Admin settings - Roles

Roles , permission sets , and model sets are used together to manage what users can do and what they can see . The Rolespage in the Userssection of the Adminpanel lets you view, configure, and assign roles, permission sets, and model sets.

You can search for specific roles, permission sets, and model sets by entering a search term into the search box in the upper right and pressing Enter.

Definitions

• A roledefines the privileges that a user or group will have for a specific set of models in Looker. You create a role by combining one permission set with one model set.
• A permission set defines what a user or group can do. You select a combination of permissions that you want to assign to a user or group. It must be used as part of a role to have any effect.
• A model set defines what data and LookML fields a user or group can see. You select a combination of LookML models to which a user or group should have access. It must be used as part of a role to have any effect.

Managing roles

A role is a combination of one permission set and one model set. It's a common convention to name roles after types of people or groups of people in your organization — administrator, Looker developer, Finance team — although you can certainly follow your own naming conventions.

A user can have more than one role in Looker. This can be useful when you have users who play multiple roles in your company or when you want to create complex systems of access to your models.

Creating, editing, and deleting roles

To create a role, follow these steps:

1. Click the New Rolebutton at the top of the Rolespage.

2. Looker displays the New Rolepage, where you can configure the following settings:

   • Name: Enter a name for the role.
   • Permission Set: Choose a permission set to associate with the role.
   • Model Set: Choose a model set to associate with the role.
   • Groups: Optionally, choose one or more groups to assign the role to.
   • Users: Optionally, choose one or more users to assign the role to.

3. Once you've configured the role as intended, click the New Rolebutton at the bottom of the page.

After a role has been created, you can edit it by clicking the Editbutton to the right of the role on the Rolespage. Clicking Edittakes you to the Edit Rolepage for that role, where you can edit the name, the permission set, the model set, and the groups or users who are assigned to the role.

To delete a role, click the Deletebutton to the right of the role on the Rolespage.

Default roles

For new instances, Looker creates the following default roles, each of which includes a default permission set of the same name:

• Admin
• Admin via IAM
• Developer
• Gemini
• Support Advanced Editor
• Support Basic Editor
• Customer Engineer Advanced Editor
• User
• Viewer

The default roles in the following sections have conditions for use.

Admin via IAM

The Admin via IAM role is available only in Looker (Google Cloud core) , and it can be managed only through the Google Cloud console. For more information, see the Authentication and authorization with OAuth and IAM and Admin Looker role versus the Admin via IAM Looker role documentation.

The Admin via IAMrole uses the Adminpermission set.

Gemini

The Geminirole cannot be renamed or deleted and contains only the gemini_in_looker permission in its permission set. By default, this role's permission set applies to all models on the Looker instance. To restrict users to accessing Gemini in Looker features with specific models, remove those users from the Geminirole and create a new role that applies the gemini_in_looker permission on selected models. Make sure to remove those users from the Gemini Default Users group.

The gemini_in_looker permission that is available in this role enables users to perform the following tasks in the Looker instance with Gemini assistance:

• Write LookML — when they also have a Looker role that contains the develop permission for at least one model in a LookML project.
• Create custom Looker visualizations — when they also have a Looker role that contains the can_override_vis_config permission.
• Query Looker Explore data with Conversational Analytics , even if the user hasn't been assigned explore permissions, when they also have a Looker role that contains the access_data permission on the model that they are querying.

For more information about Gemini in Looker features, see the Gemini in Looker overview .

Support Advanced Editor and Support Basic Editor

These roles won't appear on a Looker (original) instance if a Looker admin has disabled the Tiered Support Access Labs feature. These roles won't appear on a Looker (Google Cloud core) instance if the instance uses private connections (private services access or Private Service Connect) networking or hybrid connections networking .

The Support Advanced Editorand Support Basic Editorroles cannot be edited, deleted, or assigned to users other than support access users .

Permission sets

A permission set defines what a user or group can do. Admins can use Looker's default permission sets or create original permission sets , keeping in mind permission dependencies .

All the available permissions, and their types, are discussed in more detail in the permissions list .

Default permission sets

For new installations, Looker includes several default permission sets that you can start with:

You'll see these permission sets appear as options when you create a new role. If you select one of these permission sets, Looker will display the list of permissions that it includes.

The Admin permission set cannot be edited or deleted, and it cannot be assigned to a role. It is assigned only to the Admin role, which also cannot be edited or deleted. The only way to grant the Admin permission set to a user or group is to add the Admin role to that user or group.

Creating permission sets

To create a permission set, click the New Permission Setbutton at the top of the Rolespage. Looker will display a page where you can enter a name for the permission set and select the permissions that it should include. Once you've configured the set as needed, click the New Permission Setbutton at the bottom of the page.

After a permission set has been created, you can edit or delete it by clicking the Editor Deletebuttons to the right of the permission set on the Rolespage.

Permissions and dependencies

Some permissions depend on others to work properly. For example, it makes sense that someone who wants to develop in LookML must first be able to see LookML.

When you create a permission set, you'll see the available permissions in an indented list. If a privilege is indented under another (parent) privilege, you must select the parent privilege first. The permission list may look like this:

☑️ access_data
  ☑️ see_lookml_dashboards
  ☑️ see_looks
    ☑️ see_user_dashboards

In this example, Looker uses indentation to indicate the following:

• The access_data privilege can be selected at any time.
• The see_lookml_dashboards and see_looks privileges require the access_data privilege to be selected first.
• The see_user_dashboards privilege depends on the see_looks privilege, which in turn depends on access_data privilege.

You cannot select a child privilege without first selecting its parent.

Permissions and Looker licenses

Looker licenses classify users into three types:

• Developer (Admin)
• Standard (Creator)
• Viewer

The permissions granted to a user determine how that user is classified under the Looker license:

• A user is classified as a Developer (Admin) user if they have the Admin default role , or at least one of the following permissions:

  • develop
  • manage_models
  • see_datagroups
  • see_logs
  • see_pdts
  • sudo

• A user is classified as a Standard (Creator) user if they have none of the Developer (Admin) permissions but do have at least one of the following permissions:

  • create_prefetches
  • explore
  • manage_homepage
  • manage_spaces
  • save_content
  • see_queries
  • see_schedules
  • see_system_activity
  • see_users
  • use_sql_runner

• A user is classified as a Viewer if they have the access_data permission, but none of the Developer (Admin) permissions and none of the Standard (Creator) permissions.

Permissions list

Permissions can be classified as one of three types:

• Model Specific:This type of permission is applied only to the model sets that are part of the same role. This permission is applied to individual models or model sets, rather than across the entire Looker instance.
• Connection Specific:This type of permission is applied at the connection level. A user with this type of permission will see content on pages in the Adminpanel that uses a connection associated with a model to which they have data access, even if that connection is used with another model to which they do not have data access.
• Instance Wide:This type of permission applies to the Looker instance as a whole and has three types:
  • NN = No content access, No menu access: These permissions allow users to perform certain functions across the entire Looker instance, but do not allow users to access content based on models not included in their role's model set.
  • CN = Content access, No menu access: These permissions allow users to access content and query information across the entire Looker instance — even for content and queries based on models not included in their role's model set.
  • CM = Content access, Menu access: These permissions may expose parts of the Admin menu to non-admin users and allow users to see information about content and queries based on models not included in their role's model set.

The following list describes all the permissions that are available in Looker, in the order in which they appear on the New Permission Setpage in the Adminsection:

Things to know about permission sets

The following permissions interact with model sets in a potentially unexpected way:

• develop ; see_lookml — In Looker's IDE, a single project can contain multiple model files. If you assign the develop or see_lookml permissions to a user, and you've allowed that user to see any model that is a part of a project, they will be able to develop or see the LookML for all models in that project. However, they will still not be able to query models that you have not allowed.
• manage_models — If you assign the manage_models permission to a user, the user will be able to access all models in all projects in the instance.
• manage_modelsets_restricted — If you assign the manage_modelsets_restricted permission to a user, they can assign any model in a project to which they have access.
• manage_project_connections — If you assign the manage_project_connections_restricted or manage_project_connections permissions to a user, the user will be able to see, edit, and create project-scoped connections for any projects that are included in the model set.

Model sets

A model set defines what data and LookML fields a user or group can see. Each set is a list of LookML models to which a user or group should have access. You can think of a model set as performing two functions:

1. A model set controls which models in your LookML the permissions apply to (if those permissions are model specific).
2. A model set limits what data and LookML fields a user can see, because each model is connected to a specific database connection and contains certain LookML fields.

Creating a model set

To create a model set:

1. Click the New Model Setbutton at the top of the Rolespage.

   

2. Looker displays the New Model Setpage. Enter a name for the new model set.

3. Select the model or models that should be included in the new model set.

4. Click the New Model Setbutton at the bottom of the page. The new model set will appear in the Model Setssection of the Rolespage.

Models that are included in pending projects appear in the Modelslist on the New Model Set and Edit Model Set pages.

Deleting or renaming a model will not change any model sets that include that model. When a model is removed or renamed , we recommend that Looker admins also remove that model's name from any associated model sets, using the Edit Model Setpage. Removing a deleted model's name from a model set prevents a new model with the same name from unintentionally being included in that model set.

To learn more about models, see the Model parameters documentation page.

Creating multiple models and model sets

The following example illustrates how you can use multiple model sets to limit access to data. Consider a scenario where you have two teams, Marketing and Support. In this example, these two teams should not have access to the entire model, so you would create a separate model for each team. To separate their data access, you would perform the following steps:

1. Copy the model into two new models.
2. In the first of the new models, include only the views, fields, and Explores that the Marketing team should have access to.
3. Create a model set for the Marketing team that includes only this new model.
4. Create a new role for the Marketing team that includes this new model set and the appropriate permissions for the Marketing team.
5. Assign this new role to the Marketing team group.
6. Repeat steps 2 through 5 to configure the second model for the Support team.

Editing a model set

After a model set has been created, perform the following steps to edit it:

1. On the Rolespage, click the Editbutton to the right of the model set you want to edit.

2. Looker displays the Edit Model Setpage. If desired, enter a new name for the model set in the Namefield.

3. Add or remove any models from the model set in the Modelssection.

4. Click the Update Model Setbutton at the bottom of the page.

Models that are included in pending projects appear in the Modelslist on the New Model Set and Edit Model Set pages.

Deleting or renaming a model will not change any model sets that include that model. When a model is removed or renamed , we recommend that Looker admins also remove that model's name from any associated model sets, using the Edit Model Setpage. Removing a deleted model's name from a model set prevents a new model with the same name from unintentionally being included in that model set.

Deleting a model set

To delete a model set, on the Rolespage, click Deleteto the right of the model set that you want to delete.