This page describes Looker’s legacy dashboards. Update to new Looker dashboards for faster performance; a fresh, modern look and feel; and customizable, user-friendly filters. To determine which type of dashboard you are using, compare the screenshots on the Viewing dashboards and Viewing legacy dashboards documentation pages.git status
This page describes how to edit the legacy dashboard title, settings, or individual tiles — and how to delete a legacy dashboard. To learn how to create legacy dashboard filters, see the Adding filters to legacy dashboards documentation page.
Editing the legacy dashboard title
To change the title of a legacy 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 legacy dashboard tiles
You can move and resize tiles on a legacy dashboard by clicking and dragging. Click on the three-line icon in the upper left of a tile to move it, or click and drag the bottom right corner of the tile to resize it:
Adding tiles and text to a legacy dashboard
To make permanent changes to your legacy dashboard, you must put the dashboard in edit mode. This helps to prevent unintentional changes when a user is interacting with a dashboard. To enter edit mode, click the Edit button in the upper right of the legacy dashboard:
Adding query tiles to a legacy dashboard
A query tile is based on an independent query, one that is not linked to a Look. You can edit an existing legacy dashboard to add query tiles to it.
You can create a query tile’s query by:
- Exploring to create a new query or
- Copying the query from an existing Look. In a query tile, your dashboard will not be dependent on the Look. Any future changes to the Look will not affect the tile in your dashboard. If the Look is deleted, your query tile will still exist on your dashboard.
First, click New Tile in the legacy dashboard toolbar:
Once you click New Tile, Looker displays a menu of Explores. Choose an Explore to build your query:
Looker opens the Explore window to let you build your query:
- Give your query a name.
- Select the fields and filters for your query.
- Configure your visualization options.
- Once you have set up your query, click Run.
- Click Save to save the query as a tile on your legacy dashboard.
Looker adds your new tile to the bottom of the dashboard and automatically sizes the tile, but you can move and resize the tile however you like. You can also edit the tile once you’ve created it to adjust the name of the tile, the visualization, or the underlying query.
Adding Look-linked tiles to a legacy dashboard
You can add Look-linked tiles to a legacy dashboard only when the Look and the dashboard are both saved in the same folder. If you would like to add Looks from a different folder, first copy the Look into the same folder as the dashboard.
You can add Look-linked tiles to a legacy dashboard while editing the dashboard.
First, click Looks in the legacy dashboard toolbar:
Looker displays a window where you can manage the Looks that are already on the legacy dashboard and add new Looks from the dashboard’s folder:
To add a new Look, click Add to the right of the Look’s name. If you’d like to remove a Look that already exists inside the dashboard, click Remove.
Click Update Dashboard to save any changes you made from this window.
Looker adds your new tile to the bottom of the dashboard and automatically sizes the tile, but you can move and resize the tile however you like.
Adding legacy dashboard headers and text
You can add headers and text to your legacy dashboards to split up information or provide descriptions where needed by clicking Text in the legacy dashboard toolbar:
This will bring up a window where you can add a title, subtitle, and body. All of these elements are optional, providing some freedom about what type of text is used.
Some HTML, including links and images, is supported in the titles and subtitles. In addition, a subset of the Markdown markup language is supported in the body text. See the Using Markdown in text tiles documentation page for more information about which Markdown syntax is supported in the text tile body. You can also use the Markdown toolbar, located at the top of the Body box. Hover over each icon in the Markdown toolbar to see what format it creates.
Once you save, you will see your header/text tile appear at the bottom of the dashboard. It can then be moved and resized like any other tile to suit your needs.
Editing tiles
When the legacy 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 legacy 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 legacy dashboard is in edit mode, click the Show/Hide Title icon:
When you hide the title of a tile, 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 legacy 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 legacy 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. You can use plain text or HTML.
- 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 this 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 legacy 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 a legacy 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 legacy dashboard has a tile that is based on a saved Look, you can convert it to a query-based tile.
When you convert a Look-linked tile, the Look itself is deleted unless one of the following is true:
- The Look is used in another dashboard.
- The Look is marked as a favorite.
- The Look is scheduled for delivery.
- The Look is public.
If any of these are true, the Look will not be deleted.
For query tiles, which are tiles that are based on queries and created directly from the dashboard, you can 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 legacy dashboard
There are two ways to remove tiles from a legacy dashboard in edit mode. To remove a single tile, use the gear menu on that tile and select Remove. To remove one or more tiles, select the box on that tile while in edit mode and choose Delete Selected.
Removing a single tile from a legacy dashboard
To remove single a tile:
- For Look-linked tiles — tiles that are based on a saved Look — click 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 legacy dashboard and that are not saved elsewhere — click 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 legacy dashboard
To remove one or more tiles from a legacy dashboard, hover your mouse over a tile and click its checkmark. When you select a tile’s checkmark, Looker displays a gray box around that tile. Select any additional tiles that you want to delete. Once you have chosen the tiles, 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 legacy dashboard settings
To edit the settings for a legacy 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
If you add a description to a legacy dashboard, the description appears below the dashboard’s name in a folder that is set to list view, or when you hover over the dashboard’s thumbnail in a folder that is set to grid view.
If your admin has set your homepage to the pre-built Looker homepage, the description is also displayed when you hover over the legacy dashboard’s thumbnail on your homepage.
Layout
This option will only be available if you imported your legacy dashboard from LookML.
Under the Layout drop-down menu, drag must be enabled to drag and drop tiles. A message will prompt this change if the dashboard has recently been imported from a LookML dashboard. Any legacy dashboard that is created through the UI is already in drag layout.
Run On Load
If Run On Load is turned on, each element on the legacy 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.
Legacy Dashboard Auto Refresh
If the legacy 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, and the dashboard refreshes on the interval you set as long as the dashboard is open in a browser tab and is not in edit mode. If the dashboard is closed or in edit mode during a scheduled refresh time, it won’t refresh. The refresh interval restarts as soon as the dashboard is opened again or leaves edit mode.
For example, if it is 8:33 a.m. when you set a daily refresh, the dashboard will refresh immediately at 8:33 a.m. and then refresh again each day at 8:33 a.m. However, if one day you enter edit mode at 9:02 a.m. and exit edit mode at 9:45 a.m., the dashboard will refresh again as soon as you exit edit mode and from then on, the daily refresh will occur at 9:45 a.m.
In addition, the Clear Cache & Refresh option is independent of the auto refresh interval, meaning that manually refreshing the dashboard does not restart the auto refresh timer. For example, if a dashboard’s auto fresh interval is one hour, you can use the Clear Cache & Refresh option 40 minutes after an auto refresh and the dashboard will still auto refresh 20 minutes later (an hour after it was last automatically refreshed).
Frequent dashboard updates, especially on large dashboards, can place a significant strain on some database systems. You may want to discuss this consideration with one of your Looker admins. At a minimum, avoid setting a refresh interval that is shorter than your database update interval, because there is no new data to refresh and it creates unnecessary queries.
Likewise, when multiple users access a dashboard with auto refresh, it may impede performance. If you would like to display your dashboard on a shared screen while multiple users simultaneously access it, you can create two identical dashboards and configure only the dashboard on the shared screen to refresh automatically.
Default time zone
This option will only be available if your admin has enabled the User Specific Time Zone setting.
Select the time zone in which your legacy 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 viewers’ dashboard settings.
- 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
A legacy dashboard tile can be created by linking to a saved Look (Look-linked), by specifying text, or by specifying a query directly. In the folders, you can select one or more dashboards and convert all tiles that are based on saved Looks to query tiles.
If your legacy 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 legacy 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 legacy 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 legacy dashboard menu to convert all the dashboard’s Look-linked tiles to query tiles in a single operation.
You can also convert multiple legacy dashboards at once, as described on the Organizing and managing access to content documentation page.
As part of this process, you can choose to move the source Looks to the trash once they are converted to query tiles. This helps avoid the potential clutter of having many saved Looks that were only needed for that dashboard. This option is only shown if your dashboard includes Looks that:
- Are not used in another dashboard.
- Have not been marked as a favorite.
- Have not been scheduled for delivery.
- Have not been made public.
You can see which Looks will be deleted before deciding, as shown in the procedure below.
To convert all of a legacy dashboard’s Look-linked tiles to query tiles:
- Make sure the legacy dashboard is in edit mode, then select Convert Looks to Tiles from the dashboard gear menu.
- In the Convert window, hover over the link to see the list of Looks that have been identified for deletion. The link is shown only if Looker has found Looks that can be deleted safely — that is, none of the Looks in the dashboards are scheduled for data delivery, used in other dashboards, favorited, or have been made public. If you don’t see the link, that means that Looker hasn’t identified any Looks that can be deleted safely.
- The option to move the source Looks to the trash once they are converted to query tiles appears only if Looker has identified Looks that can be deleted safely. If you want to prevent Looker from deleting the Looks, uncheck the box. If the box is unchecked, Looker will keep all the Looks, but you can later delete them manually if you want to clean up your folder.
- Click Convert to convert all the of dashboard’s Look-linked tiles to query tiles.
Looker then replaces each of the legacy dashboard’s Look-linked tiles with a new query tile that uses the same query and visualization settings as the original Look.
If you chose the option to move the source Looks to the trash once they are converted to query tiles, the converted Looks that are listed in the window will no longer be seen in folders. If you later realize that you need a deleted Look, your Looker admin might be able to recover it for you, as long as your Looker admin team has not already emptied Looker’s trash as part of their maintenance process.
Deleting a legacy dashboard
You can delete a legacy dashboard in one of two ways:
- You can delete multiple dashboards at a time from folders, as described on the Organizing and managing access to content documentation page.
- You can delete a single legacy dashboard directly from the dashboard’s gear menu at the upper right of the screen:
The confirmation window may show an option to move the source Looks to the trash once they are converted to query tiles:
When checked, this option will delete any Looks associated with the dashboard you’re deleting. However, Looker will only do so if the Looks are not scheduled for data delivery, not used in other dashboards, not favorited, and have not been made public. You can hover over the link at the bottom of the confirmation window to see the list of Looks that have been identified for deletion.
If you don’t see an option to move the source Looks to the trash once they are converted to query tiles, it’s because Looker hasn’t identified any Looks that can be deleted safely.
Click OK in the confirmation window to delete the dashboard.
If you accidentally delete a dashboard, your Looker admin might be able to recover it for you. Looker stores deleted content in the trash until your Looker admin team empties the trash as part of their maintenance process.