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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 Blog Archives

Why we built a data culture at Fivetran

This content, written by Garegin Ordyan, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Aug 9, 2019. The content is subject to limited support. At , we build technology that centralizes data from different applications into data warehouses, so enabling organizations to be data-driven is an essential part of our mission. But what does it mean to have a data-driven culture? My teammates think of this in a few ways: "A data-driven culture means that individuals are tuned in to start thinking about problems and their solutions with a data-focused mindset. Enabled by a data-driven culture, users across the organization can ask questions like: What can the data tell me about this problem?, What hypotheses can I test with the data we have available? and How will the changes I’m going to implement affect the data we’re collecting and other people who are leveraging this data?" — Christine Ndege, Solutions Engineer/Data Analyst at Fivetran "Creating a data-driven culture is something that requires bu

410
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Creating a data culture: pt 3 | Technical foundation

This content, written by Brian LaFaille, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Sep 15, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.This is the third piece in our five-part series on increasing widespread self-service data adoption across your enterprise. In the section, we looked at the challenges of becoming a data-driven company. , we talked about the importance of executive alignment. In this post, we’ll look at the essential component that’s needed to establish the foundation for the transition to widespread self-service data adoption: the technology. Without the technical foundation, self-service analytics and data culture simply can’t exist within a business. The technology required for a data-driven transformation needs to aggregate all source data in a single repository so that it can be presented in an understandable way to decision makers. This way, organizational leaders can use it to steer the company based on what the analysis is telling them. Why a self-service anal

400
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I seeing outdated branches when I select them in Git Actions?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 28, 2020The Problem:After selecting someone else's personal branch, I'm not seeing the changes they had just committed. But when we sudo as the user, we clearly see the new code!The Fix:When you've selected the branch, On the top right corner, Validate the LookML and Pull Remote Changes. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
Department of Customer Love
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.                

400
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Will a user in multiple [SAML/LDAP] Groups Get Associated to Multiple Looker Roles?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 18, 2019 They definitely should. If it's not coming through, check the tests in the setup page.This can occur due to a messed up base_dn. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Error: 'time' param is not within 5 minutes of the server's system timeKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 2020 This error comes up for SSO embed URLs. Basically, there are two main reasons: The link needs to be hit within 5 minutes of it being generated. Try generating the link again. The time on the server generating the URL is actually 5 minutes off of the time on the Looker server. Check what the servers think the current time is with the date command line call. This portion is mentioned in our docs right here: https://docs.looker.com/reference/embedding/security#sso_embed_parameters"The signed part of the URL contains a timestamp. Once the URL is used to sign on, that time must be +/- 5 minutes from the current time." This content is subject to limited support.                

400
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is the JavaScript that runs Custom Visualizations able to make http requests?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 It is not.Sandboxed iframes have an origin of `null` so any http request at all would violate the browser’s cross-origin request rules. This content is subject to limited support.                 

400
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Pieter_DeVries
Looker Staff
Pieter_DeVriesLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to generate LookML for all datasets for BigQuery connectionKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 23, 2020 The ProblemLooker only generates one view which is specified in connection setting as dataset even we select "All tables".  A SolutionListing all datasets ( comma-separated) in schema section in create project. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
Pieter_DeVries
Looker Staff
1 year ago
J
Looker Staff
Judah_HamaouiLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I use FTP instead of SFTP for scheduled deliveries?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 23, 2018 No, Looker needs SFTP or FTP with supporting of SFTP on the side of Looker's recipient to deliver looks and dashboards.There is a feature request that you can add to with use cases. This content is subject to limited support.                   

400
J
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Embed user doesn't see option to schedule to emailKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 17, 2020 This probably indicates the embed user is not being given the schedule_look_emails permission, or the email they are trying to schedule to is not on the Email Domain Allowlist for Scheduled ContentCheck docs for more details This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why are 3rd party cookies required for public content?Knowledge Drop

Last tested; Sep 15, 2020 Looker Login UI will always require some sort of login state, even public Looks. Looker UI needs to create a session with a "fake" login for the anonymous user viewing the public content and Looker UI needs to save this login state in a browser cookie.If the content is coming from a 3rd party domain, it will require a 3rd party cookie.The best way to avoid this problem will be to change the domain name. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do I see nulls returned for the Fields Used field in the System Activity History explore?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 23, 2020 These are generated by the queries Looker runs to retrieve filter suggestions!To double check this, we can bring the history ID field into the query and link out to the Queries page to see the source. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is the difference between history and query create date?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 16, 2020 Query created date is the time that a specific query was first run. The history created date will have a new row every time that query is run.So if you run a specific explore for the first time, the history and query created date will be exactly the same. If you run the same query (same fields, filters, vis config) a couple days later, you'd have another, new history row with a new created date two days later, but the query created date would be the same. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

The metrics of success

This content, written by Nicole Beyer, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Feb 28, 2017. The content is subject to limited support.Success is found in what you value At Looker, we believe in putting our customers' success first. It’s a way of life around here. As Margaret pointed out in her , caring for our customers is baked into the way we operate. At Looker, we provide highly technical support over chat, and as you might suspect, we use data - and Looker - to evaluate our efforts. The way we measure success, however, might be a little different than what you would see elsewhere. For example, a normal chat KPI is chat duration, and many organizations are looking for ways to get that duration down. At Looker on the other hand, chat duration is not an immediate indication of success or failure. We see each chat as a fresh opportunity to teach our customer something more about how they can use Looker, and we’re prepared to take all the time needed to help that person become a Looker

400
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
11 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Multiple PDTs and a single Datagroup ObjectKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 16, 2019 If a user has multiple PDTs (say for example 3 PDTs) and they want to set a Datagroup trigger that only triggers when all 3 tables are built, then that is possible if the 3 PDTs are set to listen to the same Datagroup, only then will the cache invalidate when all 3 + PDTs are built.If each PDT is set to to the same Datagroup, the steps will be: Rebuild all PDTs, invalidate cache, send schedules This content is subject to limited support.                   

400
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
sarah.tayeri
Looker Staff
sarah.tayeriLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why can't I set a column limit when pivoting?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 11, 2020 Some dialects pivot with front-end work - Looker can only apply column limits when the pivoting is accomplished in the SQL query.For example, Denodo pivots in the front end, so we can't apply a column limit to explores that are built off a Denodo connection. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
sarah.tayeri
Looker Staff
1 year ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

If you have a templated filter in a derived table and you reference that table in another derived table, can you pass the filter value through?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 10, 2019 No, you would have to create the templated filter in your new derived table. The DT doesn’t “store” the templated filter, it’s just part of the sql.​ This content is subject to limited support.                   

390
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Morgan
Looker Staff
MorganLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Difference between downloading PDFs in Dev and Production ModeKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 4, 2019 Regardless of what mode you are in, PDF downloads always come from the production code.There is an existing discussion on allowing downloads of dev mode versions in Pendo feedback if you search for ID 17678. This content is subject to limited support.                  

390
Morgan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What are these Unknown connections in my query queue?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 24, 2019 In the Admin > Database > Queries panel, sometimes we will see queries made to an unknown database without any information on the query.​​Usually these queries to "unknown" connections are placeholders for merged result queries. If a tile has results from two separate connections, we see 3 different events in the query panel. One placeholder (“unknown”), then two actual queries (with known connections listed). This content is subject to limited support.                  

390
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
andrew.rose
Looker Staff
andrew.roseLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do I calculate the number of digits in a value using table calcs?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 18, 2020 We can do this using the power of logarithms! Looker's log() function uses log base 10, so it will return an integer for each value that is a power of 10 - eg. log(1) = 0, log(10) = 1, and so on. So, for integer values of log(x), we can return "log(x) + 1". For all other values, we can round up using the ceiling() function.Here's the syntax:if((ceiling(log(${value})) - log(${value})) < 0.00000001, log(${value})+1, ceiling(log(${value})))One fun thing to note - all of these functions can be used in a custom dimension as well! This content is subject to limited support.                   

390
andrew.rose
Looker Staff
1 year ago
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
mandy.chanLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Embed users' user attribute values are being reset in the Users PanelKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 16, 2020 If this is happening, it is likely that the embed user's user attributes are being defined in the Users panel instead of the embed URL, which is incorrect.The user attribute values for embed users should be defined in the embed URL, not in the Users panel.If you want to manage the embed user user attributes from the Looker UI, you can assign user attributes through groups.The groups_id parameter in the embed URL will determine what group the user belongs in, and once that group_ids value is set, they can assign the appropriate attribute value to that group without having to change the URL. If this is happening, it is likely that the embed user's user attributes are being defined in the Users panel instead of the embed URL, which is incorrect.The user attribute values for embed users should be defined in the embed URL, not in the Users panel.If you want to manage the embed user user attributes from the Looker UI, you can assign user attributes through groups.Th

390
mandy.chan
Looker Staff
1 year ago
bryce.heltzel
Looker Staff
bryce.heltzelLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

When using user-specific connections, is the cache still shared?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 22, 2019Just using user-specific connections does not disable the shared cache because if two users share the same username for the database, the shared cache will still be used. If the usernames vary though (which is the point of this feature), the shared cache will not be used This content is subject to limited support.                   

390
bryce.heltzel
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Blog Archives

Looker’s data-driven culture – it’s not just about the data

This content, written by Carolyn Hughes, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Oct 21, 2015. The content is subject to limited support.The best Corporate Cultures are real. They feel real. And although they may vary dramatically in substance and character, the real-ness is immediately palpable when you’re present in such an organization. So what makes a culture real? At Looker, we believe it’s when our internal value proposition is well aligned with the external value that our product is delivering out in the world. The brand is consistent. Working at Looker should feel similar to the experience of leveraging the Looker product in a Customer Company. So how do we make that happen? First, we pay close attention to the impact that Looker has on the businesses that we serve. We see (and talk a lot about) Looker enabling a real, data-driven culture to emerge in our customer organizations. But what does that mean, exactly? Does it mean we toss out ideas and intuition in favor of d

390
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
11 months ago
sam
Looker Staff
samLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Failed to save options: You are saving SMTP settings too often.Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 15, 2021 Solution: As the error says, just wait a little bit. You're allowed to run 5 requests every 5 minutes:Reason: The SMTP page can be used maliciously as a port scanner, so we decided to limit the frequency with which users can edit that info. Nobody should really need to change it that much. For security reasons, we won't share the frequency limit or lockout length. This content is subject to limited support.                  

390
sam
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Embed Showing Blank Tiles (granting "All" models)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 3, 2020 If...the dashboard in the iframe is loading in okay, but the tiles are blank (or have a dash on it) the admin query panel shows that these queries erred out "access denied" in the detailsCheck if your models are right in the embed urlYou can't use "All" to include all models, you also cannot use a model set, you need to include each individual model This content is subject to limited support.                  

390
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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