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The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2113 Topics

Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

Heaps of Looker love

This content, written by Erin Franz, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Feb 10, 2016. The content is subject to limited support.Looker is super excited to announce our partnership with Heap and the creation of a new Looker for Heap SQL Block. Heap makes collecting data on web or mobile activity painless - and Looker for Heap SQL makes deploying a BI solution on top of the resulting data just as easy to deploy across an entire organization - so that everyone can answer their own questions on things like user behavior and application performance. What is Heap SQL? Web and mobile analytics can provide meaningful insights to any modern organization. Heap automatically captures user actions - clicks, taps, gestures, form submissions, page views - and allows you to add any additional custom properties you’d like without even having to touch code. What makes Heap unique is that as your analytics' requirements continue to grow and change with your business and you add new events to track

330
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
5 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

Security and privacy conscious analytics with Looker + SecuPi

This content, written by Bruce Sandell & Atalia Horenshtien, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Feb 28, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.One of the things that customers love about Looker is our security model. Looker provides your data analysts and the flexibility to secure your Looker instance in many different ways. This includes the flexibility to manage who has the ability to log into Looker, what functionality they have available to them within Looker, as well as what content they are able to see. User access to content can be limited at the report level, dashboard-level, row-level, and even the individual column-level. Additionally, restricting access to data can be built right into the LookML model, meaning that anyone accessing data from Looker — whether through the Looker UI, embedded content, or via custom applications using Looker’s API — will all still adhere to the same security configured within Looker. However, depending on your data access patt

330
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
5 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

The three decisions we didn't make that totally changed our business.

This content, written by Lloyd Tabb, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Jan 6, 2014. The content is subject to limited support.When we founded Looker (then Llooker), there were nagging questions: Was it a Venture business? Was Looker going to be a Product or a Service? Would the Looker software be On Premise or Hosted? Conventional wisdom (and it's often right) is that you need to decide things early and focus. When starting out, we decided to put off answering some key decisions until the future was better defined. We clearly knew the value we wanted to provide: Deliver flexible access to detailed data into the hands of as many folks inside of our customers' organizations as possible, so they could make better decisions. What we didn't know was the best way to structure a business to do that. We really didn't know. Should we sell software? Should we sell consulting? Was the cloud really going to win? Would customers be comfortable having their crown jewels (data) in the cloud? How

330
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
5 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

Weather and climate data for business intelligence: Q&A with Weather Source

This content, written by Shohei Narron, was initially posted in Looker Blog on May 5, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.We recently had the opportunity to speak with Mark Gibbas, CEO of Weather Source, and learn more about how they provide weather and climate data solutions for a growing list of companies across a variety of industries. Plus, as a member of the Looker Partner Network, Weather Source now offers their as one of the newest additions to our . Hi, Mark! Could you share with us a little bit about yourself and your company? Sure! I’m a meteorologist who also has an extensive background in computer science and mathematics. This led me to found in 2015, with the mission to make hyper-local weather and climate data accessible around the globe and across industries. Weather Source helps companies quantify the impact of weather on their operations, reduce waste, increase return on investment, fine-tune logistics, deploy strategic marketing, improve resource plannin

330
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
5 months ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to connect a new LookML Project to a non-empty Git repoKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Sep 14, 2020 Create the new LookML project under Develop > Manage Projects Choose "Blank Project" and give it a name The next page will ask you to "configure git" Enter your repo URL when prompted, and enter the deploy key on the repo After configuration, Looker will prompt you to push your local branch, pull down remote changes, and finally push to production!  This content is subject to limited support.                

320
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Rack app error: #ArgumentError: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 16, 2020A user saw this error in the logs after trying to connect a project to an existing git repo.This is due to a file in the repo having non utf8 encoding - this can sometimes be caused by either a corrupt file, or just Windows line endings. Try changing the encoding on the files to utf8 and pulling again! This content is subject to limited support.                  

320
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
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.                   

320
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

How to do a customer profitability analysis

This content, written by Dan LeBlanc, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Mar 18, 2019. The content is subject to limited support.What is customer profitability? Customer profitability is far more than just the of a customer, and more than the gross or net margin generated from a transaction. A proper customer profitability analysis involves every touch point a customer has with your company, including customer service contacts, returns, custom fulfillment costs, and more. Why measuring customer profitability is important Measuring customer profitability is crucially important for continued business success because it helps determine whether certain customers are costing you money rather than making you money. Once you have a framework in place to measure this, it becomes easy to analyze customer profitability as frequently as makes sense for your business. You may find that a customer group you thought was the most important is actually of lower value to your company than others.

320
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
5 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
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.                 

320
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
david.chiaramonteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I break and change a field reference for a single explore?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 20, 2019 Will the break-the-field-reference-to-find-and-replace-in-Content-Validator method not work for your use case because we want to change specific content in specific explores? Try adding a fields parameter like:fields: [ALL_FIELDS*,-view_name.field_name_we_want_to_break] This will surface "Unknown field" errors in the Content Validator, but only for the specific explores you break (as opposed to breaking the field reference in the view file and having the reference break everywhere). This content is subject to limited support.                  

320
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
1 year ago
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
noah.kawasakiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Google Sheets showing #ERROR! exporting data with lookerFetchDataKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 17, 2018 If you can successfully load their data into Sheets with lookerFetchData on the same look, it may be due to them breaching limitations on Google's side.This goes over their quota restrictions. Notably the "Custom function runtime" being 30 seconds at the time of this card being created. This content is subject to limited support.                  

320
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
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.                  

320
noah.kawasaki
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Blog Archives

Segment + Looker - comprehensive customer analytics

This content, written by Keenan Rice, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Jan 13, 2015. The content is subject to limited support.The most exciting part of my job at Looker is seeing firsthand how some of the most innovative tech companies think about data, continually using it to compete against established traditional players. Each of these emerging companies know from the outset that data is their most strategic competitive weapon in the 'David and Goliath' scenario they face in their markets. Why? It's easy to collect, effective to utilize, and the tools to do so are pervasive; almost everyone runs Google Analytics, Adobe Site Catalyst, Mixpanel, or something similar. While these tools are easy to use and can get you from 0-60 quickly, their ease-of-use comes from the tight control these apps impose over what you can do with the data they collect. The downside of that tight control is a lack of flexibility, leaving a lot to be desired when a company is ready to do more comprehen

320
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
5 months ago
jesse.carah
Looker Staff
jesse.carahLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What git commands are executed under the hood when the "Deploy to Production" button is pressed?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 15, 2018 You are in dev mode, working on a branch dev-john-smith-wxyz in the local repo in the looker/models-user-123/project-foo directory.When you commit, you commit to the local repo under looker/models-user-123/project-foo and also push your changes to the shared repo - github.com/my-company/project-foo - under the branch dev-john-smith-wxyz.When you deploy to production, Looker first checks that all the commits in github.com/my-company/project-foo branch master are reflected in dev-john-smith-wxyx. If they are not, then you will need to pull changes and merge. Once that is done, you can deploy to production again. Looker will push dev-john-smith-wxyx to the master branch on github.com/my-company/project-foo. When that succeeds it will also then pull master from github.com/my-company/project-foo to the master branch in the local repo in looker/models/project-foo.If you have pull requests set up, instead of deploying to production Looker will create a pull request a

320
jesse.carah
Looker Staff
1 year ago
fernanda.melo
Looker Staff
fernanda.meloLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Create connection API - generate Base64 encoded certificateKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 11, 2019 When creating a new connection using the create_connection(body) API you need to pass the certificate body for server authentication.To create this string you can run in a terminal the following command line:cat yourjsonfile.json | base64ORcat yourp12file.p12 | base64Wrap the result in quotes and use that as the value for certificate.For BigQuery certificate (string): (Write-Only) Base64 encoded Certificate body for server authentication (when appropriate for dialect).,file_type (string): (Write-Only) Certificate keyfile type - .json or .p12,--> you don't give a filename to the API to upload, you have to put the content of the file into the API request as a Base64 encoded string value This content is subject to limited support.                  

320
fernanda.melo
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does changing a user's groups in SAML/LDAP affect their Looker user?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 This depends on whether you have Group to Role Mapping enabled in Looker:If so, then the changes will affect the user, but only upon their next login. When a user logs in, Looker removes all of their roles and assigns new roles based on SAML/LDAP groups.If not, then changes made on the external authentication system won't affect Looker at all.This content is subject to limited support.                

310
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Morgan
Looker Staff
MorganLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Unexpected WITH near XXXKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 1, 2020 This is one example of an error you can get by using a CTE in a derived table. See ​this post for more info.More examples:BigQuery:Syntax Error: Expected \"(\" or keyword SELECT but got keyword WITH at... This content is subject to limited support.                   

310
Morgan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I use/reference a `filter:` of type: number in a liquid statement?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 Yes, you can do this using the assign Liquid syntax. For example:filter: filter_value_to_pass {type: number} measure: my_measure {type: sumsql: ${TABLE}.field;;html: {% assign var=_filters['filter_value_to_pass'] | plus: 0 %}{% if value < var %}<div style="color: blue">{{ value }}</div>{% else %}<div style="color: orange">{{ value }}</div>{% endif %} ;;}Where | plus: 0 casts the var value from String to Integer. You could could also use | times: 1.…html: {% assign var=_filters['filter_value_to_pass'] | times: 1 %}...  This content is subject to limited support.                 

310
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is it possible to change the default cache length?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 2020The default cache length in Looker is one hour.This default is not configurable, however you can get close by defining datagroups or persist_for parameters at the model level for each model you want to override the default for. This content is subject to limited support.                

310
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
david.chiaramonteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I start Looker with java -jar looker.jar start?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 5, 2019 You can but it doesn't mean you should. Using java -jar looker.jar start instead of our startup scripts in our docs means that the Looker process boots with Java's default memory allocation. And Java's memory allocation is much smaller than what we recommend in our docs. Because of this, the Looker process can crash and yield 502 errors with:NoMethodError : undefined method `exception' for java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: GC overhead limit exceeded:Java::JavaLang::OutOfMemoryErrormessages in the logs. For best results, always recommend using the startup scripts! This content is subject to limited support.                   

310
david.chiaramonte
Looker Staff
1 year ago
andrew.rose
Looker Staff
andrew.roseLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What standard are Looker's timezones based on?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 2, 2019 We have a list of timezone settings Looker can use in this doc here: https://docs.looker.com/reference/embedding/timezones​But, where do these timezone names come from? Did we at Looker just make up all these names for different timezones?Nope! These are the names provided by the IANA Time Zone Database. Here's the link to the IANA website, that has downloadable lists of all these timezone names (if users want to access these names in a script they're writing, for example): https://www.iana.org/time-zones​This content is subject to limited support.                 

310
andrew.rose
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When do you see "Revert Uncommitted Changes" vs. "Revert to Production" in the git menu?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Feb 21, 2021You will see "Revert Uncommitted Changes" in the git actions menu when you've saved changes, but haven't committed them yet. You will see "Revert to Production" when you've committed changes.* You will see both if you've committed some changes and saved others.*Note: Revert to Production only shows in your personal "dev-" branch. Check out the full command list for git actions. This content is subject to limited support.                  

310
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
S
Looker Staff
swhiteLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Datatype parameter for dimension groupKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jul 3, 2018 The datatype parameter is a parameter for a dimension_group: of type: time.This parameter tells Looker what datatype to expect coming from the database and consequentially how to transform it into the timeframes you specify in the timeframes: parameter. eg. if the column is an epoch in the database put datatype: epoch.Link to Docs This content is subject to limited support.                

310
S
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Vincent
Looker Staff
VincentLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When looker is running in a clustered mode, where do we store the query cache?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 14, 2017 It’s on the local file system of whatever node ran the query, but node A can request it from node B.So if the user hits node A, node A looks up where the cache is (from the internal database), sees node B has it, requests it, node B sends it, and node A sends it to the user. This content is subject to limited support.                  

310
Vincent
Looker Staff
1 year ago
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
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.                   

310
srinija.godavarthi
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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