Advanced - Editing Dashboards

After you have created a dashboard, you can edit the dashboard by clicking the Edit button at the upper right of the dashboard.

Editing the Dashboard Title

To change the title of a dashboard, click Edit to enter edit mode, then edit the dashboard title in the top left of the screen:

Click Done Editing to save your changes.

Arranging and Resizing Dashboard Tiles

You can move and resize tiles on a dashboard by clicking and dragging. Click on the three-line icon in the upper left of a tile to move it, or the bottom right corner of the tile to re-size it:

Editing Tiles

When the dashboard is in edit mode, you can make changes to a dashboard’s individual tiles. Click the Edit button at the top right of the dashboard to access the edit options for the tiles on the dashboard.

You can access the edit options for each tile by using the tile’s edit icons and the tile’s option menu. Note that for smaller tiles, the edit icons are moved to the tile menu itself:

Hiding the Title of a Tile

For tiles with visualizations (tiles other than text tiles), you can hide the title of the tile. When the dashboard is in edit mode, click the Show/Hide Title icon:

When you hide the tile’s title, Looker enlarges the visualization to take up the free space.

You can display the title again by going into dashboard edit mode and clicking the Show/Hide Title icon.

Editing a Tile’s Query or Look

You can edit the underlying query or Look of a tile directly from a dashboard. First, make sure the dashboard is in edit mode and then click the Edit button in the tile toolbar.

Looker then displays an Explore window for that query or Look, letting you change and save it:

If you save changes to a Look, it will affect every dashboard where that Look is used.

Adding a Note to a Tile

To add a note to a tile, make sure the dashboard is in edit mode and then click the Add Note button in the tile toolbar.

Looker shows the following window, letting you enter the note text and select a couple of display options:

• Enter the text you want to show on the tile.
• Select whether to have the text appear at the top of the tile, the bottom of the tile, or as hover text that appears over a question mark icon that is added to the tile.
• Leaving the Default to expanded box unchecked causes the text to be centered in the tile, and to only show the beginning portion of the note with an icon to expand the full text. Checking this box will cause the entire note to appear, justified to the left side of the tile.
• Save your changes.

Editing Applied Filters

To set which filters are applied to a tile, make sure the dashboard is in edit mode and then click the Edit Applied Filters button in the tile toolbar.

From this interface, you can select which filters should be applied to the tile, and you can change the field that a filter is based upon for this tile:

Duplicating Tiles

You can create a query directly from the dashboard without saving it as a Look. This helps avoid the potential clutter of having many saved Looks that are only needed for a single dashboard.

If your dashboard has a tile that is based on a saved Look, you can convert it to a query-based tile.

For query tiles, which are tiles based on queries that are created directly from the dashboard, you can easily duplicate a tile by clicking Duplicate Tile from the tile’s menu:

Looker creates a copy of the tile with the same query and visualization settings and adds the new tile to the bottom of the dashboard. From here, you can edit the tile to adjust the name of the tile, the visualization, or the underlying query.

Removing Tiles from the Dashboard

There are two ways to remove tiles from a dashboard while in edit mode. To remove a single tile, use the gear menu on that tile and select Remove. To remove one or more tiles, check the box on that tile while in edit mode and choose Delete Selected.

Removing a Single Tile from a Dashboard

To remove a single tile:

• For Look-linked tiles — tiles that are based on a saved Look — click on the tile’s gear icon and select Remove. Because this type of tile is actually a Look that is being linked into the dashboard, the Look will still exist once it’s removed from the dashboard.
• For query tiles and text tiles — tiles that are created directly from the dashboard and are not saved elsewhere — click on the tile’s gear icon and select Delete. Since these types of tiles aren’t based on a saved Look, you are deleting the tile completely when you delete it from the dashboard.

Removing One or More Tiles from a Dashboard

To remove one or more tiles from a dashboard, hover your mouse over a tile and click on its checkmark. When you select a tile’s checkmark, Looker displays a grey box around that tile. Select any additional tiles that you wish to delete. Once you have chosen the tiles you wish to delete, choose Delete Selected. Looker then displays a dialog box to confirm that you want to delete the selected content.

If you remove a Look-linked tile from a dashboard, the Look will still exist in any other places to which it is saved. Removing a query tile or text tile from a dashboard, however, permanently deletes that tile.

Editing Dashboard Settings

To edit the settings for a dashboard, make sure the dashboard is in edit mode and then click Settings in the upper left:

Several settings can be adjusted from this interface:

Title

The Title that you assign in this interface will be displayed both at the top of the dashboard and in the Folder that the dashboard is saved into.

Description

The Description can be any text you want. The description appears below dashboards on the Folders page.

Run On Load

If Run On Load is turned on, each element on the dashboard will automatically run when the page is first loaded.

If Run On Load is turned on and there are no dashboard filters in place, the Run button will not appear.

If Run On Load is turned off, each element will show up when the page loads, but will not display any information until the Run button is pressed.

If the dashboard filters are blank or invalid, or if the dashboard does not contain any tiles, the Run button will be grayed out.

Dashboard Auto Refresh

If the dashboard will be on display, it might make sense to refresh the data regularly to ensure up-to-date statistics. To do this, turn on Dashboard Auto Refresh, then select how frequently you would like the entire dashboard to be reloaded from the database.

The auto refresh intervals begin at the time of day that you turn on this feature. For example, if you set a daily refresh at 8:33 a.m., the next refresh will occur the next day at 8:33 a.m.

The dashboard will refresh on the interval you set as long as the dashboard is open in a browser tab. If the dashboard is closed during a normal refresh time it won’t refresh until the next time it is opened. Refreshes never use the Looker cache; they always pull their data from the database.

Default Timezone

Select the time zone in which your dashboard will be run. Users will be able to change the time zone setting when viewing the dashboard.

You can choose one of the following options:

• Each Tile’s Time Zone to have all tiles run in the time zone in which they were saved.
• Viewer Time Zone to have all tiles run in your business’s setting.
• Specific Time Zone: Select the specific time zone from list in the drop-down menu to have all the tiles run in that time zone.

Auto Refresh

If you only want some rather than all elements to auto refresh, turn on the Auto Refresh switch next to each element you want to auto refresh and define the element’s refresh time.

Converting Look-linked Tiles to Query Tiles

If your dashboard has tiles that are based on saved Looks, you can convert them to query-based tiles. You can convert a single tile at a time, or you can convert all of a dashboard’s tiles at once.

Converting a Single Tile to a Query Tile

To convert a Look-linked tile to a query-based tile, make sure the dashboard is in edit mode. Then, from the tile’s gear menu, click the Convert Look to Tile option, and click OK in the confirmation pop-up:

The Look-linked tile is replaced by a new tile that uses the same query and visualization settings. If you change your mind, you can link the Look back in as a tile, as long as the Look is still saved in a Folder. If you don’t want the Look, you might consider deleting the Look.

Converting All Tiles to Query Tiles

You can also use the dashboard menu to convert all the dashboard’s Look-linked tiles to query tiles in a single operation.

 

• Make sure the dashboard is in edit mode, then select Convert Looks to Tiles from the dashboard gear menu.

• Click Convert to convert all the of dashboard’s Look-linked tiles to query tiles.

Deleting a Dashboard

You can delete a single dashboard directly from the dashboard’s gear menu at the upper right of the screen:

Then you will get to this confirmation page:

 

Adding Dashboard Filters a User Can Change

Filters can be added to a dashboard so that users can narrow the dashboard’s results to the data they are interested in. Adding a filter consists of these major steps:

• Create the filter itself, which is what the user will interact with.
• Decide which dashboard tiles should “listen” to that filter. If you don’t actively do this, a tile will simply ignore the filter.

To get started, make sure the dashboard is in edit mode and then click Filters in the dashboard toolbar:

This will bring up the Add/Edit Dashboard Filters window:

Next, on the Add/Edit Dashboard Filters window:

• Click New Filter to create a new filter. Looker lists the new filter on the left hand side of the filters pop-up. You can drag and drop the filters to control the order in which they appear on the dashboard.
• Give your filter a name.
• Choose the type of filter you want to create. You are able to create a Date, String, Number or Field filter. The Date, String, and Number types let the user enter any value they like of that type. The Field type lets you choose a specific field from which Looker will create suggestions for the user.
• Add a default value if desired. This value will be suggested to the user when they load the dashboard, but they can change it if they like. You can choose a basic default value from the drop-down options, or create a more complex default value based on an advanced match, as explained here.
• Decide which tiles the filter should be applied to and turn them on. Then, choose the field to which the value of the filter will be applied.
• In the Filters to Update tab, you can make different filters depending on the selected filter, as described in the following section. To do so:
  
  • Save your filter, as defined so far.
  • Turn on the switch next to the other filters you want to make dependent on this filter.
• In the Customize Filter tab, choose the behavior of your filter:
  • Require a filter value to run this dashboard: The user must enter a filter value before the dashboard can be run.
  • Allow multiple filter values: When this is on, the user can select multiple filter values. When this is off, the user is able to select only a single filter value.
• Save your filter.

Dashboard Filter Default Behavior

By default, a new dashboard filter is turned off for all previously existing tiles on the dashboard. To apply the new filter to one or more tiles, you must turn on each of those tiles under the Tiles to Update tab of the Add/Edit Dashboard Filters window.

By default, a new tile will not be subject to a previously existing filter that was set up before the tile was added to the dashboard. To apply the filter to a new tile, you must edit the tile directly by putting the dashboard into edit mode, selecting Edit Applied Filters on the tile, and turning on the filter toggle.

Setting Up Faceted Filters

Dashboard filters of the Field type can be applied to other Field filters. For example, on the Passes & Plans report, you might have a Pass/Plan Type filter and a Pass/Plan Name filter. One thing you may want to do is update the Pass/Plan Name filter based on the Pass/Plan Type filter:

By doing this, only the Passes/Plans that are within the chosen type will be suggested to the user.

Requiring a Filter Value

By default, filters do not require values. If a filter that does not require a value is left blank, the data simply isn’t restricted by the filter field. For example, if you have a filter on a Status field on a dashboard, if that filter was not given a value, the dashboard would return data for all status.

If a filter does require a value, the dashboard won’t run if the filter is left blank.

You can choose to require that a user enter a value in a filter before they can run the dashboard:

• Click on the filter in the Add/Edit Dashboard Filters window.
• Click on the Customize Filter tab.
• Turn on or off Require a filter value to run this dashboard.
• Click Save.

If Require a filter value to run this dashboard is on, whenever a user tries to run the dashboard without entering a value in the required filter.

Limiting the Number of Values

By default, a user can select multiple values for a dashboard filter. You can choose to limit users to a single filter value:

• Click on the filter in the Add/Edit Dashboard Filters window.
• Click on the Customize Filter tab.
• Turn on or off Allow multiple filter values.
• Click Save.

When Allow multiple filter values is on, the user has the option to add additional values for a filter:

When Allow multiple filter values is off, there is no option to add a second value for the filter, and the filter’s default value can be either is equal to (for strings and numbers), is on the day (for dates), or matches a user attribute (for strings, numbers and dates):

For location fields, the dashboard filter cannot be set to Allow multiple filter values OFF.