Embed directly to "edit look" UI

[Ben_Edwards]

We are embedding looker into our application so that users can create and edit looks through the embedded UI. There is no option to allow users direct access to looker.

Customers have given feedback that it is not at all clear how to edit looks. The “cog” in the top right is hard to see (and invisible if the look is not hovered over - not user friendly). We have a page that lists reports and ideally we would want to add a button there that directly opens the look in edit mode. Is there some way to do this, possibly by pass something like #edit into the embed url ?

[JoeR]

@Ben_Edwards while I don’t have an answer, I have a similar question for the Looker folks. I am embeddeding looks as you are but also embedding dashboards. It would be AWESOME if we load the dashboard in “Edit mode” already activated - without making the user directly click the Edit button.

I am wondering if there is a way to “call” the click action of the buttons from outside the Looker IFRAME? Looker provides a way for the IFRAME to communicate out. I’m looking for a way to communicate back in. 🙂

If I find a way, I’ll let you know

[Drew-Google]

Hey JoeR, 

To open a dashboard in edit mode, you would use the EmbedSDK to embed the dashboard, then save the dashboard object to some variable -- .then((dashboard) => {setDashboard(dashboard)}  -- after which you can call methods on that dashboard object, found here, which in this case would be dashboard.edit().  

[JoeRz]

Thanks @Drew-Google - we've been doing the embedding ourselves and haven't been using the EmbedSDK.  I've confirmed, that yes in fact we can just post the .edit command and it works.

It would be great if Looker would add the `Clear Cache & Refresh` as an option as well.  Any possibility of that?

I've been going through the boards and searching and there's some "hacky" ways to diddle with the data groups... but that invalidates too much.  So its not that helpful.

Again, thanks for the tips

[jakub_rojek-167]

Hi folks, @Ben_Edwards @JoeR 

have you ever figured out if it is possible or found some neat workaround? 🙂

[cesarmonterotr]

Same question here.

[Drew-Google]

Hey everyone,

From the embed look in edit mode,  a workaround for this would be to use the API to get the look's model/explore, fields, filters etc, and then embed an explore with that information.   An editable look is really just an explore.  

[JoeRz]

@Drew-Google while what you've mentioned is true, you aren't actually editing the Look, its creating a new Explore which we would then have to save (as a new look or add to a dashboard). So that really isn't the same.  

I'm looking to do a similar thing.  But if I don't automatically direct to the view of a Look in Edit mode (as the OP mentioned), it would be ideal to have the Edit Button enabled.  I don't see a way to have it enabled for an Embedded Look.  Maybe I'm missing a permission?

 

[JoeRz]

For the Google team... Looking at the embedded-sdk: https://github.com/looker-open-source/embed-sdk

Maybe a message like `look:edit` would be appropriate?  I would like to do this without the embedded-sdk.  As I'm building the app using embedded (IFRAME).

[JoeRz]

@Drew-Google is there a way to get Google's attention to see if the Looker team could add the `look:edit` option similar to the `dashboard:edit` option?