Looker gives you the option of having your instance hosted by Looker or of hosting the instance yourself. During the setup process, a Looker Sales Engineer or Professional Services consultant will help you get set up.
There are also many settings that help you administer your Looker instance. These settings include options to customize Looker for your organization, configure authentication for users and groups, control user and group access to data and Looker features, and monitor Looker usage and health.
This page outlines the documentation on setting up and administering Looker.
Looker-hosted instances
The following pages help you install Looker-hosted instances:
- Looker-hosted installation steps — View a list of Looker-hosted installation steps and resources for each step.
- Supported browsers — View a list of the browsers that Looker supports.
- Getting started with users — Configure sign-in options for your users.
Customer-hosted instances
The following pages help you install customer-hosted instances:
- Customer-hosted installation steps — View a list of customer-hosted installation steps and resources for each step.
- Managing a customer-hosted deployment — View a list of resources about managing your own Looker instance.
- Supported browsers — View a list of the browsers that Looker supports.
- Getting started with users — Configure sign-in options for your users.
Setting up a database connection
The following pages help you understand how to connect to a database:
- Enabling secure database access — Take the first step in connecting a database: Choose an option to secure data between Looker and your database.
- Database configuration instructions — View links for database-specific instructions for configuring your database to work with Looker.
- Connecting Looker to your database — Learn how to connect your database and Looker.
- Testing database connectivity — Test and troubleshoot the connection to your database.
Administrative tutorials
The following pages teach you about a variety of administrative subjects:
- Access control and permission management — Learn how to configure roles, permission sets, and model sets to manage user and group access to your data and to Looker features.
- Designing and configuring a system of access levels — Learn about different ways you can configure Looker to manage user and group access to saved Looks and dashboards.
- Clustering Looker — Learn how to create a clustered Looker configuration.
- Creating connections — Get an overview of the process to connect Looker to your database.
- Creating Looker usage and metadata reports with i__looker — Learn how to create reports from Looker’s internal database, called
i__looker, to view information and history about your Looker instance. - Creating Looker usage reports with System Activity Explores — Learn how to use Looker’s new System Activity reports to view information and history about your Looker instance.
- Making announcements to your users — Learn how to configure Looker’s sidebar to create personalized messages to your users on your homepage.
- Managing business user features — Learn about administrative settings that affect options for viewing, retrieving, and sharing data.
- Deleting personal user information — Learn how to remove all of a disabled or deleted user’s personal information from their Looker account.
- Using time zone settings — Learn about Looker’s various time zone settings and how they interact to convert time-based data.
- Supported user-interface languages — Learn about managing user-interface localization, letting you display data and Looker menus in multiple international languages.
- Localizing number formatting — Learn about managing localized number formatting in Looker.
Administrative panels
The following pages describe Looker’s administration functions:
- General pages — View a list of pages about setting system-wide options, enabling or disabling beta and legacy features, creating a custom help page for your users, setting a default homepage for your instance or for a user or group, and customizing the welcome emails new users receive.
- System Activity pages — View information about the System Activity dashboards, which show user activity, content activity, and performance data for your Looker instance.
- Users pages — View a list of pages about configuring users, groups, roles, and user attributes; managing user and group access to saved content; and viewing and resetting locked user accounts.
- Database pages — View a list of pages about configured database connections, database query history, persistent derived tables, and datagroups.
- Alerts & Schedules pages — View a list of pages about managing user alerts and schedules, viewing alert and schedule histories, specifying an emailed data policy, and monitoring data sent to external email addresses.
- Platform pages — View a list of pages about setting system-wide options for integrated services, Looker’s API, embedded content, email deliveries, and custom visualization types.
- Authentication pages — View a list of pages about configuring authentication methods — including passwords, two-factor authentication, Google OAuth, LDAP, SAML, and OpenID Connect — and configuring options for user to stay logged in to Looker.
- Server pages — View a list of pages about configuring Looker backups, configuring a list of IP addresses that can access your instance, viewing the internal Looker log, and viewing Looker usage information.