Looker (original) adds Google Group mirroring and an Other category for visualizations

Looker (original) now supports Google Group mirroring, which lets administrators automatically assign Looker roles and groups that are based on Google Groups membership. The updated Google Authentication admin page also adds advanced role management and programmatic configuration through the Looker API.

Looker visualizations now support grouping rows or pivot columns that are outside of row or column limits into a consolidated "Other" category. When you use Limit Displayed Rows or Limit Displayed Pivot Columns, select Group remaining rows into 'Other' or Group remaining pivots into 'Other' to display the top N rows or pivot columns alongside an aggregated "Other" category. You can also customize the category label and, for some chart types, choose a custom color.

Row grouping is supported on table, bar, column, line, area, scatterplot, pie, and donut multiples visualizations. Pivot grouping is supported on table, bar, column, line, area, and scatterplot visualizations.

When you download Looks, Explores, or dashboard tiles, you can include filter and query information in the downloaded file. PNG images can include a filter banner, and Excel workbooks can include query metadata and filter sheets. Dashboard editors can set the default Excel metadata option for tile downloads in the dashboard settings. When you download a tabbed dashboard as a PDF, you can choose whether all dashboard filters appear at the top of the PDF or each tab's active filters appear under that tab's header.

Looker administrators can now opt in to the official Google BigQuery JDBC driver (Preview) on BigQuery connections. The new driver is built and supported by Google and will replace the current Looker legacy driver in a future release.

To try the driver, perform the following steps:

1. Open the Connections admin page by selecting Admin > Database > Connections.
2. Click the Edit button for a BigQuery connection. (See Editing connections for more information.)
3. Turn off the Use latest stable driver toggle on the connection.
4. From the Driver Version drop-down menu, choose one of the BigQuery Official [Preview] driver options.
5. Select Test to check the connection, and then select Update Connection.

Note the following details:

• Existing connections continue to use the current driver unless an administrator opts in.
• You can switch back at any time by choosing the previous driver version.

If you encounter an issue during the Preview of Looker support of the official BigQuery driver, report it to cloud-looker-dialects@google.com.

The Sankey chart type is now generally available. Sankey charts visualize the flow and distribution of data between categories, stages, or states. Sankey charts are especially useful for analyzing multi-step pathways, such as customer journeys, website navigation flows, or resource allocations across different systems. Learn more about using Sankey charts in Looker.