Looker Studio Tips and Tricks

Dealing with Duplicate Rows

As most people who work with large datasets know, one trick of joining two datasets together is the potential for creating duplicate rows. In an ideal situation, you’ll be able to manipulate the data into a form that does not have any duplicates. However, this isn’t always possible. Here are some notes on visualizing a dataset with duplicate rows in Looker Studio:

• Table visualizations will deduplicate themselves based on the columns being shown. This is especially helpful when you are joining to create filters for a base dataset.
• Other visualizations that summarize the data do not deduplicate before performing an aggregation. You’ll need to be careful to make sure your visualizations are providing accurate information and not double counting - sometimes it can be helpful to be creative with using averages instead of sums, or otherwise creating calculated fields that get you to the correct summarized information. 

Blended Data Sources

Looker Studio provides a feature called Blends that allows you to create visualizations based on data from multiple sources. This is a great way for non-coders to join datasets without needing to do a SQL join. Google provides very thorough instructions on how to create Blends here. There are some limitations worth noting:

• You can only include up to 10 columns from each of the datasets being blended. 
• Blending only supports joining on two fields that match across the datasets (i.e. you can’t join on Field A <= Field B, you can only join on Field A = Field B)

Sharing Dashboards

As with other products like Google Docs and Google Sheets, you can share Looker Studio dashboards with anyone who has a Google account. They don't need to have PAD account to view and/or edit your dashboard! However, if the person will need to modify the underlying data or the connection to BigQuery, you should add this person to PAD. (You can request an account for someone by reaching out to help@techallies.org!) 

Additionally, Looker Studio allows you to schedule email delivery of a PDF version of your dashboard to the people of your choice. Here's how:

1. View the report you want to schedule
   • Note: You must be an owner or editor of this report.
2. In the upper right, click Share, then click Schedule email delivery.
3. (Optional) Enter a list of email addresses.
4. (Optional) Enter a custom email subject and message.
5. (Optional) Select the report pages to include in the email.
6. Set the date and time you wish to begin sending the report.
7. Set the delivery frequency.

For more information on Scheduled Email Delivery of Looker Studio reports you can read Google's Documentation here.

Troubleshooting Common Connection Errors

Below are some common troubleshooting steps to connection errors you may see when working in Looker Studio.

Access Denied Errors

If you are receiving reports of viewers seeing an "Access Denied" message when trying to access a Looker Studio dashboard, it may be due to the underlying credential access on the datasets. To confirm that the credentials are set to the owner's credentials, you can take the following steps:

1. Navigate to the data source in the report by clicking the pencil edit button next to the data source name under the 'setup' pane in the edit report view.
2. Click on the name next to data credentials in the window that pops up.
3. Ensure that owner's credentials are checked
4. If you see that viewer's credentials are selected, try swapping to owner's credentials and check if your report viewers can access it now

If owner's credentials are already selected, and you are still having issues, please let us know, and we will continue troubleshooting the issues.

Fields not showing up in Looker Studio when connecting to a table:
JSON-type fields are not currently supported by Looker Studio, and if you connect to a table that contains JSON-type fields Looker Studio will automatically omit them. 

Need more help? Contact us at help@techallies.org.