How to Create a Summary Report in Looker

Creating a summary report is one of the most common tasks in data analysis, but getting it right in a powerful tool like Looker requires a thoughtful approach. A good summary report cuts through the noise to deliver the most important numbers quickly and clearly. This article will walk you through the entire process, from planning your report to building and automating it within Looker.

What Exactly Is a Summary Report?

A summary report provides a high-level, condensed view of a specific area of your business over a set period. It isn't meant for deep, granular exploration, its job is to give key stakeholders a quick, scannable snapshot of performance. Instead of showing you every single sale, it shows you the total sales from yesterday. Instead of listing every website visitor, it shows you the total sessions and conversion rate for last week.

Think of it as the executive summary of your data. Common examples include:

A daily sales report showing total revenue, orders, and average order value.
A weekly marketing overview highlighting ad spend, impressions, clicks, and conversions.
A monthly support ticket summary displaying new tickets, tickets solved, and average response time.

The goal is to answer the most pressing questions at a glance, so your team can make informed decisions without getting lost in endless rows of data.

Before You Build: Planning Your Summary Report

Jumping directly into Looker without a plan is a recipe for a confusing and ineffective report. Taking a few minutes to plan will save you hours of rebuilding and ensure your final product is genuinely useful. Think of it as creating a recipe before you start cooking.

Step 1: Define Your Goal and Audience

First, ask yourself two simple questions:

Who is this report for? A report for your CEO will look very different from one for your social media manager. The CEO probably cares about top-line revenue and profit margins, while the social media manager needs to see engagement metrics by platform. Knowing your audience dictates the level of detail and the specific metrics you'll include.
What key question does this report answer? Every good report answers a specific business question. Frame it clearly. For example, "How did our recent email campaign perform against its goals?" or "What were our top-selling products last month?" A single, focused goal prevents you from jamming too much unrelated information into one report.

Step 2: Identify Your Key Metrics (Measures)

Once you know your goal, identify the 3-5 metrics that best answer your core question. In Looker terminology, these are often called Measures. They are the numerical values you want to analyze.

For a weekly sales summary, your key metrics might be:

Total Revenue
Number of Orders
Average Order Value (AOV)
New Customers Acquired

Resist the urge to include every metric available. The entire point of a summary report is to highlight what's most important. Too many metrics will dilute the message and make the report harder to read.

Step 3: Choose Your Dimensions

Dimensions are the attributes you use to group or categorize your metrics. They provide context. For example, you can view Total Revenue (your measure) by Product Category (your dimension).

For most summary reports, the primary dimension is time-based. Examples include:

Date: To see performance day-by-day.
Week: For a week-over-week summary.
Month: For a month-over-month overview.

You might add one other dimension for context, such as Region, Campaign Name, or Traffic Source, but keep it minimal. The more dimensions you add, the less of a "summary" it becomes.

Creating the Summary Report in Looker: A Step-by-Step Guide

With your plan in hand, you’re ready to build. In Looker, reports and charts are created from "Explores," which are curated starting points for data analysis set up by your development team.

1. Start a New Exploration

Navigate to the Explore section in Looker and choose the one that contains the data you need. For a sales report, this might be named "Orders" or "Sales." For website analytics, it could be "Sessions." This is your canvas.

2. Select Your Dimensions and Measures

On the left-hand panel, you’ll see a list of available dimensions and measures.

Click on the dimension(s) you decided on in your planning phase. For a daily summary, you might select "Created Date" from an "Orders" group.
Next, click the measure(s) you need. You might choose "Total Sale Price" and "Order Count" from a "Measures" group.

As you click on fields, Looker will automatically start building a query. Click the Run button in the top right to see the results in a data table.

Example: You select "Created Date," "Total Sale Price," and "Order Count." You now have a table showing the total sales and number of orders for each day.

3. Filter for Relevant Data

A summary report is almost always tied to a specific time frame. Without a date filter, you'll be looking at all of your historical data, which isn't very useful for a quick update.

Locate the Filters section above your results.
Find the dimension you want to filter by (e.g., "Created Date"). Looker may have already added it if it was in your field selection. If not, find it in the field list, hover over it, and click the "Filter_by_field" button.
Set the filter conditions. For a summary of the past week, you could choose "is in the past 7 complete days." For yesterday's numbers, select "is yesterday."

Run the query again to apply the filter. Your data table should now be limited to only the time frame you care about.

4. Choose the Right Visualization

While a simple table is often sufficient for a summary, visualizations can make data easier to digest. Switch from the "Data" tab to the "Visualization" tab.

Good visualization types for summary reports include:

Single Value: Perfect for displaying one single, critical KPI like "Total Revenue This Month." This is great for dashboard headers.
Table: The classic choice for a clean, organized list of metrics and dimensions. Use the gear icon to reorder columns, format numbers (like currency), and add text alignment.
Bar Chart: Excellent for comparing metrics across a dimension, such as sales by product category or marketing channel.
Line Chart: Ideal for showing a trend over time, like your daily sales over a 30-day period.

After selecting a type, use the Edit menu to customize labels, colors, and axes to make your chart clear and professional.

Advanced Tips for Powerful Summaries

Once you've mastered the basics, a few extra techniques can make your summary reports even more insightful.

Pivoting Data for Cleaner Comparisons

Sometimes you want to compare categories side-by-side. The Pivot function is perfect for this. For instance, instead of a long list showing daily sales for three different regions, you can pivot by "Region."

This transforms your table from:

To a much clearer format:

Date	USA	Canada
Jan 1	$1000	$500
Jan 2	$1200	$600

To do this, find the dimension you want to use for columns (like Region) and click the "Pivot" icon next to it.

Using Table Calculations for Quick Metrics

Need to calculate a new metric on the fly without changing the underlying code (LookML)? Table Calculations are your best friend. They can add columns directly to your results table.

Create one by clicking Add calculation in the data bar.

Here are two useful examples:

Percent of Total: To see what percentage of total revenue each product category represents.

${orders.total_sale_price} / sum(${orders.total_sale_price}) * 100

Period-over-Period Change: To see the daily change in sales.

${orders.total_sale_price} / offset(${orders.total_sale_price}, -1) - 1

Choose the correct numeric format (like Percent) after creating the calculation.

Saving and Scheduling Your Report

The true power of a summary report comes from automation. Once you're happy with your report, don't just leave it as an unsaved Explore.

Save it as a Look: Click the gear icon in the top right and select "Save as a Look." Give it a clear, descriptive name (e.g., "Weekly Sales Summary By Region") and save it to a folder.
Schedule It: Once saved, you can schedule the Look for delivery. From the folder, click the schedule icon next to your Look. You can set it to be sent to your team's email addresses or a Slack channel every morning at 9 AM, every Monday, or on the first of the month. This automation ensures everyone gets the right data, at the right time, without anyone having to lift a finger.

Final Thoughts

Creating an effective summary report in Looker is about marrying a clear plan with the right technical steps. By defining your goals, selecting key metrics and dimensions, and thoughtfully choosing your visualizations, you can build reports that provide immediate value and drive better-informed decisions across your organization.

Looker is incredibly powerful, but its complexity and reliance on LookML can create a steep learning curve. At Graphed, we've designed a way for you to bypass the cumbersome setup and manual report building altogether. We created Graphed to connect directly to your data sources and allow you to create reports using simple, natural language. Instead of navigating Explores and learning table calculations, you can just ask, "Show me a summary of sales from yesterday, split by product category," and get a live, automated dashboard in seconds.