Viewing and interacting with Explores in the new Explore experience

This page guides you through the components of the new Explore experience and describes how to view and interact with Explore queries in the new experience. Read the following sections to learn about these concepts:

You can view and interact with Explores in the new Explore experience as much as you want without impacting other Looker users. Visit the Creating and editing Explores in the new Explore experience to learn more about creating or editing an Explore query in the new Explore experience.

Required roles

To view and interact with Explores you must have the User Looker role or another role that contains the explore permission.

Finding Explores in Looker

You can find prebuilt Explore queries in Looker in several ways, including the following:

You can also use the Explore section in the main navigation panel to open a blank Explore.

Accessing the new Explore experience

To access the new Explore experience, the New Looker Explore Experience preview feature must be enabled for your instance. If you are not a Looker admin, ask an admin to enable the feature.

From an Explore page, click Try the new Explore to turn on the new Explore experience for all Explores that you interact with. To switch back to the classic experience, click Switch to classic Explore.

The new Explore experience consists of the following elements:

  1. The Filter pane: Displays the filters that are applied to Explores, as well as filter options. Learn more about applying filters in the new Explore experience.
  2. The Visualization pane: Displays the results of the Explore query visualized in a chart.
  3. The Data pane: Displays the results of the Explore query in a data table, or the underlying SQL query when the SQL Query button is clicked.
  4. The Drag indicator: Lets you resize the height of the Visualization pane and the Data pane, and the width of the Configure panel when you click and hold your cursor on the Drag indicator.
  5. The data column More menu: Displays the options for editing the Explore query around a specific column. Learn more about using the data column More menu to edit Explore queries in the new Explore experience.
  6. The Sort Order indicator: Indicates the field or fields, the direction (ascending or descending), and the order, that an Explore query is sorted by. Learn more about sorting queries in the new Explore experience.
  7. The Data Table button: Lets you display or hide the Data panel.
  8. The Results button: When clicked, displays the Explore results in a data table.
  9. The SQL Query button: When clicked, displays the SQL query that's generated to fetch the Explore results instead of the results data table.
  10. The Totals switch: When enabled, displays the row or column totals in the Explore results. Learn more about totals in the new Explore experience.
  11. The Limit field: Lets you input a number to limit the displayed results. Learn more about limiting data in the new Explore experience.
  12. The Switch to classic Explore button: When clicked, switches the Explore view to the classic Explore experience.
  13. The Quick Start button: Opens the Quick Start panel that displays quick start analyses, when available. Learn more about using Quick Start analyses in the new Explore experience.
  14. The Insight Assistant button: Opens the Insight Assistant panel that lets you ask questions to discover insights and answers using data from the Explore. Learn more about using the Insight Assistant in Explores.
  15. The Change chart button: Opens the All chart types menu, which let you choose how to visualize the Explore data. You can also click Auto visualize to let Looker choose the best chart option for displaying the results. Learn more about selecting an effective data visualization and editing visualizations in the new Explore experience.
  16. The Run button: Runs the query with the fields that are selected from the Configure panel. When a query is running, the button becomes the Stop button. You can stop a query when it is running by clicking the Stop button.
  17. The Save or share button: Opens a menu that displays the options to save, download, or share an Explore query. Learn more about saving or sharing Explores in the new Explore experience.
  18. The More options menu: Displays more options, including Clear cache and refresh when permissions allow. Learn more about refreshing data.
  19. The Configure panel: Displays the All Fields, Fields in use, and visualization Style tabs, which let you select fields to create and edit the Explore results and the Explore visualization. Learn more about creating and editing Explores in the new Explore experience and about editing visualizations in the new Explore experience.
  20. The name of the Explore. Click the Explore Summary button to view a description of the Explore that was either added by a developer, or generated by Gemini in Looker.
  21. The Clear all and Clear fields keep filters options: When clicked, Clear all clears all of the Explore fields, and Clear fields keep filters clears the Explore fields but keeps any filters that are applied.
  22. The Merge queries (join data) button: Opens the Join data page. Learn more about joining data in the new Explore experience.
  23. The Explore summary: Displays the total number of fields in an Explore (including custom fields and table calculations when permissions allow), and the Go to LookML link. The Go to LookML link directs users to the explore definition in its LookML project. This link is visible only to users with the see_lookml permission.
  24. The Configure button: Lets you display or hide the Configure panel. Alternatively, click the Close button to close the Configure panel.
  25. The Filter button: Lets you display or hide the Filter pane.
  26. The Visualization button: Lets you display or hide the Visualization pane.
  27. The Data Table button: Lets you display or hide the Data pane.
  28. The Feedback button: Lets you submit feedback that you have about the new Explore experience.
  29. The Move Left or Move Right button: Lets you change the docking orientation of the Configure panel on the Explore page. The button label is Move Left when the Configure panel is docked on the right and Move Right when the Configure panel is docked on the left.

Using the Save or share menu

The Save or share menu in the new Explore experience lets users save and share an Explore in several ways, depending on their permissions in Looker. Depending on user permissions and instance integrations, the options can include the following:

  • Save to new dashboard: Save an Explore as a query tile to a new dashboard.
  • Save to existing dashboard: Save an Explore as a query tile to an existing dashboard.
  • Save as a Look: Save an Explore as a Look.
  • Download: Select this option to download the contents of an Explore in one of several format options.
  • Share URLs: Select this option to open the Share URLs menu to copy the short or expanded Explore URL to your clipboard.

Drilling into the data

Every query result is the starting point for another query. Selecting any data point in a result will drill down, creating another query that's refined by the data point that you selected. For example, you might have an Explore that displays flight information, in this case Flight Count grouped by Origin City. In this example, the selected origin city, Chicago, has 4,719,108 flights. Clicking the count value of 4,719,108 opens a drill window that displays a data table that contains details about those specific flight records.

Drilling deeper ...

The drill window displays all the flights that had Chicago as a point of origin. From the drill window, you can do the following:

  • Click Explore to open an Explore that uses the fields in the drill window as a starting point.
  • Click Download to download the data using the same options as shown on the Downloading content documentation page.
  • Select a value from the drill window data table to keep drilling in the drill window.

Looker query results are linked so that you can keep drilling, exploring, and arriving at new insights.

Drilling into dashboards

You can also drill into data from dashboards. For example, suppose you have a dashboard called Business Overview that has a filter on the field State for all dashboard tiles. In this example Explore, which is a query tile on the dashboard, the Business Overview dashboard appears as an option in the Dashboards section of the drill menu for the State field, since the State field is used as a filter on that dashboard:

A single dashboard is listed in the Dashboards section of the drill menu for the State field.

When you click the name of the dashboard in the drill menu's Dashboards section, Looker takes you to the Business Overview dashboard, with the filter for the dashboard set to the value for the State field that you selected in the Explore.

The presence of links or data actions is indicated by an ellipsis (…) following the value in an Explore column. You can access links and action options by clicking the ellipsis (...) to open the drill menu.

Your Looker developers may have added links to your data. The option to open the link will be available in the Links section of the drill menu when you click a value in a data table column.

For example, if a developer adds a link to an external resource to the Percent Flights Delayed field, Looker provides an option to navigate to that resource. You can select this option in the Links section of the drill menu when you select a value for State from the Percent Flights Delayed column in a data table.

Drill menu options for the 100.00% = 2 Delays / 2 total Percent Flights Delayed value include a link to open a resource called delay risk score details in a new browser tab in the Links section.

Using data actions

Your Looker developers may have added data actions to the dimensions or measures in your data. With data actions, you can perform tasks with other tools directly from Looker, such as sending an email or setting values in other applications. These data actions appear in the drill menu in the Actions section.

Drill menu options for the 100.00% = 2 Delays / 2 total value include an option to Send Customer Delay Notification Email in the Actions section.

In this example, the Percent Flights Delayed field has a link to email a delay notification to customers. When the user clicks a column value and chooses the Send Customer Delay Notification Email action, the user will be taken to an email service to send a delay notification to impacted customers.

Now that you know how powerful the new Explore experience is for learning more about data and discovering insights through iterative searches, you might want to learn how to do the following: