The Basics

You can schedule reports directly to an SFTP server in Looker. Results can be unlimited, allowing users to schedule and send large result sets, provided they meet the streaming criteria. That is, the report cannot contain table calculations or totals or (in some dialects) pivots. The scheduler will let you know as you are scheduling if the report can be unlimited or not. To see this option in the scheduler modal, the user needs to have the send_to_sftppermission.

When to Schedule to SFTP

Sending results to an SFTP server works well when results are too large to send directly via email, which is similar to sending results to S3 (as shown here). Because Looker uses Sendgrid to process scheduled emails, and Sendgrid has a 19.5MB size limit (as of November 2016), the reports Looker sends via email have to be limited in size.

Streaming to an SFTP server allows customers to bypass browser, memory, and email limitations. Additionally, scheduling results to an SFTP server allows customers to send large result sets from Looker to an SFTP server, which can then securely pass those results to third parties.

You could, for example, generate a report in Looker and schedule a CSV to be delivered daily to an SFTP server, that could forward the CSV to vendors.

How It Works

1. Create a schedule for a saved Look or dashboard.
2. Select SFTP from the Destination dropdown (the user needs to have the send_to_sftp permission to see this).
3. Enter the URL of the server you want to send results to
   NOTE: The path should end with q.
   For example: sftp://sftp.server.com/home/user123/ NOT sftp://sftp.server.com/home/user123.
4. Enter SFTP credentials.
5. Select Save Allor send a test via Send Test (Send Test also works for sending a one-time email).
   

Whitelisting

You can find a list of IP addresses to whitelist on your SFTP server. They are the same ones used for secure database access.