Looker 23 changelog

23.6

changed The SQL generator is now fixed and adds a ${TABLE} only when the reference is not present anywhere.

changed References to legacy dashboards have been removed in the Admin > Themes page.

changed The Legacy Dashboards Button Colors section has been removed from the Admin > Themes page because legacy dashboards are removed in this release.

changed Code for legacy dashboards has been removed because legacy dashboards are fully deprecated and removed in this release. Now all legacy dashboards are shown in the new dashboard viewer.

changed The Can Access Legacy Dashboards legacy flag has been removed because legacy dashboards are fully deprecated and removed in this release. Now all legacy dashboards are shown in the new dashboard viewer.

changed You can no longer upgrade dashboards from the Folders page because legacy dashboards have been deprecated.

changed The Liquid parameter tag and _parameter_value variables now return a date string rather than date SQL in non-SQL contexts (for example, the html and link LookML parameters) for date parameters

changed The LookML string type is now referenced correctly and no number formatting will occur.

changed The New LookML Runtime will only return Liquid variable not found references on parameter tags if the field reference refers to a field that is in the scope of the current Explore being validated.

changed The Liquid date filter %Y is now fixed return YYYY instead of YYYY-MM-DD with New LookML Runtime.

added Looker now supports Incremental PDTs for Databricks connections when using Databricks version 12.1 or later.

added Customers can now set the position of popup dialogs in an embedded environment. Customers must make changes to their embedded applications to take advantage of this feature. Convenient methods have been added to the Embed SDK, and an updated Embed SDK has been published. The Embed SDK repository has also been updated to provide examples of using this feature with the Embed Javascript (windows postMessage) API.

added Content thumbnails now support dark theme.

fixed An issue has been fixed where having no results in a pivot led to an error when a PDF was downloaded.

fixed The left sidebar content is no longer selectable when the sidebar is closed.

fixed If a browser does not support full screen displays, a full screen menu item is not displayed. By default, iframes do not support full screen. This behavior can be overridden by adding allow=fullscreen to the iframe element. The Embed SDK has been updated to support this.

fixed When all data was hidden with the Hide No's from Vis option, the PDF renderer failed and returned an error. This behavior has been fixed. A successful PDF is created with a "No Results" message.

fixed When trend lines were used in a scatter plot visualization, PDF rendering was causing an error. This issue has been resolved.

fixed An issue has been fixed that caused custom visualizations to become blank when they were moved during dashboard edits. Custom visualization tiles no longer lose content when you move a tile during a dashboard edit.

fixed Donut multiples now render custom HTML labels in the legend and tooltip.

fixed The custom fields in filter expressions are now referenced correctly instead of returning "inaccessible field name" errors.

fixed The New LookML Runtime now shows the correct parameter localization translation.

fixed The average_distinct measure computed through a number type measure in the Snowflake dialect has been fixed and no longer returns a SQL error.

fixed Previously having no results in a pivot led to an error when the Scheduler was used to send a PDF. This issue has been fixed.

fixed The performance of the add filter to dashboard modal has been improved. A calculation that took ~4s in earlier Looker versions now takes ~4ms (1,000 times faster).

fixed The dashboards with duplicate filters is now fixed to be restored from the trash.

23.4

changed Support for YAML LookML is scheduled to end in the latter part of June 2023. All YAML LookML projects will generate a warning to this effect upon project validation, and all instances of YAML LookML in the Ruby test base must be translated to New LookML by this date.

changed The unversioned Denodo dialect was deprecated in Looker as of January 31, 2023. Any queries run against it will return an error. The updated dialects (Denodo 7 or Denodo 8) remain supported; however, customers running Denodo 7 are encouraged to move to Denodo 8.

changed The New Users Page and New Groups Page Labs features are now generally available. These features add a host of performance improvements to the Users and Groups pages, including pagination options on the Groups page.

changed The download dashboard modal now allows CSV download without Chromium. If the user is an admin, a message about installing Chromium is displayed.

changed The Support Access page in the Admin panel now contains a link to an upgraded support access audit dashboard.

added

The Looker Studio Connector and Connected Sheets features are now available for all Looker-hosted instances, including those Looker-hosted on AWS and Azure. Previously, these features were available only for instances that were Looker-hosted on Google Cloud. A Looker admin must enable these features in the new BI Connectors Admin page.

added The new logging feature allows Looker to collect metrics on the number of NFS read, write, open, and status operations.

added The Performant Field Picker Labs feature offers more refined search options that let users more quickly and efficiently search for fields in large Explore field pickers.

fixed The Query Reload custom filter in the Automagic Heatmap now correctly maintains the rendered data after every refresh instead of getting erased from the query and preventing the visualization from running the query with custom filters, which was the previous behavior.

fixed The grid visualization feature now correctly styles different column types using classic themes and contrasting colors.

fixed The Create Connection and Edit Connection pages have received a design refresh for improved clarity and usability.

fixed Distinct measure types such as count_distinct and sum_distinct now bring through their filter values when referenced in a number type measure.

fixed When New LookML Runtime is enabled, fields of type: parameter are no longer automatically added to the SELECT statement of generated SQL queries. Any references to parameter type fields using Liquid will still apply to SQL queries.

23.2

changed When users are running model-based SQL Runner queries, the new Query Admin page should not show Error fetching requested Queries.

changed Users will no longer be able to view legacy dashboards unless a Looker admin turns on the Can Use Legacy Dashboards legacy flag on the instance. This is in preparation for the complete deprecation of legacy dashboards in Looker 23.6. See the Removing the legacy dashboard experience - a timeline from Looker 21.20 (November 2021) through Looker 23.6 (April 2023) Best Practices page for more information.

changed The Admin > Usage page now uses the new dashboard experience.

changed The Use Legacy Internal Query API legacy feature is now disabled by default. When this feature is disabled, Explores, Looks, and SQL Runner use the upgraded internal API for running queries. Upgrading the internal query API does not affect applications that use the externally available Looker API.

added Error logging for cookieless embedding has been improved. Additional error details are logged if an issue is detected while Looker is processing a cookieless embed request.

added The Presto and Trino dialects now support the approximate parameter.

added A new Center Dashboard Title dashboard control on the Admin > Themes page lets you center dashboard titles on embedded dashboards. You must enable the Expanded Dashboard Theming Labs option to access the Center Dashboard Title dashboard control.

added A new parameter, email_domain_allowlist, has been added to the external settings API. This parameter takes an array of email domains of type: string as input. email_domain_allowlist validates these email domains and saves them to the email domain allowlist if the domains are valid.

added Looker has added merged_queries and join_fields as legal types for extending dashboards.

fixed Dashboard URLs in alerts are now rendered as expected.

fixed An issue has been fixed where a persistent derived table (PDT) that was referenced in the SQL of the query and a dependency of another PDT that was both referenced in that same SQL query and required with a direct join would not build unless the parent PDT was also required to be rebuilt in that query. This occurred only when <New LookML Runtime was enabled.

fixed The gray theme in Grid visualizations now works as expected.

23.0

changed The Legacy Render Card Height legacy feature is now removed.

changed The Use Legacy Internal Query API legacy feature, when enabled, configures Explores, Looks, and SQL Runner to use the legacy API for running queries. When this feature is disabled, Explores, Looks, and SQL Runner use the upgraded internal API for running queries. Upgrading the internal query API does not affect applications that use the externally available Looker API. This legacy feature is enabled by default for Looker 23.0 and will be disabled by default starting in Looker 23.2.

changed The BI Engine Optimizations feature is removed from Labs and is now generally available and enabled for all Looker instances. With BI Engine optimizations, Looker will generate experimental SQL patterns for certain types of LookML queries that use a BigQuery database connection. These SQL changes are designed specifically to execute faster on Google BigQuery's BI Engine. This feature affects the query runtime and has no effect on query results.

changed The Athena JDBC driver is now upgraded from 2.0.27 to 2.0.35.1000.

changed If an API request to create or edit database connections passes a value less than the 90-second minimum for the pool_timeout parameter, an error will be returned to enforce the minimum allowed pool_timeout value.

added The settings API 4.0 endpoint now allows for setting the instance-wide host URL.

added The Looker Studio connector is now generally available on the BI Connectors page in the Admin panel. When enabled, the Looker Studio connector lets you access data from Looker Explores within Looker Studio by adding an Explore as a data source in a Looker Studio report. See the Connect to Looker article in the Looker Studio help center for more information about how to use the Looker connector in Looker Studio.

added The Expanded Dashboard Theming Labs feature, which lets admin users display and hide dashboard header elements on embedded dashboards, is now available.

added Cookieless embed session status events are now published.

added The Hide Dashboard Filters Labs feature lets users hide dashboard filters through the dashboard URL using the new hide_filters URL parameter.

added The Custom urls for alert and schedule emails Labs feature lets you customize the View full dashboard links in emailed alerts and scheduled email deliveries. Both the link URL and the link text can be customized.

added Scatterplot charts now contain an option to customize the value label for data points to any of the dimensions that are present in the visualization.

fixed Explores and Looks now use the correct fonts.

fixed When the liquid_filters parameter is being used and no value is set in the new_lookml_runtime parameter, there is now parity between New LookML Runtime and legacy LookML.

fixed The external group folder in embedded content navigation will now appear as the Group folder name instead of in the external_group_id.

fixed Drill fields are no longer added to links in New LookML Runtime when they are not accessible in the context of the given Explore.

fixed The new_lookml_runtime parameter, when used in conjunction with the sql_always_where and always_filter parameters, now works as expected when there is an always_filter option on a parameter with no form value in the Explore.

fixed Label parameters, Times, and DateTimes formatting for the New LookML Runtime feature now work as expected.