How to Create a Simple Dashboard in Looker
Creating your first dashboard in LookerStudio can feel like a big step, but it's really just about putting a few key pieces together. This guide will walk you through building a simple, effective dashboard from scratch. We'll cover everything from exploring your data to adding interactive filters, giving you a solid foundation to build on.
First, Let's Understand Looker's Building Blocks
Before you start building, it helps to know the three core components you'll be working with: Explores, Looks, and Dashboards. Grasping these concepts will make the whole process much smoother.
What is an "Explore"?
An Explore is your starting point for asking questions of your data. Think of it as a logical grouping of data fields (dimensions and measures) that your data team has prepared for you. It's a curated, business-friendly view of a database table or a set of joined tables. You won't be writing any SQL here. Instead, you'll use the Explore interface to pick and choose the data points you want to analyze, like grabbing ingredients from a pantry to make a specific dish. For example, you might have an "Order Items" Explore that contains everything related to sales, like product names, sales dates, revenue, and customer locations.
What is a "Look"?
A Look is essentially a saved report. When you select some fields in an Explore, run a query, and create a chart or table from the results, you can save that entire configuration - the data and the visualization - as a Look. You can save Looks in folders, share them with colleagues, and, most importantly, add them to dashboards. It's like a framed picture ready to be hung on the wall.
What is a "Dashboard"?
A Dashboard is a collection of saved visualizations (Looks) and query tiles arranged on a single page. It provides a high-level view of your key metrics and allows you to see multiple, related data points in one place. Your dashboard is the gallery wall where you hang all your important data pictures (Looks and tiles) to tell a complete story.
Step-by-Step: Creating Your Simple Looker Dashboard
Ready to build? We'll create a simple sales dashboard to answer the question: "How are our product categories performing this quarter?" Let's break it down into manageable steps.
Step 1: Start with a Question from an Explore
A good dashboard always starts with a business question. Instead of just opening Looker aimlessly, define what you want to understand. For our example, let's explore our product performance.
Navigate to the Explore section from the main Looker menu.
Select an appropriate Explore. For our practice run, we'll pretend there's an Explore named Order Items. Click on it.
You are now in the Explore interface. On the left, you'll see a list of available fields, divided into Dimensions (blue fields used for grouping, like names, dates, and categories) and Measures (orange fields used for aggregating, like counts, sums, and averages).
Step 2: Create Your First Visualization (as a Look)
Now, let's build our first visualization to show sales by product category. This visualization will become the first tile on our dashboard.
Select your fields:
From the list of Dimensions, click on Product Category.
From the list of Measures, click on Total Revenue.
Add a filter: We want to see data for the current quarter.
Find a date dimension, like Order Created Date, and click the Filter button next to it.
In the filter pane at the top, set the filter logic to "is in the past" and select "3 months" or "1 complete quarter."
Run the query: Click the Run button in the top right corner. Looker will process your selections and display the results as a data table.
Choose a visualization: A table is useful, but a chart is often better for a dashboard.
Click on the Visualization tab.
Looker will suggest a chart type, but you can select a different one. A Bar Chart is a great choice for comparing categories. You can use the settings (the gear icon) to customize labels, colors, and axes.
Save it as a Look:
Click the gear icon in the top right corner and choose Save as a Look.
Give your Look a descriptive title, like "Quarterly Revenue by Product Category." Select a folder to save it in.
Click Save.
Great! You've just created your first data asset. Now let's build the dashboard to display it on.
Step 3: Create the Dashboard Canvas
With your first Look ready, you need a new dashboard to place it on.
Navigate to your personal folder or the shared folder where you want the dashboard to live.
Click the New button at the top right of the screen.
Select Dashboard from the dropdown menu.
Give your new dashboard a clear name, like "Quarterly Sales Performance," and click Create Dashboard.
You now have a blank dashboard canvas in "edit mode," waiting for you to add your analytics tiles.
Step 4: Add Your Look to the Dashboard
Let's add the Look we created in Step 2 to our new dashboard.
On your new, empty dashboard, you’ll see options like Add Tile or a plus (+) icon. Click it.
A menu will pop up. Choose Look.
A dialog will open, allowing you to browse through your folders and find the Look you just saved ("Quarterly Revenue by Product Category"). Select it and click Add.
The Look will appear on your dashboard as a "tile." You can click and drag it to move it around, and use the corners to resize it. Position it at the top left, as it's the first thing people will see.
Click Save in the top right of the dashboard to save your layout changes.
Step 5: Add a New Tile Directly from the Dashboard
You don't always have to create a Look first. Sometimes you just want a simple metric or chart directly on your dashboard. This is called creating a "Query Tile," and it's perfect for things like showing a single number, like total revenue for the quarter.
Make sure your dashboard is in Edit Mode (click the "Edit Dashboard" button if it's not).
Click the Add Tile button again.
This time, choose Visualization. This takes you directly to the Explore interface.
Let's build a new query. Select the Order Items Explore again.
Under Measures, click Total Revenue.
Filter the Order Created Date for the last quarter, just like before.
Click Run.
In the Visualization pane, select the Single Value chart type. This will display the total revenue as a large number. You can use the settings to add a title like "Total Quarterly Revenue."
Instead of saving as a Look, simply click Save. Looker will drop this new tile directly onto your dashboard without creating a separate Look in your folders.
Now you have two tiles. You can continue this process, adding charts for sales over time, a table of top-performing products, or a map showing sales by state.
Step 6: Make Your Dashboard Interactive with Filters
Dashboards become truly powerful when users can interact with them. Let's add a date filter so anyone viewing the dashboard can change the time frame on their own.
With your dashboard in Edit Mode, find the "Filters" option in the top toolbar and click Add Filter.
A filter configuration window will appear. First, give the filter a clear Title, like "Date Range".
For Control, choose the type of filter interface you want. "Date Range" is a good option.
The next crucial step is linking the filter to your tiles. In the Tiles to Update tab:
You'll see a list of all the tiles on your dashboard. Select both the "Quarterly Revenue by Product Category" tile and the "Total Quarterly Revenue" tile.
For each tile, you must now choose which field the filter should apply to. In the Field to Filter dropdown, select the date field you used to build a query, which is "Order Created Date" in our example.
In the Default Value tab, you can set a default date range, like "last quarter," so the dashboard always loads with that view.
Click Add. The filter control will appear at the top of your dashboard.
Don't forget to click Save to exit edit mode and lock in your changes.
Now, you or your teammates can click on the date filter, pick a new time frame, and watch all the connected tiles update automatically. This single feature prevents you from having to build dozens of different reports for different date ranges.
Final Thoughts
Putting together a simple dashboard in Looker involves a straightforward cycle: using an Explore to ask a question, saving your answer as a visualization, and arranging those visuals on a dashboard canvas. By adding filters, you transform a static report into an interactive tool that empowers your entire team to find their own answers.
While Looker is a robust platform, its learning curve can be steep for those who aren't data professionals. The process involved in setting up Explores, creating individual Looks, and configuring connections can be time-consuming. We built Graphed because we believe getting insights shouldn't require so many steps. It connects directly to your data sources like Google Analytics or Salesforce and allows you to build real-time dashboards just by describing what you need in plain English, turning hours of manual setup into a conversation that takes seconds.