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2115 Topics

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

Why are my email fields grey?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 10, 2018 There are two different interpretations of this question, with two different answers.1. On the Admin > User page, before editing a user. If an email is grey here, it means the user can't log in with these credentials. In this example, SAML is enabled for the instance. User 538 is an Admin and thus is allowed to log in with Alternate Login using their email address. User 587, on the other hand, doesn't have the login_special_email permission and is not an admin, so they cannot use their email address to log in, only SAML.Two: On the Edit User page.This means that the email can't be edited from here. When using SAML or another identity provider (IdP), Looker gets the email address from that IdP. You can't edit the email in Looker, because it will get overridden the next time someone logs in with SAML. This content is subject to limited support.                  

470
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

6 ways to integrate a data strategy into your product workflow

This content, written by Erin Franz, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Mar 21, 2018. The content is subject to limited support.Even though most product and engineering organizations today are collecting tons of data, most only use a fraction of what is available. This is often due to competing priorities or lack of implementation experience in data strategy. Looker and are working together to make data-driven product development workflows a reality. There’s no silver bullet when it comes to making data-backed decisions the norm, but there are steps you can take to shift the culture of your team, or even your company. 1: Expand your definition of data Data from instrumented products is increasingly valuable to product teams because it shows how users interact with the product directly. But data from the product itself isn’t the only source of information you can use to improve your product and workstreams. Data from issue tracking tools can provide valuable insight into historical

470
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months ago
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
romain.ducarrougeLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

GIT - Find differences between 2 branchesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 If you have access to the git repo on command line, you can use `git diff`. The syntax looks like this:git diff <branch 1>..<branch 2> git diff prod..other_branch This is useful when trying to find out what's different between your dev mode and production. This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Peggy_Beard
Peggy_BeardMember
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What permission is required to create a project?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 12, 2018The manage_models permission is required to create a project. This permission is not in the Developer permission set for the Developer role. This content is subject to limited support.                   

460
Peggy_Beard
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I getting a warning for the explore or field parameter in my LookML dashboard filter?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 The explore parameter is a valid parameter only for type: field_filter LookML dashboard filters. Like a UDD field type filter, this is the only filter type that queries a field in an explore to pull suggestions from—all other filter types do not need to query a field.This throws a warning:filters:- name: order_datetype: date_filterexplore: ordersfield: orders.order_date This does not throw a warning:filters:- name: order_datetype: field_filterexplore: ordersfield: orders.order_dateYou can reference these docs for more information. This content is subject to limited support.                 

460
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 click or double-click on a visualization legend series to show one specific series?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 14, 2020 YES! Use "Alt + click" on WIndows or "Option + click" on MacOS on visualization legend series to show one specific series on the visual This content is subject to limited support.                 

460
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
romain.ducarrougeLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

JMX monitoring when using --no-daemonise flagKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 5, 2017 You will need to change all of the JMX-related startup flags by removing com.sun.akuma.jvmarg.like this:-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote \-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9910 \ -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \ -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=false \ -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=true \ -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=${HOME}/.lookerjmx/jmxremote.access \-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=${HOME}/.lookerjmx/jmxremote.password \  These were a workaround to keep the daemonizer from grabbing the JMX ports, which kept the child process from starting. This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Peggy_Beard
Peggy_BeardMember
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I include a comment in a custom field?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 20, 2019 Yes! A comment line begins with a #, just like in a table calculation This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
Peggy_Beard
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

CSV downloads with foreign currency renders as £ in Excel ( Euros, British Pounds, etc.)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 17, 2019This is a bug in how excel handles CSV files. Try downloading the content as XSLX instead! This content is subject to limited support.                   

461
R
1 year ago
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
noah.kawasakiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Variable not found "variable_name" in commented out liquidKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 24, 2018 Liquid being commented out in SQL by -- will still be processed as valid liquid by Looker because of the order in which Looker processes a view file.To have liquid commented out and not used, comment it out in liquid syntax as well{% comment %} some liquid stuff {% endcomment %} This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
1 year ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I have a dimension in a Look but hide it from the Explore?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 21, 2020 Yes!What we can do is first save the Look with our desired dimension, and then once saved, go into the LookML and apply the hidden parameter to the dimension so that it no longer shows up in the Explore. This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
chris.seymourLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What permission do I need to schedule based on a datagroup?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 7, 2020 Besides the general scheduling permissions, you need the develop permission on the model where the datagroup is defined AND see_datagroups. This means that only developers can schedule based on a datagroup.You do NOT need update_datagroups —this permissions is only for seeing datagroups in the Admin panel.Changes from Version 7.8+Non-develop permissioned users can select "Datagroup Update" when defining schedules. This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
chris.seymour
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does the description fields parameter have a character limit?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 30, 2020 Probably but not that we know of - we tested this parameter with 2,000 characters on a local instance.Based on our testing, it looks like if there is a technical limit, you would would hit a limit on what would appear in the browser before hitting the technical limit. This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How are LookML dashboards validated (LookML validator)?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 13, 2020 Before we get into how LookML dashboards are validated, here's how the LookML validator works at a high level (documentation).The LookML Validator scans only LookML files that have been updated since the last LookML validation, or files that are affected by updates:If a model-level setting changes, everything is revalidated. If a view changes, only the Explores where it is used are revalidated. If an Explore changes, only that Explore is revalidated.When we validate our LookML, the validation is done on a model-by-model basis. Meaning if we have four model files and we only made a change to one of them, then only the explores/views/LookML dashboards associated with that one model file will be validated.Now to LookML dashboards. When we load a LookML dashboard for the first time, we need to validate the dashboard to be able to render them. That means when we're accessing a LookML dashboard for the first time, it has to validate all the models/explores that it r

460
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Best practice for handling group ids over multiple instancesKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 13, 2020 Say you have staging/dev/production instances and your group ids are different per instance.The recommendation is to keep the names the same, then1. run api call on group name to get group id, save as variable2. add the group id variable to the sso embed urlNo magic there. best you can do is query for all_groups then pick them out by name. or the app code could keep a mapping somewhere of all the names => id for every environment, so you don't have to keep looking it up This content is subject to limited support.                  

460
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Enhancing the data-sharing experience with the latest Looker Slack integration

This content, written by Ani McDowell, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Oct 13, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.Everyone today, regardless of role, department, or technical skill, needs access to data. But perhaps more importantly, they need data in the places they’re already working. Our product and engineering teams are making it faster and easier for everyone to get value from their data when and where they need it. We’ve approached this with a focus on three main themes: Deliver rich and interactive data experiences Empower users to quickly understand and explore their data Provide seamless access to data where users spend their time Part of delivering on that third pillar has included reimagining our Slack integration. Since announcing the beta for this integration during our launch, we’ve continued to improve upon it, bringing it out of beta and building out new features. With this release, we’ve added the ability to set custom, threshold-based alerts that

460
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

Why doesn't my user COUNT() in History explore match total existing users? (System Activity)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 7, 2020 The History explore in System Activity is NOT the best place to see ALL users, looks, dashboards on the instance. The reason for this, is because History only tracks query events, so if a user has not done anything in 90 days, or a look or dashboard has not been queried in 90 days, it will not show up in History.For all of your content exploration needs, use the following explores:/explore/system__activity/look/explore/system__activity/dashboard/explore/system__activity/userFor more details on the History explore, see our documentation on the History Explore in System Activity. This content is subject to limited support.                 

450
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Aleksandrs_Vederniko
Looker Staff
Aleksandrs_VedernikoLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I set up monitoring of my Looker instance's health via the API?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 5, 2018 Looker responds to /alive with an http 200 status code if it is up. This can be used for load balancers and such to do health checks. We recently added /availability which does the same thing, but exercises more of Looker's internals while also returning a human readable page. It will say "Looker is up" if all is well. This content is subject to limited support.                  

450
Aleksandrs_Vederniko
Looker Staff
1 year ago
A
Looker Staff
adina.katzLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I use prefix unicode/ prefix N notation in Looker?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 3, 2019 You can use prefix N notation in the sql parameter of a dimension or other sql_* parameter types however this could lead to issues with filtering on the dimension.For example, if you have a dimensions with sql: N'Hello' ;; and then filter on that dimension in an explore for is equal to 'Hello', Looker will not generate N'Hello' in the WHERE clause so you will see no results in some cases, depending on the database settings.The better thing to do in this case is to configure the SQL server with a Collation that supports the desired string literals, and then never use the N'' prefix. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/collations/collation-and-unicode-support?view=sql-server-2017 This content is subject to limited support.                 

450
A
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sarah.tayeri
Looker Staff
sarah.tayeriLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Error: Every derived table must have its own aliasKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 17, 2020 This is a MySQL error that gets triggered if two PDTs are named the same.If you've checked no PDTs share a name, check the dt sql for missing parentheses/brackets - not closing the parentheses can also throw this error. This content is subject to limited support.                  

450
sarah.tayeri
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When would I use the | symbol after the sql parameter in old LookML?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 20, 2018 The pipe | symbol is only used in old LookML. It tells the validator that multiple lines of code are coming. This has been replaced in New LookML with the ability to use double semicolons to end code blocks like html or SQL. # Example of | used correctly. Without the |, this would error.sql: | CASE WHEN 1=1 THEN 'grand'ELSE 'not as grand'END More examples: https://oldlookmldocs.looker.com/reference/view-params/sql-for-derived_table This content is subject to limited support.                  

450
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Why a visualization is worth a thousand data points

This content, written by Jill Hardy, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Jul 8, 2019. The content is subject to limited support.We talk about data visualization (or “viz”) a lot at Looker. We believe in its power to tell stories, to help people see patterns and take action accordingly. In other words, visualization matters—a lot. In the age of big data, visualization is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal as an analyst or data enthusiast. It can so drastically affect the way we interpret and understand information that it may seem like magic; when, in fact, it works so well because of the way the brain processes large amounts of information. Get it right, and you supercharge your efficiency, your ability to draw connections, and your communication. Data visualization makes you more efficient Understanding the scope of data available today illuminates why visualization makes you more efficient, and how necessary it is for modern business. For example, this picture, taken o

450
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

How Guru modernized their data stack to provide more value to customers

This content, written by Mitch Stewart, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Nov 4, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.At , we help organizations consolidate and manage knowledge so they can get the answers they need to quickly. Our main focus is capturing a company’s information and expertise — whether from internal messaging tools like Slack and Teams, the web, and employees' heads — and creating a single source of truth that’s easy for any employee to then access and use within their corporate business applications. Our goal is that with Guru, teams spend less time hunting down information and more time doing their jobs. Unlike traditional wikis, intranets, or knowledge bases, Guru “lives where you work.” As an overlay to any web-based application, we have a unique way of understanding what knowledge is being leveraged across specific business applications. These insights are super valuable for our customers, and as such, analytics has been a core component of our pro

450
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
10 months ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I escape commas when using liquid {{value}}?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 2020You can use {{ filterable_value }} as shown in the liquid docs. This content is subject to limited support.                

440
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Vincent
Looker Staff
VincentLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why wouldn’t a value_format_name or value_format apply to my field?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Dec 5, 2019 Without a type parameter, a field type defaults to string. You need to add type: number in most cases where this happens.You should change this:measure: ratio_of_cases_to_accounts {value_format_name: decimal_1sql: 1.0 * ${count} / ${accounts.count} ;;} to this:measure: ratio_of_cases_to_accounts {value_format_name: decimal_1type: numbersql: 1.0 * ${count} / ${accounts.count} ;;} This content is subject to limited support.                  

440
Vincent
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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