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Hey Looker Users, I’m Chrissie, a Developer Relations Engineer at Looker. If you’re a Looker user who wants to analyze ad-hoc data in your Looker reports, I want to introduce you to Studio in Looker and offer some tips to get you started.
First, what is Studio in Looker?
Studio in Looker offers direct access to Looker Studio within your Looker interface. It expands Looker’s visualization and reporting capabilities and enhances internal reports. Now you can pull in ad-hoc data without writing LookML.
Second, why would you want to use Studio in Looker?
- It can boost efficiency: Streamline your reporting workflows and save valuable time.
- It offers simplicity in sharing: Effortlessly and securely share interactive reports with colleagues and stakeholders.
- It offers expanded data visualization: Create compelling visuals like charts, graphs, and maps to effectively communicate data insights.
- Allows you to access and integrate diverse data sources: Connect to and blend data from various sources, including Looker and Excel data sources.
Finally, now that you’re excited to try it, let’s build a report.
If you already have Studio in Looker enabled on your instance you can start right away by opening a Looker report. If not, you’ll want to reach out to your administrator for enabling and disabling Studio in Looker
Quick Start:
- Open the Looker menu
- Click Create
- Choose Report from the dropdown
- Connect via the Looker Connector or the Excel Connector
- Start building charts
Preview of creating a report
After you've created a report try some of these features.
- Build a chart.
- Try filtering your data.
- Pull more than one data source in with a connector.
- Do you want to use two data sources for one chart or table? Try blending data.
- You can build interactivity into your report with controls.
- Controls enable you to do things like:
- Setting parameter values.
- Linking to an external URL
- Filtering your report based on different dimensions
Here are key terms when working with Studio in Looker.
As you are navigating the documentation, you will sometimes discover a term that is similar to another you’ve heard, but you’re not quite sure if it’s the same. To clarify some of these similarities, refer to the glossary of shared terms.
Reports vs. Dashboards
A report is a tool that provides meaningful insights to internal users and stakeholders. Its advanced visualizations and ease of access help users to bring in additional data via connectors, incorporate beautiful visualizations, and view and analyze data without LookML.
A dashboard is a collection of stored queries that are displayed as visualizations or text. Dashboards are created entirely in LookML or in the Looker interface.
Each of these offer data visualizations. Looker dashboards are used for embedded projects, applications, and the full Looker ecosystem. Looker dashboards rely on the authoritative LookML to ensure correctness. Studio in Looker reports are used for internal insights, quick sharing, and analysis without LookML.
Data Modeling
Data modeling is setting up your data to be analyzed. When you first connect to data, Looker Studio recognizes the “fields” in your data source and pulls them in. Data modeling can help you structure your visualizations to deliver the most insight.
Here is some helpful documentation.
As you are getting started with Studio in Looker, here are five important Studio in Looker documentation that will offer scope and keep you going with the tool:
- Enabling and disabling Studio in Looker
- Using Studio in Looker
- Move, share, and copy reports
- Feature availability in Studio in Looker
- Troubleshooting Studio in Looker errors
When you try using Studio in Looker, please let me know in the comments what you tried!