Admin settings - Self-service Explores

With the Self-service Explores feature, your Looker users can upload CSV, XLS, and XLSX files to Looker and then query and visualize the data in a Looker Explore without needing to configure a LookML model or set up Git version control.

Looker admins can select the Self-service Explores option from the Looker Admin menu to configure the Self-service Explores feature and view data uploads on the instance.

Note: The Self-service Explores feature is in preview with limited support. We encourage you to share your feedback to help us improve. To report bugs or issues, send an email to [e-mail] with the following details:

• A clear description of the problem and the expected behavior
• Steps to reproduce the issue
• Any additional relevant details

Before you begin

To use self-service Explores, your Looker instance must meet the following requirements:

• Running Looker 25.18 or later.
• Has a connection to a BigQuery database, and the connection must be enabled for persistent derived tables (PDTs).
  • See the Google BigQuery documentation page for information about setting up a BigQuery connection on your Looker instance.
  • To verify that PDTs are enabled on the BigQuery connection, open the Looker Connections page, click the Edit button for the BigQuery connection, click to open the Optional Settings tab, and then verify that the Enable PDTs toggle is turned on.
• For any user who will be creating self-service Explores, their Looker user account must have the upload_data permission, which allows a user to upload CSV files to your instance.

Enabling self-service Explores

Warning: Be mindful of changing these settings if your instance has existing self-service Explores:

• If you disable the Data file uploads toggle, your users will no longer be able to access existing self-service Explores from the Explore menu, and any Looks or dashboards that rely on the data may be affected.
• If you change the BigQuery connection, any existing self-service Explores on your instance can be affected, along with any Looks or dashboards that rely on their data.

Before your users can create self-service Explores, a Looker admin must configure the feature by performing the following steps:

1. From the General section of the Looker Admin menu, select the Self-service Explores admin page.
2. On the Self-service Explores admin page, enable the Allow data uploads toggle if it isn't already enabled.
3. From the Default BigQuery connection drop-down menu, select the BigQuery connection to use for storing the data for self-service Explores. Looker will save the data to this BigQuery database for the self-service Explores on your instance.
4. Click Save.

Viewing the data uploads on your Looker instance

If self-service Explores are enabled on your instance, a Looker admin can use the Data uploads table on the Self-service Explores admin page to view the data that your users have uploaded on the instance.

The Data uploads table shows the following information about the data uploads on your instance:

• The name of the self-service Explore
• The owner of the data upload
• The date that the data was uploaded
• A Delete button that allows Looker admins to delete the file upload and its associated self-service Explore

Removing a data upload

The owner of a data upload can remove their upload from the Edit Self-service Explore page. In addition, a Looker admin can remove a data upload from the Self-service Explores admin page by following these steps:

1. From the General section of the Looker Admin menu, select the Self-service Explores admin page.
2. In the Data uploads table, click the Delete button for the data upload that you want to remove.
3. Click Delete in the confirmation dialog.