Data is most useful when shared across teams and platforms as it makes it easier to analyze data, draw actionable and powerful insights and make data-backed rewarding decisions. This article aims to provide you with a comprehensive step-by-step guide to help you set up Amplitude Looker integration seamlessly, either by using a database or a data warehouse of your choice.
Upon a complete walkthrough of the Looker Amplitude integration guide, you will be able to successfully set up a connection between Amplitude & Looker and seamlessly transfer your data for in-depth analysis. It will further help you build a customized ETL pipeline for your organization. Through this article, you will get a deep understanding of the tools & techniques, and thus, it will help you hone your skills further.
Methods to Set Up Amplitude Looker Integration
There are multiple ways in which you can set up the Amplitude Looker integration:
Loading Data from Amplitude to Looker via a Data Warehouse
This method requires you to extract data from your Amplitude project and perform necessary transformations to bring it to the schema supported by your data warehouse and then load it. You will then need to develop code snippets or use in-built connectors to connect and load data from your data warehouse to Looker.
Using a Database to Set Up the Amplitude Looker Integration
Using a database to set up the Amplitude Looker integration is one such way. This method requires you to extract data from Amplitude and load it either in an external database of your choice or in a Looker Managed Database. You can set up either of these and then load your data to Looker by establishing a connection with either the Looker Managed Database or an external database.
Using Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline
A fully managed, No-code Data Pipeline platform like Hevo Data, helps you integrate data from Amplitude (Free Data Source) and numerous other Paid and Free Product Analytics sources and visualise it in your desired BI tool such as Looker effortlessly. Hevo is the only real-time ELT No-code Data Pipeline platform that cost-effectively automates data pipelines that are flexible to your needs.
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Method 1: Using Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline
Use Hevo Data, a No-code Data Integration Platform, to connect Amplitude, a Free Data Source with various product analytics & marketing applications to bring in integrated data in a matter of minutes and visualise it in Looker. Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only bringing in your data from multiple sources but also transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
Hevo focuses on three simple steps to get you started:
- Configure Amplitude as source: Connect Hevo with Amplitude and various other product analytics & marketing data sources by simply logging in with your credentials, free of cost.
Learn more about configuring Amplitude Analytics here.
- Configure BigQuery Destination: To move data to destination, consolidate your product and customer data from several sources in Hevo’s Managed Data Integration Platform and automatically transform it into an analysis-ready form.
Learn more about configuring BigQuery here.
- Connect to Looker to visualize: Connect Hevo with your desired BI tool such as Looker and visualise your unified product data easily to gain better insights.
Check out What Makes Hevo Amazing
- Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
- Robust Integration with BI tools: Hevo supports connecting with numerous BI tools such as Tableau, Looker, PowerBI, etc. in a matter of minutes and lets you analyse your product & marketing data in a completely secure and hassle-free manner in real-time.
- Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilisation of bandwidth on both ends.
Discover the straightforward ways to sync Amplitude data with Redshift to enhance your data warehousing capabilities.
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Method 2: Loading Data from Amplitude to Looker via a Data Warehouse
To analyse your business data using Looker, you will need to establish a connection with your company’s in-house database or with a data warehouse, containing your unified analysis-ready data from various sources. Hence, it’s best to unify your Amplitude data with data from numerous other sources by storing it in a robust data warehouse such as Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Synapse Analytics, etc. and then connect it with Looker.
To load your Amplitude data to a data warehouse, you will have to develop a data structure. You can do this by defining a schema for your destination tables using the predefined data types such as INTEGER, DATETIME, etc. that will help store the incoming data from Amplitude.
This is how you can set up the Amplitude Looker integration by loading data via a data warehouse.
Method 3: Using a Database to Set Up the Amplitude Looker Integration
To set up the Amplitude Looker integration using a database, you will first have to extract your Amplitude data onto a database of your choice. Once you’ve done this, you will now need to configure your database by creating and copying your credentials such as username, password, etc. on the Looker server.
To start configuring your database connection, check out the Looker’s official documentation, that will provide you with a step-by-step guide.
Once you’ve performed the necessary configurations and selected the desired database dialect, you can connect Looker to a database. You can do this either by establishing a connection with a new database or a Looker Managed Database.
You can learn more about these from the following sections:
Creating a New Database Connection
To set up a new database connection in Looker, you first need to log in to Looker. To do this, go to the official website of Looker and log in by providing your company’s hostname, username and password.
Image Source: Self
Once you’ve logged in, click on the connections option, found in the database section under the admin panel. Click on the add connection option. A new dialogue box will now open up on your screen as follows:
Image Source: Self
To set up a connection with an existing database, click on the database connection option. The connection settings page will now open up on your screen, where you will need to provide the following information:
- Name: This is the name you will assign to the database connection. Ensure that the name is unique and doesn’t match any existing ones.
- Dialect: This represents the SQL dialect associated with your connection. Choosing a dialect will help get the appropriate options to translate LookML into SQL.
- Remote Host:Port: This represents the host and port value, through which Looker will connect to your database.
- Database: This represents the database you want to connect with Looker. In case you can have multiple databases on your host, you will have to set up different connections for each of them.
- Username: This represents the name Looker will use to connect with your database.
- Password: This represents the password Looker will use to connect with your database.
- Schema: This represents the schema in place. It will show the default schema, in case you have not specified one. It applies the schema to the SQL runner, LookML projects, etc.
- Max Connections: This represents the maximum number of connections Looker can establish with your database.
- Time Zone: This represents the time zone in which your database stores the time-based data. It helps Looker convert time-based values.
- SSH Server: To connect databases using the SSH tunnel, you will have to turn on the toggle and select SSH server configuration from the drop-down list.
Other options to input include Persistent Derived Tables, Temp Database, Max PDT Builder Connections, SSL, Verify SSL Cert., Connection pool Timeout, Query Time Zone, etc.
Once you’ve added all the necessary information, you now need to test these configurations or settings. To do this, you can click on the “Test These Settings” option.
Image Source: Self
Now, click on the add connection option as a final step to set up your new database connection successfully.
This is how you can set up a new database connection in Looker to set up the Amplitude Looker integration.
Creating a Looker Managed Database Connection
Looker provides users with a Looker Managed Database offering that allows users to store their data in a Looker-managed database and integrate with Looker Marketplace seamlessly, allowing users to load data for analysis with ease.
To set up a Looker Managed Database, you first need to log in to Looker. To do this, go to the official website of Looker and log in by providing your company’s hostname, username and password.
Image Source: Self
Once you’ve logged in, click on the connections option, found in the database section under the admin panel. Click on the add connection option. A new dialogue box will now open up on your screen as follows:
Image Source: Self
Click on the Looker Managed Database option. The add a new database page will now open up on your screen, where you will have to enter your first name, last name and email address as follows:
Image Source: Self
Once you’ve added all the necessary details, click on the create database option. The connect data sources page will now open up on your screen, where you can click on “Connect” to download your data immediately, by providing your credentials for authorisation. The download usually takes up around 24 hours to happen.
With your connection now up, you will see it under the Looker Managed section in the connections page. You can now click on the test button to test your connection, edit button to edit your “Database Connection” and the gear icon to perform other actions.
Image Source: Self
This is how you can set up the Amplitude Looker integration by loading data via databases.
About Amplitude
Amplitude is a robust product analytics platform that allows businesses to leverage the collaborative analytics functionality to track and monitor their customer’s behaviour and interaction with their products and services. With Amplitude in place, users can generate and leverage compelling and informative behavioural reports to gain holistic insights about customer interaction with their products, likes, dislikes, etc. and provide customer-centric experiences to boost conversion rates and growth.
Amplitude further houses numerous functionalities that help users carry out an in-depth analysis of customers, gain actionable insights about the product experience and optimize strategies to enhance user engagement, & conversion and boost retention.
About Looker
Looker is one of the most popular modern business intelligence tools that allow organisations to explore, analyse and visualise their data in depth. With Looker in place, businesses can capture and bring in data from a diverse set of data sources such as supply chains, customer behaviour, digital markets, distribution process, etc., and run analysis to gain crucial insights.
Looker houses unique and intuitive functionalities such as LookML, proprietary data modelling language that allows users to define and analyse data metrics such as dimensions, aggregates, calculations, etc. and explore relationships between SQL databases in depth. Looker also lets users present data reports through data-rich visualisations that are easy to manage, evolve, and are scalable.
Conclusion
This article teaches you how to set up the Amplitude Looker integration with ease and steps for Amplitude Looker data analysis. It also provides in-depth knowledge about the concepts behind every step to help you understand and implement them efficiently. Carrying out an in-depth analysis of your product and customer data requires you to integrate data from a diverse set of data sources.
Learn how to achieve seamless Amplitude HubSpot integration to enhance your data analytics and marketing efforts.
Integrating such diverse data can be challenging and tiresome, especially for a beginner & this is where Hevo saves the day.
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Hevo Data, helps you easily integrate data from multiple marketing and product analytics sources and applications such as Amplitude and visualise it in your desired BI tool for absolutely no cost!. Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only bringing in your data from multiple sources but also transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. You can easily visualise your unified data using your desired BI tool and create informative business reports.
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Tell us about your experience of setting up the Amplitude Looker integration! Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Ofem Eteng is a seasoned technical content writer with over 12 years of experience. He has held pivotal roles such as System Analyst (DevOps) at Dagbs Nigeria Limited and Full-Stack Developer at Pedoquasphere International Limited. He specializes in data science, data analytics and cutting-edge technologies, making him an expert in the data industry.
