div class = vis to trick the text tile into thinking it's a single value visualization, then insert the text you want. Insert the following into the text tile body:<div class="vis"><div class="vis-single-value"><font color="#5A2FC2" size="6" ><center><b>Using div class = vis we get a white background, and override the 500px default. See? The text goes as wide as the tile</b></center></font></div></div> This content is subject to limited support.

vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Do access grants cascade or apply to fields that reference a field with an access grant?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 19, 2020 No, access grants do not have cascading restrictions. Therefore with the existing functionality, every object needs to be explicitly defined with an access grant.If we have the below LookML and do a sum on a dimension that has an access grant, we'll see the same results when we delete the required access grant from the dimension. So we will need to define the required access grant for both fields to correctly restrict the information.dimension: dim1 {required_access_grants: [sensitive_info]type: numbersql: ${TABLE}.col1 ;;} measure: sum_of_dim1 {type:sumsql: ${dim1};;} This content is subject to limited support.

vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why can't I save a LookML file? "Save Error" when trying to save in IDEKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 31, 2020 The ProblemWhen attempting to save a LookML file, the save button will turn red when you click it:The ExplanationThere are several possible causes.Expecting 'end_of_file', 'keyword', got '}'There are a couple things that could trigger this error message:The most common trigger for this is a syntax problem, such as a missing or extra end curly brace. To check this, we can fold all the LookML objects in the file to see if everything folds as expected. Folding LookML keyboard shortcuts We have 2+ IDE tabs open and we are trying to save in the tab that is not as updated as the other(s). There are two people making changes to the same file and when one saves first, the other gets the save error when trying to save their changes.400 Error in the JS consoleWe have seen this with LookML dashboards with missing or mis-aligned syntax. In this case there was no other indication in the IDE, and there is an error 400 in the console. Please reach out to Looker Support if y

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