Today we are introducing three new features to our Conversational Analytics agent, building for the most common customer requests. These new agent capabilities for Conversational Analytics in Looker are available in Looker version 25.18.9, which most customers have, as of October 20th.
- Agent Sharing
It is now possible for Looker Admins to share their agents with other users. This means that now, all users’ conversations can benefit from the extra context and business knowledge that data experts provide in their agent definitions.
Admins can make other users Viewers of the agent, which allows those users to ask questions of the agent in conversations. Or, they can make them Editors of the agent, which allows those users to also edit the agent’s configuration or to share it. This capability will be extended from Admins to all agent creators (anyone who has the new save_agents permission) in 25.18.11 by the end of next week.
This has been our most-requested feature for Conversational Analytics agents, as it allows many more users to get more accurate, informed responses from Conversational Analytics and it streamlines the process of creating and updating agents and removes any need to have multiple similar agents.
- Multi-Explore Agents
We have also now made it possible to add up to five Looker Explores to a Conversational Analytics Agent, eliminating the need to ask questions of a single Looker Explore at a time. Now, when a user asks a question, the agent will determine which Explore is best suited to answer the question, and then create and run a Looker query against that Explore. (Note: this does not include merging results from multiple queries to different Explores.)
- Roles and Agent Permissions
We have also heard from many of you that you would like expanded control over who can create and share agents, who can use Conversational Analytics directly with Explores, and who can use Conversational Analytics solely with agents created by others. These controls are now available as new Looker model-level permissions as outlined below:
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chat_with_agent allows users to chat only with agents created by others
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chat_with_explore allows users to chat directly with an Explore
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save_agents allows users to create, edit, share, and delete agents
- Conversational Analytics dashboard in System Activity
Many Looker admins have told us that they would like to have better visibility into who is using Conversational Analytics, how often, and with what data. Admins can now see all of this live in the new Conversational Analytics dashboard in System Activity. The dashboard also displays usage over time, most used agents, users by role, and more.
Some reminders related to Conversational Analytics:
How to enable Conversational Analytics
Conversational Analytics is in preview. Admins will need to enable both Gemini in Looker and Trusted Tester features to activate Conversational Analytics. The details vary slightly for Looker Original (controls are in Looker) vs Looker Core (controls are in the Google Cloud Console), but in either scenario, it requires two clicks.
Admins will then need to assign users a role that includes the permissions mentioned above. We’ve made this easier by creating two new default roles (Conversational Analytics Agent Manager and Conversational Analytics User) and the associated default permission sets.
How to give feedback
If you have detailed feedback you would like to share with the team, including examples with actual behavior and expected behavior, please send it to conversational-analytics-feedback@google.com.