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Explore Your Data Intuitively with these new Looker Extensions

Looker is a powerful BI tool. We love using it at Data Driven and recommend it to our clients because of its flexible embedding, API capabilities, and scalable architecture. These features enable custom integrations, seamless user experiences, and the ability for your Looker setup to grow alongside your business.

But like any tool, its effectiveness depends on the skill in using it.

In a world where the average department uses about 87 SaaS applications, it's incredibly difficult to become an expert in everything. Even for data-focused professionals, the struggle remains real – finding the data you need in Looker, interpreting complex dashboards, and figuring out how to drive action from your findings can all pose challenges.

So wouldn't it be amazing to have a data-savvy assistant to streamline the process?

That's precisely why Google built these three open-source extensions to leverage the power of GenAI in Looker.

These extensions are designed to facilitate smooth data exploration, reveal hidden patterns, and enable rapid data-driven decisions. Each extension can be installed and used individually or in combination, depending on your specific requirements. In an ideal setup, all three extensions work together to provide a comprehensive analytics solution.

The Explore Assistant generates prompts that guide your data exploration, while natural language capabilities allow for follow-up questions to delve deeper into your analytics.

The Dashboard Summarization extension provides concise overviews of your dashboards, along with recommendations for next steps based on the data's patterns and trends.

Lastly, the Vertex AI Actions extension allows you to take action using prompts to generate personalized messaging for users based on their unique data.

Let’s dive a little deeper..

1. Explore Assistant

Ever stared at a list of Explores, wondering which one holds the answer? Or found yourself within an Explore but unsure which dimensions and filters to use?

Explore Assistant is here for you. You can ask it questions in plain English, like, "What were our regional sales trends last quarter?" Not only will it direct you to the right place, but it will select relevant fields and create a visualization for you.

As opposed to writing the raw SQL itself, the large language model (LLM) is optimized to translate text input into a Looker explore query.

Key Features:

• Natural Language Queries: Ask questions just as you'd explain them to a colleague.

• Guided Exploration: Explore Assistant provides contextual suggestions and prompts, tailored to your organization's data models.

• Question History: Easily revisit past queries and results (stored within your browser).

• Natural Language Refinement: Modify visualizations directly through conversational prompts.

Upcoming Enhancements:

• Historical Question Analysis: Gain insights into popular questions, trends, and areas for further exploration.

• LLM Suggested Questions: Get proactive recommendations for follow-up analysis.

2. Dashboard Summarization

Well-crafted dashboards offer valuable insights, but sometimes it's the story beyond the charts and numbers that holds the key to major breakthroughs.

Dashboard Summary uses GenAI to analyze your data, providing a narrative that may reveal unexpected trends, surprising correlations, and those "aha!" moments that drive new strategies.

For instance, a marketing manager may see a dashboard displaying overall campaign success, but Dashboard Summary could reveal a hidden issue, like a drop in engagement from a specific customer segment. That insight could otherwise have gone unnoticed!

Key Features

• Concise Summaries: Get digestible text summaries of dashboard data, highlighting key patterns and trends.

• Prescriptive Insights: Dashboard Summary identifies potential issues and suggests actionable next steps.

• Seamless Integration: Summarize insights and send them directly to collaboration tools like Google Chat and Slack.

Upcoming Enhancements

• Contextual Refinement: Regenerate summaries with tailored prompts for even more specific results.

• Next Steps to Visualization: The extension will be able to suggest visualizations within Looker to illuminate insights.

3. Vertex AI Actions

Analysis is great, but what drives real change is action. The Vertex AI action bridges the gap between insight and action, integrating Looker with sophisticated GenAI models directly from Looker.

Imagine building a Looker dashboard on customer loyalty metrics. A Vertex AI action could generate highly-personalized emails tailored to each customer, complete with specific product recommendations or offers – all based on your data and powered by GenAI's text generation capabilities.

This integration leverages Looker's Action API, allowing you to execute tailored Vertex AI workflows directly from your Looker environment.

Here's a breakdown of the process:

1. Start with your usual Looker data exploration process.

2. When you have a dataset ready for analysis, select a customized Vertex AI action.

3. A dynamic form lets you provide any necessary inputs or prompts for your chosen AI model.

4. Vertex AI processes your data, applying advanced algorithms and generating predictions, personalization, or whatever your model is designed to do.

5. The results flow back into Looker or are sent to external tools (like email marketing platforms, CRMs, spreadsheets) to drive your next steps.

Conclusion

GenAI powered Looker is truly a game-changer for companies that want to provide data insights that are accessible by everyone, without bottlenecks or technical roadblocks. It’s also a great way to fully leverage your Looker investment if you’re already a customer.

We invite you to try these open-source extensions and start experiencing the benefits today. Just remember that the quality of the data you plug in will reflect how powerful and intuitive these analytics become.

These open-source extensions are your entry point to see this shift in action. Experiment, explore, and witness the transformation firsthand.

If you want to learn more about how to leverage these extensions for your business, subscribe to our newsletter or reach out to us with any questions!