Looker for Beginners

Explore the four core Looker concepts—dimensions, measures, pivots, and table calculations—through practical e-commerce data examples to build foundational analytics skills.

Learn how dimensions represent data columns in Looker, showing only unique values and their combinations as you add date, status, or other fields, guiding data summarization before moving to measures.

Discover how measures in Looker perform calculations and blend with dimensions to reveal total revenue, while analysts alone build new measures when needed.

Apply dimensions and measures to compute the average sale price by status (cancelled, complete, processing, return, shipped), run the query, and observe a normal distribution of returns.

Explore pivots in Looker to analyze total revenue by distribution center and month, transforming data into a cross grid with distribution centers across columns and months down the rows.

Build a month-by-category pivot in Looker to count orders by shipped month and product category, then visualize which categories led each month, with accessories leading.

Apply filters to exclude unwanted data by constraining dimensions or measures, such as filtering customers by age over 18 or total revenue under 250000.

Explore how to customize Looker visualizations by selecting appropriate chart types and adjusting data-driven options. Add value labels and adjust layout settings to accurately represent geographic, scatter, or single-value data.

In Looker for Beginners, project #1, build a visualization of total revenue by state for customers older than 18, excluding under-18, with hover to view revenue.

Build a state-based revenue map in Looker by using the state dimension and total revenue measure, then apply an age filter over 18 to refine the visualization.

Explore how table calculations combine dimensions and measures to produce dynamic insights, and learn when to turn recurring calculations into reusable measures across visuals.

Master date functions in Looker by using table calculations to compute diff days between shipped and return dates, with custom fields and dollar sign column references.

Explore string functions to join, split, and manipulate text in Looker, using a distribution center example to extract state information with contains and boolean results.

Looker for beginners teaches using the case function to classify distribution centers as east coast, west coast, or central with table calculations.

Learn how to use positional and math table calculations in Looker to compute rolling averages, such as the last three quarters’ revenue, using offset list and mean functions.

Save looks as tiles to dashboards by naming each tile and adding it to a new or existing dashboard. Edit dashboards with the context menu to rearrange, resize, add filters, and adjust settings.

Explore dashboard filters by adding and configuring a filter for shipped quarter, adjusting the default time or time frames, and updating tiles to reflect the previous year's data.

Explore cross filtering in Looker for beginners by clicking a pie chart to filter other visuals, with order category and quarterly filters, all from one data set.

Enable automatic refresh to keep dashboard data up to date by refreshing every hour, preventing stale visuals as new data flows in and visuals can be added without manual changes.

Learn how to download and schedule delivery of Looker dashboards, including exporting images, setting daily email deliveries, and sharing via configured destinations like email or Slack, with targeted filters.

Navigate Looker with the left pane: folders, my folder, and shared folders, to organize looks and dashboards. Add to favorites for quick access; boards are covered in the next video.

Create a new board named sales, add sections, and pin dashboards or looks to group content. Share boards with admins or users using a quick link and access options.