Conversational Analytics in Looker

Conversational Analytics is a chat with your data feature powered by Gemini for Google Cloud. Conversational Analytics empowers users with no expertise in business intelligence to ask data-related questions in regular, natural (conversational) language, and go beyond static dashboards. Conversational Analytics is available in Looker (Google Cloud core) and Looker (original) instances.

Learn how and when Gemini for Google Cloud uses your data.

Supported conversation types

The following conversation types are supported for using Conversational Analytics in Looker:

Before you begin

To use Conversational Analytics within a Looker instance, you and your Looker instance must meet the following requirements:

  1. A Looker admin must enable Gemini in Looker for the Looker instance. To learn more about how to manage Gemini in Looker enablement, see the documentation for Looker (original) or for Looker (Google Cloud core).
    • The Trusted Tester capabilities must be enabled to use Conversational Analytics during the preview period.
    • We recommend that all Looker instances, but especially those for customers participating in Looker's Extended support release program, update to Looker 25.6 or later to use Conversational Analytics.
  2. A Looker admin must grant you a role that contains the gemini_in_looker permission in the Looker instance. You must also have a role that contains the access_data permission for the model that you are querying.
  3. To manage or use data agents for chatting with Looker Explores, your Looker instance should be running 25.18 or later. A Looker admin must grant you additional permissions.

For known limitations and a list of key features, see the Conversational Analytics landing page.

You can access Conversational Analytics in Looker in the following ways:

Start a conversation with a data agent or Explore

Sets of questions that you ask about a dataset are organized by conversation. Splitting work into multiple conversations can be useful for organizing lines of inquiry. To create a new conversation, follow these steps:

  1. Start a new conversation.

  2. Choose one of the following options to start your conversation:

    • Explores: To start a conversation based on a Looker Explore, select the Explore panel. The project name is listed beside the Explore name.

    • Agents: Data agents are customized with context and instructions that are specific to your data. To start a conversation with an existing data agent, select the Agents tab, and then select a data agent. To create a new data agent, select New agent.

  3. By default the conversation is called "Untitled." After you ask your first question in the conversation, Conversational Analytics automatically generates a conversation title that is based on your question and response. To change the generated name, click the title at the top of the conversation page and enter a new conversation name. To save your changes, click elsewhere on the page, or press return (Mac) or Enter (PC).

Once you have created a conversation, you can ask questions about the data in the Ask a question field within the conversation.

Start a conversation from a Looker Explore

You can also start a conversation directly with a Looker Explore. To start a conversation, navigate to the Explore and select Start a conversation.

Ask questions

You can ask questions to get insights from your data. When you're beginning a new conversation, Conversational Analytics suggests some starting questions to ask. The questions don't need to be in a specific format or use a specific syntax. However, they do need to relate to the Explore that you've selected. Conversational Analytics may rephrase your question after you've written a query, and the rephrased question will be displayed in the conversation window following your original question. For example, Conversational Analytics might rephrase the question "What is the mean of user ages?" to "What is the average user age?"

Conversational Analytics will take previous questions and answers into account as you continue the conversation. You can take previous answers and build on them by further refining results or changing the visualization type.

For more guidance on creating questions, see Limitations on questions.

Conversation metadata

When you converse with an Explore or a data agent, the collapsible Data panel shows the name of the Looker Explore that is being used by the conversation. The Data panel also provides the following options:

  • View fields: When chatting with an Explore, you can view the Explore in a new browser window by clicking View fields.
  • Edit agent: When chatting with a data agent, you can edit the details about the data agent by clicking Edit agent.
  • New conversation: Start a new conversation with the Looker Explore that the current conversation is using.

Manage queries within a conversation

When you converse with data, you can manage the conversation by stopping an active query response while it is running or by deleting the most recent question and its response.

Stop a query response

To stop running a query after you've sent a message, click Stop response. Conversational Analytics stops running the query and displays the following message: The query was cancelled.

Delete the most recent question

To delete the most recent question and its response, follow these steps:

  1. Hold your cursor over the most recent question, and then click Delete message.
  2. In the Permanently delete message? dialog, click Delete to permanently delete the question and its response.

Understand query results and calculations

When you ask questions about your data in Conversational Analytics, the response might include a visualization, a data table, or other details, depending on your specific query and the connected data. To open the query results as an Explore, click Open in Explore within the query results.

In addition to this query response, Conversational Analytics provides the following options for understanding query results and calculations:

Determine how an answer was calculated

To see how Conversational Analytics arrived at an answer or created a visualization, click How was this calculated? within the query results.

When you click How was this calculated?, Conversational Analytics displays a Text section. The Text section provides a plain text explanation of the steps that were taken by Conversational Analytics to arrive at the given answer. This explanation includes the raw field names that were used, the calculations that were done, the filters that were applied, the sort order, and other details.

Get additional insights

When Conversational Analytics is able to provide additional data insights about a response, an Insights keyboard_arrow_down button will appear. Click Insights keyboard_arrow_down to see additional information about your query. Insights only analyzes the data that was returned by your prompt and won't run additional queries to fetch additional data. Insights can be a useful source for ideas for follow-up questions to continue the conversation.

The following is an example of some insights that might be returned by the prompt "How many users are in each state?":

  • A general summary of high and low data volume areas. For example:
    • "California, Texas, and Ohio are key states for business operations based on the data provided."
    • "England and specific regions in China, namely Anhui and Guangdong, show significant business activity."
    • "Some states, including Mie, Akita, and Iwate, have minimal presence based on the data."
  • An assessment of the variability of the dataset. For example, "The data indicates varying operational scales across different locations."

Manage conversations

Conversations are listed by title in the Recent section. You can change the names of conversations, delete conversations, or restore them from the trash folder.

Delete a conversation

To move a conversation to the trash, open the conversation and click Move to trash.

Restore or permanently delete a conversation

To restore or permanently delete a conversation from the trash, follow these steps:

  1. Within Conversational Analytics, select Trash in the left navigation panel to view the list of conversations that have been moved to the trash.
  2. In the Trash section, click the name of the conversation that you want to restore or permanently delete.
  3. In the Are you sure? dialog, select one of the following options:
    • Cancel: Cancels the action.
    • Restore: Restores the conversation. The conversation can be accessed from the Recent section of the left navigation menu within Conversational Analytics.
    • Delete forever: Permanently deletes the conversation.

Additional resources