Looker - Complete Guide to Google Looker - User and Analyst

Explore sample data for Element Rental to practice building analyses, looks, and dashboards in Looker, including products, salespeople, customers, offices, transactions, and inventory.

Set up a free sandbox Looker environment when you don't have a locker instance, using Quick Labs, with hourly sign-outs and a caveat that everything resets each hour.

Create a Looker sandbox account, enroll in a quest, and start the lab to access your sandbox environment, including one-hour refresh and 50 hours of sandbox time.

Import your Excel data into a Looker instance by enabling development mode, editing the model file, and pasting the dataset so you can explore sales and inventory.

Learn to load sample data into your Looker instance and complete setup steps, as the instructor notes you should have finished the text-file preparation and refresh tasks before this lecture.

Discover how Looker uses explorers as data capsules for analysis, and how saved looks (reports) compile analyses into interactive dashboards.

Explore how folders store looks, reports, and dashboards, while boards organize them into shareable collections like a sales data board.

Explore how lookml defines dimensions, aggregations, and data relationships and how Looker automatically generates sql queries, enabling standardized metrics without etl.

Navigate Looker’s left-hand menu to access Explore and Develop. Organize looks and dashboards with folders, boards, blocks, and shared folders.

Open an explore, select fields, and run analyses to see sales by office, while learning how explorers, filters, visualizations, and the concepts of dimensions and measures shape data in Looker.

Define dimensions as groupings like customer or product name, and measures as quantitative values such as total sales; the module adds two dimensions and two measures.

Remove fields in Looker by manipulating dimensions and measures, using the gear icon or deselecting a field, then click run to update results.

Create a table of total sales by state with average sales as a measure. Sort by total or average, and add a totals row to see overall figures.

Explore how visualizations turn data from a table into graphs and charts, using transactions by product name, and tailor chart types and axis labels for looks and dashboards.

Explore how to create and customize a table visualization in Looker, including themes, row numbers, totals, transposing, pivoting, formatting, and conditional color rules.

Learn how to freeze left-hand columns in a Looker table, keeping key fields like company and office names visible while you scroll and adjust column width.

Learn to visualize sales data with bar and column charts by stacking or grouping series, adjusting left and right axes, percentages, and legends for clear distribution.

Explore how a scatter plot uses two continuous numeric variables to show the relationship between hours and sales across transactions in Looker.

Explore sizing dots in a scatter visualization by a measure, using series to size by total sales or average sales, and compare offices by transactions and total sales.

Explore line and area charts to visualize sales trends over time, compare total sales with hours, and customize colors, axes, and stacked distributions by category.

Explore pie chart visualizations in Looker, learn to view sales distribution by customer and product, and customize start and end angles, colors, and labels.

Save and reuse analyses with looks to create repeatable monthly sales reports, then customize visuals and share looks in folders while tracking generation time and data.

Create another look in Looker to build a sales performance report, showing average and total sales by salesperson with conditional formatting and folder-based access.

Move and copy looks between personal and shared folders, create shared folders like customer metrics, store elements in a shared folder, and switch quickly between monthly sales and salesperson reports.

Learn to edit looks in Looker, adding age, editing the title, saving as a new look, and adjusting the description, plus configure automatic run on page load to control reruns.

Discover how to drill down into Looker reports using developer-set quick actions and explore from existing reports to reveal transaction details by date or week.

Learn to limit data with filters in Looker, covering basic, advanced, and custom types, three ways to add filters, and applying date ranges or customer company name filters.

Enter values in the filter box to create or condition by typing lead or closer and pressing enter, then select from the dropdown or type another value and press enter.

Explore how filters on dimensions apply before aggregation, while filters on measures apply after aggregation, using Looker to distinguish where versus having clauses.

Explore advanced filters by combining and or logic to filter salespeople by age, using greater than or equal to 38 or less than or equal to 22, across 100 rows.

Explore Looker's advanced matches and filter expressions to craft complex numeric, date, and string filters using operators, wildcards, and between-range syntax.

Learn to create custom filters in Looker using and/or logic, wildcards, and advanced match to combine office and customer conditions for precise transactions.

Learn how to create custom filters that compare two columns, such as office name and salesperson office name, using a dollar sign to filter transactions where both offices match.

Learn how to create custom dimensions and measures in Looker, then use post-aggregation table calculations to combine fields, calculate average hourly price, and format currency.

Explore quick calculations in Looker to compute percentage of total, percentage change from previous, and ranking of monthly sales using total sales and custom expressions.

Learn how to use quick calculations in visualizations to display total sales by month and percent change from the previous month, with bars and dots.

Learn to build custom measures from a dimension, turning sales dimensions into new metrics like sum, median, or count, and apply them to segments such as Detroit.

Create a custom measure in Looker to filter total sales by customer type (long haul or medium haul) before aggregation, enabling investor sales insights.

Create custom dimensions in Looker from scratch using expressions and functions, derive state codes with substring, and use if statements and contains for grouping states.

Learn to share and send one-time looks and explorers in Looker by email or via a shareable URL, with optional title, message, and export options.

Learn how to publicly share looks in Looker, toggle public access, and embed reports with iframes on external websites, while understanding permissions and limitations.

Enable scheduling in Looker by having your administrator turn it on, then create a weekly schedule to refresh data and deliver an Excel file by email.

Learn to set up conditional schedules and alert emails in Looker, delivering reports only when results change or meet thresholds, with daily or interval-based triggers.

Looker organizes analysis with folders and reports, where folders store looks, dashboards, data, and permissions. Use my folder for personal work; shared folders enable organization-wide access with controlled permissions.

Learn to manage folder permissions in Looker by renaming folders, setting defaults, and controlling access with custom user lists and personal versus shared folders.

Save, copy, and move looks between personal and shared folders (like ad hoc data) using save as, gear icon, and move options to organize looks.

Boards in Looker help you group looks and dashboards by sections like sales data and salesperson performance, including monthly and ad hoc reports, for quick, organized access.

Create and organize a looker board by adding sections for sales and salespeople, pinning existing looks from folders, and reusing the same look across multiple boards.

Explore how to use boards in Looker, add descriptions and contributors, share boards with your team, and use folders to locate looks and dashboards.

Learn to use recently viewed and favorites in Looker to quickly access your most recent looks across all of Looker and your favorites.

Explore heat map visualizations in Looker, using state as a location dimension to map total sales, adjust map style, borders, grid lines, and interactive zoom in a flexible map workflow.

Leverage Looker's single value visualization to showcase a top-row measure with context through comparisons, targets, and progress bars, including formatting and priority rules for measures and tables.

Explore how to configure single value visualizations in Looker, adjust remaining sales to target, convert figures to a percentage, and apply leftmost measures and table calculations.

Learn how Looker’s word cloud visualization sizes words using one dimension and one measure, such as total sales. Adjust rotation and gradient palettes to highlight top offices or top salespeople.

Learn to create box plots in Looker to visualize distribution across offices using min, 25th percentile, median, 75th percentile, and max.

Place look-linked tiles in the same folder as the dashboard, save to the dashboard, and enable live tiles with pivots like customer type and customer company name in stacked views.

Learn to use text tiles and markdown in Looker dashboards, including headers, tables, lists, and links. Enhance clarity for analysts and sales teams with flexible layout and editing.

Learn to manage Looker dashboard tiles: move and size them, hide titles, edit underlying queries, add notes, and duplicate or delete tiles for organized sales visuals.

Set dashboard settings to control data freshness and performance: choose run on load or automatic refresh, tune per-tile refresh, adjust time zone, and manage permissions.

Learn to add global filters to dashboards in Looker, using two-click filters and button groups to filter by explore fields like product name, with a default value and tile-specific filtering.

Apply filters to specific dashboards by editing a product filter and updating tiles, so only the sales trace changes while the map and other charts remain unfiltered.

Explore filter controls in Looker, including inline and pop over displays, multiple vs single selection, range sliders for numbers, date and time frame filters, and how filters affect tiles.

Explore advanced filters in Looker that let users define criteria with operators like starts with, contains, and is not null, enabling flexible filters across strings, numbers, and dates.

Learn how cascading, or linked, filters in Looker constrain options based on prior selections, such as country to city or salesperson office name to last name.

Explore cross filtering, a feature that lets any visualization become a filter, enabling state-level and map-based filtering, multi-select with control, and automatic updates across dashboards.

Learn cross filtering in Looker, where filters apply across all visualizations; selecting the product name excavator and junior salesperson updates the background query.

Explore filtering to constrain data by date ranges in line charts, tables, and maps, from February to April. Enable drill downs with explorer show all in a cross-filtered dashboard.

Build an end-to-end CEO dashboard that tracks total sales vs target, hours and transactions, shows the number of employees, and highlights top salespeople with product distribution and sales trend visualizations.

Style a Looker dashboard with color, add a stacked area chart of sales over time, pivot by function, and include tiles for sales by office and product.

Create an end-to-end Looker dashboard with office name and date range filters, using a pop-over button, to analyze sales by office and transactions on the CEO dashboard.