Looker Data Sciences Inc. today added industry- and function-specific templates along with a host of new goodies for analysts in version 6 of its namesake business intelligence platform.

Compared with the overhaul Looker made a year ago, this round of enhancements is more modest, consisting of a suite of software development tools targeted at data analysts, support for the MongoDB NoSQL database and improved utilities for monitoring environments with many users.

A significant new addition is the first vertically oriented applications for digital marketing and web analytics. Looker for Digital Marketing aims to provide visualizations that identify cross-channel marketing opportunities. Looker for Web Analytics is based on Google LLC’s Analytics 360, providing enhanced filtering and drill-down capabilities.

“We’ve taken the perspective that developers have powerful tools for building powerful software and the analyst world needs that as well,” said Daniel Mintz, Looker’s chief data evangelist. Analysts now can use Git folders, an important organizational element of the Git development repository. They can also import models created by others as well as apply new permission options to models they develop.

Visualizations have been improved in this release to give developers more control over look and feel through such things as default color controls. The data model offers expanded language and currency localization options for Japan, France and Germany, with other countries to follow.

Users are getting the ability to create custom fields on the fly with spreadsheetlike controls. A new schedule feature adds alerting, improved color usage and revamped logic for default visualizations. The customization features are targeted at people “who aren’t necessarily familiar with the Looker user interface,” Mintz said. “This seamlessly brings them into the platform with an experience that’s intuitive to them,” such as viewing web traffic reports using Google Analytics metaphors.

A new encryption key management architecture ensures that encrypted data at-rest and in-transit is secure and creates a foundation for the addition of other encryption algorithms. Workflows can now include authentication using the OAuth cloud-based single sign-on protocol. That capability “lets you authenticate not just as a generic corporate user, but also to send data to individually authenticated places like Google Drive or [Dropbox Inc.’s] Dropbox,” Mintz said.  Looker is also now certified as compliant with the SOC 2 Type II reporting standards defined under System and Organization Controls.

System administrators are getting improved usage reporting with prebuilt dashboards that cover such factors as response times, database performance, user activity and engagement. “Every query and interaction is logged and can be seen within Looker,” Mintz said. “We had a version of that in past but it was much more limited. We’ve gone back to the drawing board and built from scratch.”

New features will begin rolling out next month with international support available in early 2019.

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