Looker and LookML - The Complete Course for Beginners

Set up a Looker sandbox environment to learn Looker basics for free, noting the 2020 acquisition changes and one-hour usage limits, and skip if you already have an account.

Learn to access Looker for free through Google Cloud Skills Boost, enroll in free Looker labs (three labs like 'Exploring data with Looker'), and use one-hour sandboxes with no save.

Learn how sandbox quotas work in Looker labs: you can run five attempts per lab, then switch to other labs in this quest for hundreds of hours of learning.

Navigate the Looker interface, begin with explore to create an analysis, looks, and dashboards, and learn how development mode, folders, boards, and blocks organize your work in a sandbox environment.

Explore data with Looker explorers, learning how to analyze datasets from the e-commerce training project. Build queries using dimensions and measures, run results, and save looks or dashboards.

Learn to filter explores in Looker by adding fields such as fruit type, weight, price per pound, and excluding orange using multiple filter methods (left, data, or filter menu).

Discover how to sort data in Looker, arranging by color, total price, or average price, and toggle ascending or descending order to compare results.

Learn to add totals and subtotals in explores, including total price and weighted average price, and control display with row limits without changing the underlying data.

Switch to in use to review only the fields currently used, then use clear row or clear all to reset fields (keep filters if desired) and start a new analysis.

Explore advanced explores in Looker by pivoting airport data to compare max elevation across states and cities, using filters, sort, and pivot options for rapid analysis.

Explore how Looker caches query results to reduce database load, storing encrypted cache files, and enforcing LookML cache policies to serve data from cache or requery the database.

Explore how Looker generates SQL from explores, view the SQL tab, and use SQL Runner to modify queries, including aircraft name, certification, and years in service, via automatic joins.

Explore how Looker defines explores by linking front-end views to back-end LookML models, where views, dimensions, and measures are joined to power quick data analysis.

Explore Looker visualizations using the airports model; learn about 15 to 20 visualization types, from table to bar charts and scatter plots, with tips on when to use them.

Explore the table visualization in Looker by adding dimensions and measures, then customize table appearance with row numbers, totals, transpose, row limits, and conditional formatting.

Master configuring a column chart in Looker: limit rows, adjust grouping, tweak colors, labels, and axis settings to visualize top cities by state and compare counts.

Explore bar charts and compare them to column charts in Looker, adjusting plot options, series colors, axis names, fonts, rotations, and grid lines to suit your use case.

Explore scatterplot visualizations in Looker to examine relationships between variables, using the flights dataset to relate aircraft years in service to flight cancellations, and learn practical customization options.

Learn to switch from scatter plots to line charts in the Looker flights explore, customize options, and use line charts to identify trends and seasonal patterns over time.

Explore area charts in Looker by switching from line charts to area charts with flight data, and learn when area charts best show changes over time and differences between values.

Learn to create pie charts in Looker with one dimension and one measure, using e-commerce data; customize labels, legend, colors, and donut options within a 50-row limit.

Explore how to create map charts in Looker using geographic dimensions, customize map layers and styles, and leverage tooltips and color options to visualize regional data.

Explore the single value visualization in Looker to display key metrics on dashboards, using measures like total revenue and year, with sorting, filtering, and comparisons.

Learn to build a multi-series donut chart in Looker by pivoting product category and year to display total revenue across years, with optional filters, labels, and palette customization.

Use the looker single record chart to display all details for a specific record, such as an aircraft’s serial number. Publish the result in looks or dashboards.

Explore the table legacy chart in Looker, learn how to customize a tabular view with conditional formatting, totals, labels, and row controls for dashboards and looks.

Explore how a word cloud in Looker shows product category popularity by order counts or revenue, with style options to adjust colors and rotate text for presentations.

Explore what custom fields are, why you need them, and how to create them in Looker using LookML for ad hoc analysis in the current explorer, without backend changes.

Create a custom dimension by grouping product categories with custom fields, such as pants and shorts or underwear and swim, using add custom field and edit options in Looker.

Explore custom binning in Looker to create ad hoc cost bins, adjust bin size and range, and reveal revenue patterns by price tier in visualizations.

Learn how to create a custom measure from a dimension in Looker to sum cost across items, compute gross profit, and format results like total revenue for ad hoc analysis.

Apply advanced filters to custom fields in Looker to create year-specific measures like cost in 2021 and total revenue in 2021, using duplicates, edits, and careful year-based filtering.

Create a custom dimension with a Looker expression to calculate gross profit (retail price minus cost) in USD, then save to add it to the table.

Explore Looker expressions and functions to build a full name by concatenating first and last names in a custom dimension, adding a space, and running the query efficiently.

Learn Looker filtering basics on order items dataset; apply filters to product category and dates; use options like is equal to, contains, starts with, ends with, and is blank.

Explore how filters vary by field type in Looker, with date fields offering past days, specific dates, and relative or absolute ranges, and learn three ways to apply filters.

Apply matches advanced filtering to the product category in Looker using exact matches, starts with, and ends with, and consult the reference filter expressions in Looker docs.

Learn to use custom filters in Looker, applying diff days on created and delivered dates to identify orders beyond five days and refine analysis.

Save your first look by turning an explorer of product category and total revenue into a saved look (report) you can access later, with a pie chart of all-time revenue.

Edit a saved look by applying filters to include or exclude product categories, such as top three categories. Save as a new look to preserve older versions.

Explore saved looks options like sending, sharing, scheduling, and pinning to boards, while learning to favorite, rename, edit settings, run on load, and export data.

Create and customize a dashboard by adding tiles, text, and visualizations, apply filters like 2021, and save looks or explores to enable interactive, multi-chart analysis of product category performance.

Edit dashboards in Looker by adjusting visualizations, fonts, and colors; save changes, run data, and compare 2021 product category revenue, returns, and average price.

Learn how to add and configure filters in Looker dashboards, including date and product category filters, and understand how filters enable flexible, self-serve drilling without hard-coding.

Enable cross filtering on the dashboard to filter visualizations by a selection and drill down into data, using Ctrl to multi-select and reset filters to compare revenue and returned orders.

Explore dashboard settings in Looker by editing general options for run load and automatic refresh, adjust per-tile refresh, include time zone options in sandbox, and enable expanded filters by default.

Explore Looker dashboard options, from cache refresh and filter management to editing, copying for versioning, getting LookML, sharing links, scheduling deliveries, and organizing dashboards in boards.

See how Looker shortcuts save time by using keyboard shortcuts across the home page, explorer, and editors, including development mode, undo, and common actions.

Explore Looker’s history feature to reproduce past analyses, save looks, and remix with new dimensions like product name for stakeholders.

Explore the Looker marketplace to access apps, models, dashboards, explores, and plugins that save time and avoid building LookML models from scratch—note this is unavailable in the sandbox.

Learn how to organize Looker content with boards and pins, creating department-based boards to surface relevant dashboards and looks from shared and personal folders.

Move dashboards and looks with drag-and-drop, share boards via links, and manage access levels (edit or view) for admins and owners to keep analytics structured and user-friendly.

Switch between production and development modes in Looker to safely edit LookML. Open projects under develop to explore the e-commerce project and learn models, views, and core terminology.

Explore the LookML structure from project to fields (dimensions, measures, fieldsets), views, models, and explores, and learn how joins enable cross-dataset dashboards.

Explore the field level in LookML, distinguishing dimensions and measures and how they map to database columns or transformations. Understand filter fields and how fields power Looker queries.

expose views as explores within a model to empower analysts to build logs and dashboards. use the explorer to combine dimensions and measures like age, city, country, and tier.

Models house the explores and set the database connection, while deciding which views to include and how joins connect related views for querying.

Navigate the project as the top-level LookML hierarchy where models and views define connections, explores, and objects used to query data, with file navigation and Git-based version control.

Define dimensions and measure fields in a Looker view, including a dimension group for time and a count measure to analyze completed orders in the orders view.

Explore seven dimension types in Looker, including string, number, is (yes/no), tier buckets, location with latitude and longitude, distance between locations, and zip code for modeling in the ecommerce project.