How to Create a New Dashboard in Looker

Creating your first dashboard in Looker is a fantastic step towards transforming raw data into clear, actionable insights. While it can seem complex at first glance, the process is straightforward once you understand the core components. This guide will walk you through building a new Looker dashboard from a blank canvas, covering how to add visualizations (called "Tiles"), arrange your layout, and make it interactive with filters.

Before You Build: What's Your Dashboard's "Why"?

Jumping straight into building without a plan is a common mistake. A few minutes of planning will save you hours of rebuilding and make your final dashboard infinitely more useful. Before you even open Looker, take a moment to answer three fundamental questions.

1. Who is the Audience and What Questions Do They Have?

A dashboard built for a CEO tracking high-level company health will look very different from one designed for a marketing manager analyzing campaign performance. Is your audience technical or non-technical? What is the one primary question they need this dashboard to answer every time they look at it?

• For a sales leader: "How is my team pacing against our quarterly quota?"
• For an e-commerce manager: "Which products are driving the most revenue this week?"
• For a content strategist: "Which blog posts are generating the most conversions?"

Defining this helps you stay focused and avoid adding clutter.

2. What Are Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?

Once you know the primary question, identify the specific metrics (KPIs) that will answer it. If the question is about sales pacing, your KPIs will be things like "Deals Closed This Quarter," "Pipeline Value," and "Win Rate by Rep." For the e-commerce manager, it would be "Revenue by Product," "Average Order Value," and "Conversion Rate." Listing these out beforehand gives you a shopping list of data points you'll need to find and visualize.

3. Can You Sketch a Rough Layout?

Grab a piece of paper or open a simple diagramming tool and sketch out your dashboard. This doesn't need to be a work of art. The goal is to decide on the information hierarchy.

A good rule of thumb is to place the most important, high-level numbers (your main KPIs) at the top left, as this is where a user's eye naturally lands first. Supporting charts and more granular tables can be arranged below or to the right. This simple step helps you translate your plan into a visual structure before you get bogged down in technical settings.

Step-by-Step: Creating Your New Looker Dashboard

With a clear plan in mind, you're ready to start building. Here's how to create your dashboard from the ground up.

Step 1: Create a New, Blank Dashboard

First, you need to create the container that will hold all your charts and data.

1. Navigate to the folder where you want to save your dashboard. This could be your personal folder or a shared team folder.
2. In the top right corner, click the New button.
3. From the dropdown menu, select Dashboard.
4. A dialog box will appear asking you to name your new dashboard. Choose a clear, descriptive name (e.g., "Q3 Marketing Campaign Performance") and click Create Dashboard.

You’ll be taken to a fresh, empty dashboard in "Edit Mode." This is your canvas.

Step 2: Adding 'Tiles' – The Building Blocks of Your Dashboard

In Looker, every individual chart, number, map, or visualization on a dashboard is called a Tile. There are two primary ways to add Tiles to your dashboard.

Option A: Add a Tile from an Existing Look

A "Look" is a single, saved report or visualization in Looker. If you or a team member has already created a chart that you want to include, this is the quickest way to add it.

1. On your new dashboard, you'll see a prompt to either Add Tile or you can choose it from the top toolbar.
2. Select the option to add from an existing Look.
3. A menu will appear allowing you to browse through your folders to find the saved Look you want to add.
4. Select it, and the Look will appear as a new Tile on your dashboard.

Option B: Build a New Query Tile from Scratch

This method lets you build a new visualization without leaving the dashboard editor. It's perfect for when you know what you want to show but haven't saved it as a Look yet.

1. In your dashboard's Edit Mode, click Add and select Visualization.
2. First, you’ll be asked to choose an Explore. An Explore is a curated starting point for a query, designed by your data team (e.g., "Order Items," "Users," "Campaign Data"). Select the one that contains the data you need for your Tile.
3. You'll now be in the Explore interface. Here, you can build your query:
4. Once you're happy with your visualization, click Save. The visualization will be added as a new Tile to your dashboard.

Step 3: Populating Your Dashboard with More Tiles

Continue repeating Step 2 - either adding existing Looks or building new query Tiles - until you have all the data visualizations from your plan on the canvas. Don't worry about the layout just yet, the goal here is to get all the pieces on the board.

Remember to mix up your Tile types for clarity:

• Use Single Value visualizations for your main KPIs at the top.
• Use Line Charts to show trends over time.
• Use Bar or Column Charts to compare categories.
• Use Tables for displaying detailed, granular data.

Step 4: Arranging Your Layout

Now that you have all your Tiles, it's time to arrange them according to the sketch you made earlier. While in Edit Mode, you can simply click and drag Tiles to reposition them. You can also resize them by grabbing the bottom-right corner of any Tile and dragging it to your desired dimensions.

Align your Tiles on the grid to create a clean, organized, and easy-to-read dashboard. Put your most important KPIs in the top-left corner and logically group related charts together.

Step 5: Making Your Dashboard Interactive with Filters

A static dashboard is good, but an interactive one is great. Filters allow you and your teammates to slice and dice the data directly on the dashboard without having to edit each individual Tile.

1. Make sure you are in Edit Mode.
2. From the top toolbar, click Filters and select Add Filter.
3. A new window will appear where you can configure the filter. A "Date" filter is one of the most common ones. Let's create one.
4. Now, you need to tell Looker which Tiles this filter should apply to. Go to the Tiles To Update tab.
5. For each Tile you want the filter to affect, select the specific data field it should control (e.g., for an Orders Tile, you'd connect the filter to the "Order Date" field).
6. Click Add. Your new filter will appear at the top of your dashboard.

Step 6: Don't Forget to Save!

Once you are happy with the layout and functionality, click Save in the top right corner to exit Edit Mode. You can now interact with your new dashboard, change filter values, and see all the Tiles update in real-time.

Tips for a Dashboard People Will Actually Use

Building the dashboard is only half the battle. Follow these principles to make it effective and user-friendly.

• Keep it Clean: The goal is clarity, not density. A good dashboard has a high signal-to-noise ratio. Don't be afraid of white space. If a chart isn't critical to answering the primary question, leave it out.
• Tell a Cohesive Story: Your layout should guide the user's focus. Start with high-level summaries at the top and flow down to more detailed breakdowns. The arrangement should feel logical and narrative.
• Use Text Tiles for Context: Add Text Tiles to give sections a title, explain what a particular chart is showing, or define a key metric. This context is invaluable for anyone who didn't build the dashboard themselves.
• Choose the Right Chart for the Job: Don't just pick a visualization because it looks cool. Use line charts for time-series data, bar charts for categorical comparisons, and pie charts sparingly (if at all) for part-to-whole relationships with few categories.
• Design for Performance: Be mindful that every Tile is a query. A dashboard with 50 complex Tiles will take a long time to load. Stick to the essential charts needed to tell your story.

Final Thoughts

You now have a solid framework for planning, building, and refining a new dashboard in Looker. By thinking about your audience first, adding Tiles methodically, structuring your layout intentionally, and empowering users with filters, you can create a powerful tool for your team to make better, data-informed decisions.

While powerful tools like Looker give you incredible control, it's clear there's a steep learning curve that requires a fair bit of technical knowledge and point-and-click configuration. For teams that need answers fast without becoming data experts, this manual process can feel slow. At Graphed we’re built around the idea that getting insights shouldn't require an 80-hour training course. You just connect your data sources - like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce - and describe the dashboard you want in plain English. We turn your request into a live, interactive dashboard in seconds, not hours, so you can spend your time acting on your data instead of just trying to visualize it.