Set up and administer Looker

Looker customers can opt to have Looker host their instance or to self-host an on-premises Looker deployment. Throughout our documentation, we refer to instances that are hosted by Looker as "Looker-hosted" and to instances that are hosted on-premises as "customer-hosted" or "self-hosted."

This page outlines the documentation on setting up and administering the Looker application.

Looker-hosted instances

The following pages describe how to install and configure Looker-hosted instances:

Customer-hosted instances

The following pages describe how to install, configure, and maintain customer-hosted instances:

Setting up a database connection

The following pages help you understand how to connect to a database:

Administrative tutorials

The following pages describe a variety of topics relating to the administration of a Looker instance:

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.

Security

The following page helps you understand Looker's security practices: