Google Looker Business Analyst Exam

Looker Business Analyst
A Looker Business Analyst uses Looker daily to create and curate content, develop reports, and use visualizations to represent data. A Business Analyst should be able to use Looker to query data and create actionable metrics, validate data accuracy, and apply procedural concepts to identify error sources. A Business Analyst can build Looker dashboards to meet business requirements, deliver reports for data consumers, and use appropriate visualizations to meet analysis requirements. A Business Analyst can apply procedural concepts to curate content for intuitive navigation and control it for security.

The Looker Business Analyst exam assesses your knowledge of:
Scheduling and sharing Looks and dashboards
Table calculations and Looker expressions
Customize and advanced filters
The impacts of pivoting
Best practices around designing dashboards
The fundamentals of caching

About this certification exam
Length: 100 minutes
Registration fee: $250
Languages: English
Exam format: Multiple choice and multiple select taken remotely or in person at a test center. Locate a test center near you.

Exam delivery method:
1. Take the online-proctored exam from a remote location, review the online testing requirements.
2. Take the onsite-proctored exam at a testing center, locate a test center near you.

Prerequisites: None
Recommended experience: Business analysts with 5+ months of experience using Looker for report development, data visualization, and dashboard best practices.

Exam overview

Step 1: Understand what’s on the exam
The exam guide contains a complete list of topics that may be included on the exam. Review the exam guide to determine if your knowledge aligns with the topics on the exam.

Looker Business Analyst

Certification exam guide
A Looker Business Analyst uses Looker daily to create and curate content, develop reports, and use visualizations to represent data. A Business Analyst should be able to use Looker to query data and create actionable metrics, validate data accuracy, and apply procedural concepts to identify error sources. A Business Analyst can build Looker dashboards to meet business requirements, deliver reports for data consumers, and use appropriate visualizations to meet analysis requirements. A Business Analyst can apply procedural concepts to curate content for intuitive navigation, and control it for security.

Section 1: Analyze

1.1 Use Looker Explores to query data and create actionable metrics in a given scenario. For example:
Utilize requirements and create queries using fields (e.g., dimensions, measures, filters, pivots)
Determine additional metrics needed and construct custom metrics using table calculations
Determine how to utilize filters (e.g., standard filters, matches advanced filters, and custom filters)
Determine which fields to use merge results for joining across different Explores and data sources

1.2 Use Looker to validate data accuracy in a given scenario. For example:
Investigate data results to determine accuracy (e.g., using SQL, drilling, A/B testing, comparisons)
Investigate discrepancies by viewing row-level data using Explores (e.g., review individual dimension values that make up the result of a measure)

1.3 Apply procedural concepts to identify error sources. For example:
Utilize Looker’s features to determine the cause of the error (e.g., read error message to get context)
Interpret error message to identify the source (e.g., caused by the database, query, LookML code, permissions, visualizations)

Section 2: Build
2.1 Build dashboards to meet business requirements. For example:

Construct dashboards to meet requirements (e.g., using dashboard filters, merged results)
Apply procedural concepts to design impactful dashboards (e.g., storytelling, tile organization, use of text tiles, amount of data per dashboard)

2.2 Deliver reports for data consumers. For example:
Determine appropriate report delivery methods (e.g., file format, destination, delivery cadence, recipients, scheduling, sending, downloading, test delivery)
Determine appropriate download configurations (e.g., no option for unlimited downloads, table calculations, pivots, lack of permissions, database limitations)

2.3 Use visualization types to meet analysis requirements in a given scenario. For example:
Select appropriate visualizations to illustrate data results (e.g., bar, line, scatter, column, pie)
Determine which visualization settings to use (e.g., conditional formatting, subtotals, double axis, value label format using spreadsheet functions, grouping)

Section 3: Curate

3.1 Apply procedural concepts to curate content for intuitive navigation. For example:
Determine appropriate setups for folders and boards (e.g., structures, subfolders, hierarchy)
Apply naming conventions to identify folders, boards, or other content for users (e.g., clear titles, description fields, naming folders, content, and conventions)

3.2 Apply procedural concepts to control content access for security. For example:
Utilize appropriate Explores based on audience to prevent data leak (e.g., restricting sensitive data to specific users)
Assign folders and boards permissions to organize content based on user groups