Book Image

Data Storytelling with Google Looker Studio

By : Sireesha Pulipati
Book Image

Data Storytelling with Google Looker Studio

By: Sireesha Pulipati

Overview of this book

Presenting data visually makes it easier for organizations and individuals to interpret and analyze information. Looker Studio is an easy-to-use, collaborative tool that enables you to transform your data into engaging visualizations. This allows you to build and share dashboards that help monitor key performance indicators, identify patterns, and generate insights to ultimately drive decisions and actions. Data Storytelling with Looker Studio begins by laying out the foundational design principles and guidelines that are essential to creating accurate, effective, and compelling data visualizations. Next, you’ll delve into features and capabilities of Looker Studio – from basic to advanced – and explore their application with examples. The subsequent chapters walk you through building dashboards with a structured three-stage process called the 3D approach using real-world examples that’ll help you understand the various design and implementation considerations. This approach involves determining the objectives and needs of the dashboard, designing its key components and layout, and developing each element of the dashboard. By the end of this book, you will have a solid understanding of the storytelling approach and be able to create data stories of your own using Looker Studio.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1 – Data Storytelling Concepts
5
Part 2 – Looker Studio Features and Capabilities
10
Part 3 – Building Data Stories with Looker Studio

Using parameters

Parameters in Looker Studio allow both report editors and viewers to input data values to use with calculated fields and connectors. Parameters enable you to create more dynamic reports. There are three ways in which you can use parameters in Looker Studio:

  • In a calculated field, to show the results based on the parameter value set by the report editor or chosen by the report viewer
  • To pass query parameters to a custom SQL query for the BigQuery connector
  • To pass values to community connector parameters

The parameter values can be set and modified in multiple ways:

  • The default value in the parameter configuration (by the data source editor).
  • Report components – at the chart level, page level, and report level (by the report editor).
  • Interactive controls in the report (by report users).
  • In the report link by passing the parameter names and values as URL-encoded JSON strings. This allows advanced users to configure reports...