Important Updates to Looker Studio Users on Scheduled Email Feature

[Indumathi]

Note: The below changes apply to all non-pro Looker Studio users and any non-pro assets that are still in “Owned by me.” If you are a Pro user with all your assets in Sandbox or Team Workspaces, these changes do not apply.

We're making changes to the email scheduling feature in Looker Studio (LS) to improve the reliability and efficiency of our email delivery system.

What's Changing:

• Removal of "Send Now": The ability to immediately send a report via email using the "Send Now" option will be removed.
• Removal of Custom Subject and Messages: The option to customize the email subject and message for scheduled emails will also be removed. Any custom messages in the existing schedules will be preserved, but you will no longer be able to edit them.
• Image in Preview: The preview of the report will not be added in the email and only the PDF file and link to the report will be sent.

What You Can Still Do:

• You can continue to schedule email reports to be delivered automatically at your desired frequency.
• This will ensure that your stakeholders continue to receive your reports on time.

Alternatives:

• For users who require immediate email delivery or custom messages, we recommend considering an upgrade to Looker Studio Pro. Looker Studio Pro provides enhanced features and flexibility to meet your reporting needs.
• Users can download a PDF of the report and send it via their own email client.

All non-pro Looker Studio users and any non-pro assets of pro-users that remain in “Owned by me” are now subject to these changes, effective immediately. For more information, please refer to our updated document 

We appreciate your understanding as we work to improve the Looker Studio experience. Thank you for being a valued Looker Studio user.

[omonereo-sand]

Hello, these changes have been affecting our reports, not being sent on time and being sent without any content. Are those bugs expected to continue happening? 

[mars124]

"We appreciate your understanding as we work to improve the Looker Studio experience."

It seems like the experience got worse though, especially with the removal of the report's preview image. HUGE DOWNGRADE.

[mik4el]

This is a really bad change. The removal of images completely broke my way of using Looker.

[BenAndersen]

I'm disappointed to see the removal of Custom Subject and Message options from Scheduled Emails. This change feels like a push toward the paid Pro plan.

Additionally, it would be great to have an option to translate the "View the interactive report:" text into other languages. With no context and a default English message, the email now feels generic—almost like spam—reducing its effectiveness for non-English-speaking recipients.

I hope Looker Studio reconsiders and brings back customization options to enhance the user experience.

[AlexG3]

Making a product worse in order to upsell us, sounds like Google.
Using the upsell on a product to try and lock us into other Google products, sounds like Google.
Not communicating these changes to report creators via an email, sounds like Google.

We implemented a rival tracking and analytics platform with the GA4 changes. We only used Looker Studio because it integrates so well with Google products but as these products keep getting worse to tie you into the Google ecosystem we are de-googling the business so will stop using the product entirely. We appreciate your understanding as we work to remove the Google experience.

[russells]

Very disappointing to see you using removal of features as a method of getting users to pay to upgrade. This feels very much like a Microsoft play.

You should be innovating and improving the platform to get us to upgrade, not taking features away.  

[ncompass]

At $9 per project, I am confused - what constitutes a 'project'?

I have lots of reports in Looker Studio, and these changes are more annoying than anything else.  I don't really see a reason for upgrading, but why make things more difficult for people?  Typical Google.

[dadrcheng]

The lost of preview image on schedule email is a deal breaker for us.  Time to move to another solution.

[ncompass]

So I have to assume that the reasoning behind this move was to make Looker Studio more efficient, either subscribers paid for Pro - or Looker Studio saved money in overheads of sending larger emails with converted reports and customised messaging.

But this now seems to have backfired. As a user of Gmail, I am now generating Previews of the PDF report instead, multiple times as are the recipients of Looker Studio reports.  The 'work' or generating a report and putting it in an email has moved from Looker Studio to an email client.  The result does not save any money, time or energy, it probably increases it.

If these changes were to make Looker Studio a more efficient product, then I think it has failed.

[jkanyae]

I am glad I found the answer why my once visually appealing Looker Studio daily emailed HTML dashboards are now links and PDFs.  I agree with the sentiment most commenters are posting - this is a significant downgrade I did not know was coming.

I appreciate Looker, but it's an odd formula to take away what was once basic functionality to motivate moving to the paid version.  Typically, I see most companies try to make their paid version more appealing, not their free version less appealing.

If resource constraints were a motivator here, my suggestion is the free version could provide the option to include a PDF or an HTML preview but not both.

[Daddyoohoo]

Looker team should return the old setup, this is a big mistake.

[russells]

This is especially frustrating when Gmail completely fails to render the PDF in preview.