[Preview] Data Preview on Studio data sources.

[mannybhatia]

Hello Looker Studio users

The Looker Studio team is introducing Data Preview on Studio Data sources.This feature aims to improve the analysts experience by allowing them to understand the source data before creating a chart. In the preview stage, the “Data Preview” feature is available only on Excel, Looker, BigQuery, CSV and Sheets based data sources. Additional data sources will be added incrementally.

What is included in these enhancements

A new “Data Preview” tab on the Datasource →. Fields page, which allows analysts to select from available dimensions and measures and show preview of data. When a user navigates to the Data Preview tab, they need to select dimensions and measures, and click “Refresh Data” to display the underlying data. Analysts can also change the field selection and click “Refresh Preview” to get updated data. 

Analysts can view additional information about the fields like data type, aggregation type, and description when they hover over the field selector or data table header.

 Why is it important?

Allowing analysts to preview datasource data enables them to understand the shape of the data, especially if they do not know the data. Enabling users to preview the source data structure also improves productivity as users spend less time trying to figure out the data.

Limitation

• For the private preview, the “Data Preview” feature is limited to Excel, Looker, BigQuery, CSV, and Sheets. Additional data sources will be added incrementally.
• Keeping the performance and query costs in mind, Preview is currently limited to the first 1000 rows without any sorting capability.
• Based on the data connector, Studio enforces limitations on the number of dimensions and measures that can be queried. Data previews are subject to these same constraints as well. These constraints are detailed in the footer section of the preview tab for user reference

Feedback

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