IMPORTANT:

Take screenshots of your work for each task to add to your portfolio.

Make sure to complete this hands-on lab on a desktop/laptop only.

There are only 5 attempts permitted per lab.

As a reminder – it is common to not get every question correct on your first try, and even to need to redo a task; this is part of the learning process.

Once a lab is started, the timer cannot be paused. After 1 hour and 30 minutes, the lab will end and you’ll need to start again.

For more information review the Lab technical tips reading.

Activity overview

This lab is part of a capstone project. In this lab, you will apply your knowledge of the last two stages of the data journey, analyze and activate, by building an interactive dashboard that meets a business need using the Looker Enterprise user interface. You will be given a scenario and a set of tasks to complete. These tasks will require you to use your skills to build a dashboard with four visualizations, answer questions, and complete challenges that will test your data analysis and visualization skills.

By successfully completing this lab, you will have a user-friendly dashboard that you can add to your portfolio to showcase your skills to potential employers and gain additional experience using an enterprise-grade tool to meet challenges similar to those you encounter as a cloud data analyst.

Scenario

Trevor, the head of the Treasury department at The Look Fintech, is impressed with your work so far. Your ability to collect data from different sources and process it provides them with valuable insights for their business.

Now, Trevor has another task for you: develop a dashboard to help the team make the most of their loan health data and have quick and user-friendly access to the insights they need.

Trevor has identified four key business questions that the team regularly needs answers to when discussing loan health.

These questions are:

• What is the total outstanding amount of all loans?
• What is the percentage of outstanding loans in each status category?
• What states have the highest number of outstanding loans?
• What customers own their homes outright and have current loans?

Trevor also provided important information about the key metrics needed to answer these business questions.

The total balance of outstanding loans is the sum of all loan balances that have not been fully repaid. Lenders track this amount to understand their overall risk and financial health. In some jurisdictions, lenders are also required to collect this information to comply with regulations.

The loan status is an important attribute to track. The loan status identifies if the loan payments are current, late, charged off, in default, fully paid off or in a grace period. Trevor explained that to mitigate risk, it is important to track what percentage of outstanding loans fall into each category.

The borrower location is also a key consideration. The Treasury department is seeking to understand how loans are distributed geographically by state. This is because high concentrations of loans in one region can increase the risk of collective defaults. An even distribution of loans across regions can help to reduce this risk by ensuring that lenders are not overly reliant on any one area for their loan repayments.

The homeowner income index is a way to track the financial health of the borrowers using their income and home ownership status. This can help Trevor influence other teams to tailor their financial offering to the borrowers' needs as well as help make sure that they are meeting their goals of making borrowing accessible to a wide range of people.

The dashboard you create will have four visualizations that focus on these elements and help Trevor’s team get answers to their business questions.

First, you’ll get started with Looker and create a dashboard. Second, you’ll build a visualization that shows the total amount of all outstanding loans in a guided way. Third, you’ll build a visualization that displays the total amount of all outstanding loans by status. Then, you’ll challenge yourself to build a visualization to display the top 10 states with the highest total count of outstanding loans and a table that displays customers that own their home outright and have “Current” loans. Finally, you’ll customize your dashboard by enabling cross-filtering and setting the refresh rate for each Look.

Setup

Before you click Start Lab

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources will be made available to you.

This practical lab lets you do the activities yourself in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials that you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

• Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended)

• Time to complete the lab---remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab

How to start your lab and sign in to Looker

1. Click the Start Lab button. On the left is the Lab Details panel with the following:

   • Time remaining
   • The Open Looker button
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab
   Note: If you need to pay for the lab, a pop-up opens for you to select your payment method.

2. Click Open Looker.

Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

3. Copy the Looker username (email) and password below and paste it into the Looker Log in dialog.

Looker username (email):

{{{looker.developer_username | "Looker username (email)"}}}

Looker password:

{{{looker.developer_password | "Looker password"}}}

You can also find the Looker username (email) and password in the Lab Details panel.

4. Select the Stay logged in checkbox, and click Log In.

After a successful login, the Looker instance for this lab will display.

Task 1. Get started with Looker

In this task, you'll locate the Developer Student’s folder and create a new dashboard.

1. In the navigation panel, click the dropdown arrow next to Folders.

2. Click My folder to open the Developer Student’s folder. This is your personal folder where you can save and manage your dashboard.

3. Click New, and select Dashboard from the dropdown.

4. In the Create Dashboard dialog, for Name enter Loan Insights.

5. Click Create Dashboard. A new, empty dashboard with the name Loan Insights is created.

6. Click Edit Dashboard to start adding charts and visualizations to the new dashboard.

Note: In Looker Enterprise, tiles are used to display data in a variety of ways, such as tables, charts, and maps. To add a new visualization to the dashboard click Add Tile.

Click Check my progress to verify that you have completed this task correctly. Get started with Looker

Task 2. Build a visualization that displays the total amount of all outstanding loans

Trevor has requested a visualization for their key team members that displays the total outstanding loan balance. An outstanding loan is any loan that has not been fully repaid. They have also requested that you make it easy for a team member to check if the total balance of outstanding loans goes above the $3,000,000,000 threshold. This is the amount the team has decided is the most that they can lend responsibly.

In this task, you’ll build a visualization that displays the total amount of all outstanding loans, and add a threshold indicator.

First, you’ll explore the data to determine which dimensions and or measures you’ll need to build the visualization.

1. Click Add Tile. The Choose an Explore page displays.

2. Click Loan Details to select the Loan Details Explore. The Edit Tile page displays.

3. In the All Fields tab, expand the Loan dropdown to explore the available Dimensions and Measures.

Hint: Use the Information icon to explore the data type and description of each dimension and measure.

4. Click Go to LookML to review the Loan view. This will open a second window.

5. Click the dropdown arrow next to Views and click the loan.view file.

6. Return to the previous window. The Edit Tile page is displayed.

Next, you’ll use your observations to create the visualization.

7. In the All Fields tab, expand the Loan dropdown to select the dimensions and/or measure you chose above.

8. Select the Visualization Type icon to select the best visualization type.

Hint: Expand the visualization toolbar to select the Visualization Type.

9. Click Run to display the visualization.

Then, review the visualization and explore the results used to create the visualization in the Data section.

Finally, add a threshold to the visualization and save the completed visualization to the dashboard.

10. In the Visualization bar, click Edit.

11. In the Edit dropdown menu, select the Formatting tab.

12. Slide the Enable Conditional Formatting toggle to enable conditional formatting.

13. In the Rules section, add a rule to change the background color to red if the value is greater than 3,000,000,000.

14. Click Run.

15. In the Title bar under Edit Tile, enter the following title for the visualization: Total Amount of Outstanding Loans.

16. Click Save to save the visualization.

17. The dashboard with the new tile displays. Click Save to change the changes made to the dashboard.

Click Check my progress to verify that you have completed this task correctly. Build a visualization that displays the total amount of all outstanding loans

Task 3. Build a visualization that displays the percentage of outstanding loans in each status

Trevor has also asked you to create a visualization that can help their team identify the percentage of outstanding loans in each status. This metric is important because it provides insight into the overall health of the company's loan portfolio including how many loans may be currently late, in default, or charged off.

In this task, you’ll identify the dimension and measure that you’ll use to visualize the data, select the most suitable visualization type, and then create and add the visualization to the dashboard on your own.

1. Click the Dashboard actions menu icon () and select Edit dashboard.
2. Click Add Tile, and select Visualization.
3. Click Loan Details to select the Loan Details Explore.
4. In the All Fields tab, expand the Loan dropdown to explore the Dimensions and Measures.

Trevor has explained it is important for their team to easily see how each loan status contributes to the total, or the part-to-whole relationship.

Challenge: Build a visualization and save it to a dashboard

In this challenge, you’ll build a visualization using the dimension and measure identified above and save it to the dashboard:

• The visualization should use one dimension and one measure.
• The visualization should be the same visualization type as identified in the multiple choice question above.
• The visualization should have the title: Percentage of Outstanding Loans.
• The visualization should be saved to your dashboard.

Hint: Feeling struck? Review the instructions for Task 2!

Click Check my progress to verify that you have completed this task correctly. Build a visualization that displays the percentage of outstanding loans in each status

Task 4. Build a visualization that displays the total count of outstanding loans for each state

Trevor has requested a new visualization that displays the total count of outstanding loans for each state, limited to the 10 states with the highest total counts. This will help Trevor’s team quickly identify states where the team might need to focus their efforts, provide insight into the distribution of loans by geographical area, and help assess risk.

In this task, you’ll first need to identify the one dimension and one measure that you will use to visualize the data. Then, you’ll select the visualization type, create the visualization, and add it to the dashboard on your own.

Challenge: Select dimensions and measures and choose visualization type

In this challenge, you’ll build a visualization and save it to the dashboard:

• The visualization should use one dimension and one measure.
• The visualization type should display comparisons between categories in a user-friendly way.
• The visualization should have the title: Total Count of Outstanding Loans.
• Limit the results to the 10 states with the highest total count of outstanding loans.
• The visualization should be saved to your dashboard.

Click Check my progress to verify that you have completed this task correctly. Build a visualization that displays the total count of outstanding loans for each state

Task 5. Build a visualization that displays top 10 customers by highest income

Trevor has requested a visualization that displays information about the top 10 customers with the highest individual income. This visualization should only include customers who own their own homes outright and also have current loans. In addition, for each customer, Trevor has asked that the visualization displays the customer’s ID, their annual income, the state where the loan was taken out, and the loan’s interest rate.

In this task, you’ll identify the dimensions and measures that you will use to visualize the data and select the most appropriate visualization type. Then, you’ll create the visualization and add it to the dashboard on your own.

Challenge: Use multiple dimensions to visualize data

In this challenge, you’ll build a visualization and save it to the dashboard.

• The visualization should use four dimensions and no measures.
• The visualization should include dimensions from both the Loan and Customer views.
• The visualization should display customers that own their own homes outright and also have current loans.
• The visualization should only display the data for the top 10 customers with the highest individual income.
• The visualization type should allow the data to be easily sorted.
• The visualization should have the title: Top 10 Customers by Highest Income.
• The visualization should be saved to your dashboard.

Click Check my progress to verify that you have completed this task correctly. Build a visualization that displays top 10 customers by highest income

Task 6. Add functionality to the dashboard

In addition to the visualizations, Trevor has also requested that the team’s dashboard has certain features that will allow their team to make the most of the data. Trevor requested that their team is able to cross-filter data. Cross-filtering allows users to click on a value in a visualization and dynamically filter the rest of the tiles on the dashboard for that selected value. They have also requested that each visualization refreshes at a regular interval.

In this task, you need to edit the loan status dashboard to enable cross-filtering and add a refresh rate to each visualization.

1. Make sure all the changes you have made to the dashboard have been saved.

2. Navigate to the Looker home page.

3. In the navigation panel, navigate to the Developer Student’s folder.

4. Click on the Loan Insight dashboard.

5. Click the Dashboard actions menu icon () and select Edit dashboard.

6. Click the Filters button in the toolbar. In the Filters dropdown menu, slide the Cross-filtering toggle to enable cross-filtering.

7. Click Save.

8. Once enabled, click on values in the visualizations in the dashboard, and explore how the rest of the tiles are dynamically filtered.

Challenge: Enable automatic refreshes to visualizations to add real-time visibility

In this challenge, you’ll apply what you learned above about adding functionality to enable automatic refreshes to each visualization on your own.

• The Total Amount of Outstanding Loans should refresh hourly.
• The Top 10 Customers by Highest Income and Percentage of Outstanding Loans should refresh daily.

Click Check my progress to verify that you have completed this task correctly. Add functionality to the dashboard

Task 7. Optimize dashboard

In this task, you’ll use the skills you learned to optimize the dashboard for your users.

Here are some things that you may want to consider:

• Choose a color scheme.
• Arrange the visualizations to create an easy-to-use layout.
• Make sure all your visualizations are clearly labeled.
• Make the dashboard one that your users will love!

Before moving on, don’t forget to take a screenshot of your completed dashboard for your portfolio.

Task 8. Share dashboard

In this task, you’ll practice sharing your completed dashboard.

1. Click the Dashboard actions menu icon ().
2. Click Get Link.
3. Click Copy to Clipboard.
4. Click Done.

The link you have copied can be shared with Trevor so they can view the dashboard you have created.

Conclusion

As a cloud data analyst at TheLook Fintech, you’ve successfully built the dashboard Trevor and their team need to monitor the status of loans.

First, you created a visualization to display the total amount of outstanding loans.

Second, you created a visualization to display the total amount of outstanding loans by status.

Third, you created a visualization to display the top 10 states with the highest total count of outstanding loans.

Fourth, you created a visualization that displays customers who own their home outright and have “Current” loans.

Finally, you enabled cross-filtering on the loan status dashboard to make it easier for the users to interact with the data and understand how one measure relates to others and explored how to enable automatic refreshes to visualization on your own.

You are well on your way to understanding how to use Looker to build dashboards that help businesses monitor and track key performance indicators.

End your lab

Before you end the lab, make sure you’re satisfied that you’ve completed all the tasks. When you're ready, click End Lab and then click Submit.

Ending the lab will remove your access to the lab environment, and you won’t be able to access the work you've completed in it again.

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