The first consideration, before you even open Google Data Studio, is to ensure that your data is ready, i.e. In addition, there are over a hundred partner connectors, which connect other third-party tools directly into Data Studio, although some of these connectors are paid services.įinally, there are a handful of open source connectors and if you’re a developer, you can create your own community connector.ĭata Studio works equally well for Google Sheets tables with 10 rows as it does with huge SQL or BigQuery datasets with millions of rows of data. In addition, you’ll see direct file uploads, popular SQL databases, BigQuery, Google Analytics, YouTube, Ads, Google Cloud services etc. One of these connectors is Google Sheets, which means that any data you can get into a Google Sheet is accessible for visualizing in Data Studio. There are currently 18 Google Connectors which connect different Google platforms directly into Data Studio. The old adage “garbage in, garbage out” is as applicable to visual reporting as to any other sphere of computing.ĭata Studio dashboards consist of two parts: the dashboard (obviously!) and the data source. Of course, it has the reliability, scalability and support that only Google can provide. You get sharing and collaboration seamlessly built-in. If you’re already using Google products in your analytics workflow, then it’s super easy to hook them up to Data Studio. It’s very quick to create dashboards once you know the basics. It’s simple and intuitive, so it doesn’t take long to get the hang of the basics. It’s free, which is a significant factor considering the steep cost of alternatives. Ultimately, Data Studio is a tool you use as the final piece of your data analytics pipeline, to show your results visually and share insights and answers with others. The premise is that you can connect all of your disparate business data sources and easily build beautiful, interactive dashboard reports to display that information, atop Google’s super-reliable, powerful, scalable architecture. It has a simple drag-and-drop interface, so you can easily add charts and build reports without needing any deep technical knowledge. It was launched in mid-2016 and came out of beta mode in October 2018.

What is Google Data Studio?ĭata Studio is Google’s free data visualization and business intelligence reporting tool. This is a guest post from Ben Collins – freelance data analyst and developer, and founder of The Collins School of Data.

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