Person: In Looker, data delivery is when you want to share or export content with others. You can deliver data from Looks, Explores or dashboards, and to make it easy for you, the process for each is very similar. In this section, we focus on delivering data from dashboards. Note that everything in this section also applies to individual dashboard tiles, so you don't need to download, send or schedule an entire dashboard if you only need to share a single tile or a few tiles. To deliver data from a dashboard, start by clicking on the three vertical dots icon for dashboard actions at the top right of the page to see the delivery options. If you'd like to export data on a one-time basis, you can download or send it. Downloading extracts the data to your own computer. There are a number of output formats you can choose from. If you choose PDF, you have options to select the paper size, expand tables to show all rows and to arrange the tiles in a single column. The last option is useful if you expect people will need to view the PDF on a mobile device, as it stacks all the tiles up and makes it easier to view them on a smaller screen. If you choose CSV, Looker exports a CSV file for each tile that contains data on your dashboard and packages them together in a zip archive. Now, sending the data one time is an option available under schedule delivery. Sending allows you to deliver the data somewhere else outside of Looker. The most popular destination is e-mail. For example, you could e-mail the dashboard to yourself and your manager. Depending on your permissions and what your Looker admin has configured in your own Looker instance, you might see other available destinations such as Amazon S3 or Google Drive. If you need to ensure that someone will always be able to view updated data when they need it, the best approach would be to simply send them the link to the dashboard itself. That way, they can open it directly in Looker where they can ensure that they will always be looking at the most current data. You can easily get the URL for a dashboard by copying it from the address bar of your Internet browser, for example, companyname.looker.com/dashboards/6. However, if you or other users need the dashboard on a recurring basis, you can schedule it. This is basically the same as sending it, except you can set a frequency such as daily or weekly. This is useful if you'd like to have the dashboard PDF automatically delivered to your inbox, for example, every Monday morning before you start your work week. Let's take a closer look at the options for scheduling a dashboard. There are four pieces of information that you need to provide in order to send a dashboard either one time or on a recurring basis. First, how frequently do you want to schedule the dashboard? Under recurrence, you could choose daily, weekly, et cetera. Or, choose send now to send it just this one time. Second, where should the dashboard go? E-mail is the most commonly used destination. Based on your choice for question two, you would need to specify the destination here. If you choose e-mail for the destination, you would need to enter one or more e-mail addresses or aliases. Last, in which file format should the dashboard be sent? In addition to PDF, you can send a PNG image snapshot or a zip file containing one or more CSV files. Before you send the dashboard, you can use the advanced options to include a custom message, perhaps letting the recipient know what this data is and why they're receiving it. You can also set the delivery time zone for the recipient or recipients in question so that time-sensitive data is properly contextualized and presented to the recipient. And with that, Looker makes it easy for you to share dashboards with anyone you want as often or as little as you want.
