New blocks, applications, visualizations, and plug-ins are announced in the Looker Release Notes or the changelog for each release. You can access the changelog from the Looker Release Notes page.
The Looker Marketplace is a central location for finding, deploying, and managing many types of Looker content, such as Looker Blocks, applications, visualizations, and plug-ins.
The Looker Marketplace feature is enabled by default. Before you can deploy some blocks from the Looker Marketplace, a Looker admin must enable the Local Project Import Labs feature. Before you can install extensions from the Looker Marketplace, a Looker admin must enable the Extension Framework feature.
Accessing the Looker Marketplace
To enable users to access the Looker Marketplace, a Looker admin must enable the Marketplace feature.
All users can access the Looker Marketplace by clicking the shop icon on the Looker menu bar. Users must have develop, manage_models, and deploy permissions to install packages from the Marketplace.
The Marketplace homepage shows popular Looker applications and tools:
In the main menu on the left side of the page, you can select one of several options to see the full library of tool types. These types include:
- Applications: Looker applications are comprehensive sets of models, dashboards, and Explores. Applications are designed to let you analyze your sales and marketing data without having to build your own LookML models. Using the Looker Marketplace, you can install an application and connect to your data source. The installation process then loads your data, letting you see results within 24 hours.
- Models: Models are pre-built LookML models, including dashboards and Explores, for a variety of popular data sources.
- Plug-ins: Plug-ins are visualization types that you can install and add to Looker’s native visualization library.
Make sure that you always install the latest version of the visualization. Some visualizations serve JavaScript in the
file:subparameter. If you have the most recent update of the visualization installed and the visualization is not rendering, you must enable Looker cookies in your browser.Some applications, like the Looker Data Dictionary, are extensions that are built using the Looker extension framework. Before you can install such extensions from the Looker Marketplace, a Looker admin must enable the Extension Framework feature.
Once a package is installed, it can be accessed from the Applications drop-down in the left navigation panel.
From there, you will see either the application’s homepage or a list of pre-built dashboards and Explores that use the installed model and associated data. All users will be able to view the Applications option in the left navigation panel; however, users will be able to access only the installed packages that are based on the models to which they have been granted access permissions.
See the Customizing Looker Marketplace Blocks documentation for information on customizing blocks you have installed from the Marketplace.
The applications, models, and plug-ins available in the Marketplace are defined in a server separate from the Looker instance. This allows the Marketplace data to be updated at any time. Looker instances running in the cloud automatically get access to the Marketplace data server.
Customer-hosted Looker instances may require additional configuration to access the Marketplace data. The server running the Looker instance will need to be configured to access the public internet server running at the URL
https://marketplace-api.looker.com/.
Automatically installing Looker-built applications
If your Looker admin has enabled the Auto Install option in the Marketplace page in the Platform section of Looker’s Admin menu, some Looker-built applications will automatically install and update on your Looker instance. Currently, the API Explorer is the only extension that will automatically install, but more Looker-built applications may be added in the future.
For more information, see the Admin settings - Marketplace documentation page.
Installing a tool from the Marketplace
Customer-hosted deployments using clustered instances must set up a shared (network) file system to install applications or tools from the Looker Marketplace.
The installation process varies, depending on the tool you are installing. Applications and some models, for example, have the option to connect the tool to your source database. Most plug-ins, however, require some minimal configuration information to install successfully.
The procedure below shows all the possible installation options; however, depending on the tool you are installing, you may only see a subset of the steps below.
Before installing any tool from the Marketplace:
Admins should ensure that the appropriate features are enabled:
- To install any piece of content from the Looker Marketplace: Marketplace feature
- To use the Digital Marketing Analytics, Sales Analytics, and Web Analytics apps: Local Project Import Labs feature
- To install extensions: Extension Framework feature
To install a tool from the Looker Marketplace:
- From the Marketplace main menu, navigate to the tool you want to install, and click its tile:
Looker displays the tool’s installation page. The installation page shows a short description of the tool and any needed information about installing and using the tool:
Click Install or Install Free Trial.
Looker displays pages asking you to accept the tool’s license agreements and the Looker permissions required by the tool. If you want to accept the license agreements and permission requests, click Accept on these pages.
Each tool requires some configuration information that is specific for that tool, such as a connection name or visualization label. Looker displays a screen asking you for that tool’s configuration information:
Select or enter the configuration information, and click Install. After the installation is complete, you can change this configuration information any time using the settings icon in the Marketplace Manage menu.
Looker will complete the installation.
Once a tool is installed, you can open it through the Applications & Tools folder or through the Manage option in the Marketplace main menu. You will see any Explores built for the tool in Looker’s Explore menu, and you can view the tool’s LookML through the Develop menu.
If you installed a plug-in, the new visualization will be available in the Visualization menu in an Explore.
Make sure that you always install the latest version of the visualization. Some visualizations serve JavaScript in the
file:subparameter. If you have the most recent update of the visualization installed and the visualization is not rendering, you must enable Looker cookies in your browser.
Installing a tool from a Git URL
You can also install models and plug-ins directly from their Git repository:
From the Marketplace main menu, choose Manage.
Click the three-dot menu, and select Install via Git URL:
Looker shows the Install via Git page:
Enter the URL and commit SHA of the repository and version of the tool or visualization you want to install.
- Click Install.
Managing installed tools
From the Manage option in the Marketplace main menu, you can view a list of all installed tools. From the Manage page, you can also update tools, open them, change a tool’s configuration, or uninstall tools:
- Click Update to download any updates to the tool from Looker.
- Click Open to open the tool and view its lists of dashboards and Explores.
- Click the settings icon to modify a tool’s configuration.
- Click the trash can icon to uninstall a tool.