Detailed Steps to "More Powerful Data Drilling" & how to get vis configs for custom drilling

Looker Tips & Resources Technical Tips & Tricks
1

Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 15, 2019

  1. Enable the “visual drilling” labs feature.

  2. In the drill_fields parameter within the definition of a measure we’d like to drill into, we select only the fields we want to see in the drill modal.

  3. Go to the explore and drill into the measure. We should be seeing some default visualization in the drill modal.

  4. Click “Explore from Here” in the drill modal itself.

  5. In the explore that we’re taken to, we modify the visualization so that it becomes exactly what we want. This can be choosing a different type of chart, changing the colors, adding grid lines, etc.

  6. Once we have the visualization we want, go to “Share” on the explore and copy the expanded url.

  7. Paste the expanded url into a URL decoder (URL Decoder/Encoder) and hit “decode”.

  8. Copy the decoded url, paste it into a JSON string escaper (Free Online JSON Escape / Unescape Tool - FreeFormatter.com), and hit “Escape”.

  9. Copy the part of the escaped output that’s after the &vis={ and before the }&filter_config=.

  10. Go back to the measure definition and add the following and paste in the escaped string into the url in the place of “[this is where you pass through the vis config details]”:

    link: {

    label: "Show as line plot" #or whatever label we want

    url: "

    {% assign vis_config = '{

    [this is where you pass through the vis config details]

    }' %}

    {{ link }}&vis_config={{ vis_config | encode_uri }}&toggle=dat,pik,vis&limit=5000"

    }

  11. Save

2

Doesnt work when i use pivot and try to bring a chart. When i hit explore from here i can see the chart i built .

link: {
label: “Column Chart”
url: "
{% assign vis_config ='{ "x_axis_gridlines":false,
"y_axis_gridlines":true,
"show_view_names":false,
"show_y_axis_labels":true,
"show_y_axis_ticks":true,
"y_axis_tick_density":"default",
"y_axis_tick_density_custom":5,
"show_x_axis_label":true,
"show_x_axis_ticks":true,
"y_axis_scale_mode":"linear",
"x_axis_reversed":false,
"y_axis_reversed":false,
"plot_size_by_field":false,
"trellis":"",
"stacking":"normal",
"limit_displayed_rows":false,
"legend_position":"center",
"point_style":"none",
"show_value_labels":false,
"label_density":25,
"x_axis_scale":"auto",
"y_axis_combined":true,
"ordering":"none",
"show_null_labels":false,
"show_totals_labels":false,
"show_silhouette":false,
"totals_color":"#808080",
"type":"looker_column",
"defaults_version":1 '} %}
{{link}}&vis_config={{ vis_config | encode_uri}}&pivots=abccolumn&toggle=dat,pik,vis&limit=5000&column_limit=15"