Connect Looker to Profound

Looker is Google Cloud’s enterprise business intelligence platform. Teams connect it to a data warehouse (BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, and others), define metrics in LookML, and use Looker’s UI to explore data, build reports, and share dashboards.

This is not Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio). It is also not the same as Profound’s Tableau connector, which exports Profound analytics into Tableau. Profound’s Looker integration works in the opposite direction: Profound Agents query data from your Looker instance.

What Looker terms mean

Term	What it is
LookML	Looker’s modeling language. Analytics teams use it to define dimensions, measures, joins, and business logic on top of raw warehouse tables.
Model	A LookML project exposed for querying, such as marketing or core. Agent inline queries reference a model by name.
Explore	A starting point for ad hoc analysis within a model — a curated set of related tables and fields users can query. Inline queries need both a model and an explore name.
Look	A saved report or query in Looker. If your team already built the metric in Looker, agents can run it directly with Run Look.
Dashboard	A collection of Looks and visualizations. Profound does not embed dashboards; agents run individual Looks or inline queries and receive the underlying data.

What this integration does

Profound connects to your Looker instance using API credentials (client_id, client_secret, and instance URL). Once connected, Profound Agents can:

• Run a saved Look — execute an existing Look and return the result as JSON for downstream agent steps
• Run an inline query — query a specific model and Explore with custom fields, filters, sorts, and advanced options

The integration is read-only and org-level. Profound runs queries against Looker and returns the results; it does not create, update, or delete Looker content. One Looker connection is shared across your organization and can be selected in any agent that needs it.

Where you can use Looker in Profound

Surface	What it does
Profound Agents	Add Run Look or Run Inline Query steps to pull Looker data into an agent workflow
Sheets	Import rows from a saved Look into a spreadsheet for analysis or batch agent runs

Both surfaces use the same org-level Looker connection and the same read-only query capabilities.

Prerequisites

Before connecting Looker to Profound, ensure:

• You have access to a Google Cloud Looker instance (for example, https://your-company.cloud.looker.com)
• You can create or use a Looker user with API credentials
• That user has permission to access the saved Looks, models, Explores, and fields your agents will query

How to create Looker API credentials

1. In Looker, go to Admin → Users and select the user Profound should use for API access
2. In the user’s API credentials section, create a new API key pair
3. Copy the generated Client ID and Client Secret before leaving the page, Looker may not show the secret again.
4. Confirm the user can access the Looks, models, Explores, dimensions, and measures your agents will need

Connect Your Account

1. In Profound, select your organization name in the top-left corner of the platform, then select Settings.
2. In the left sidebar, select Integrations under Account.
3. Search for Looker, select it, then select + Add account.
4. In the Connect Looker dialog, enter your connection details:
   • Client Secret: the Looker API client_secret
   • Looker Base URL: your instance URL, for example https://your-company.cloud.looker.com
   • Client ID: the Looker API client_id
5. Select Connect account.

Profound validates the credentials by authenticating with Looker (Looker API 4.0) and confirming the API user. Once connected, Looker appears as an available integration in Agents and Sheets.

Troubleshooting

The connection fails to save

Confirm the base URL is the root Looker instance URL, such as https://your-company.cloud.looker.com. Profound also accepts URLs that include /api or /api/4.0 and normalizes them to the root instance URL.

No Looks appear in agent nodes

Make sure the Looker API user has access to the folders and saved Looks you expect to use. If permissions were recently changed, retry after a short delay.

A query returns a Looker permission error

Check the Looker user’s role, model set, and field-level permissions. Profound can only run queries that the connected Looker user is allowed to run.