Previewing Studio in Looker, the (Eventual) Future of Self-Service Reporting for Looker

Google recently made Studio in Looker, an embedded version of Looker Studio that runs within the main Looker user interface and connects to Looker’s governed semantic layer, available in pre-GA form for previewing and evaluation purposes before its full release next year.

Complementing the existing standalone (free-to-use) Looker Studio and (paid) Looker Studio Pro, Studio in Looker provides a more flexible, design-oriented interface for building reports and dashboards with a wide range of information-dense visualization components and complete control over how your reports are formatted and branded.

Studio in Looker also introduces data “mashup” capabilities to the Looker platform beginning with the ability to upload data from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and combine it with Looker datasets, making it possible for users to add their own data, for example lookup values or test metrics, into a report without IT or data team involvement.

Right now, Studio in Looker runs alongside the existing front-end Looker components and in-time will be able to access both Looker’s semantic model as well as other data sources using Google and third-party/community data connectors.

Eventually the intention is for Studio in Looker or some future iteration to become the default data visualization, report building and dashboard experience for Looker with the majority of future investment in this area going into these components, not the traditional dashboarding and reporting features present in Looker today.

Studio in Looker isn’t by default turned on in Looker instances and depending on your hosting version and authentication method you’ll need to in some cases submit a request form and then turn-on the feature as per the screenshots below, and once it’s available to your users you’ll see a Report option in the menu that appears when you press the new Create button.

So how does Studio in Looker work and what benefits does it bring compared to standard Looker dashboards and reports? What’s different about this embedded Looker Studio version from the standalone Studio/Studio Pro versions and how do the self-service/data-mashup features work?

How Do You Create a Studio in Looker Report?

A prerequisite for creating a Studio in Looker report is having the data needed for the report already available (including any calculated fields, right now in the preview release), and modeled using LookML in Looker’s semantic layer.

As of the time of writing (November 2024) the only data source options available are the Looker semantic model and, as we’ll see in a few moments, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet files.

Once you’ve selected your Looker data source and the explore you’ll be sourcing data from, you’ll then be presented with the report builder interface that’ll be familiar if you’ve used Looker Studio before except in this case you’ll see your Looker explore as the data source in the right-hand Data panel.

Some significant differences and improvements over the regular Looker content creation interfaces include:

• The ability to precisely-position charts and other report components around the page, as well as the ability to fine-tune the shape, background colour and other visual aspects of the page and each component

• A much-more straighforward process to add period-over-period calculations and indicators such as sparklines to metric tiles and other visualizations

• The ability to position time-range and other dimension controls and filters anywhere on the page, and to add more than one page to the report as I’ve done in this example

• And as you can see in the screenshot below, you can add images and shapes to the report canvas on-top of which you can overlay charts and, as I’ve done in the example below, metric tiles, to communicate concepts such as customer journey much-more visually than we could do with Looker before.

Users can also bring their own data, initially limited to just Microsoft Excel spreadsheet data but presumably expanding over-time to the full-range of supported Looker Studio data connectors, and upload it into the report to join and merge with the main dataset coming from Looker’s semantic model.

At least in this preview version of Studio in Looker there are some pretty-significant limitations that, honestly, to my mind rule it out for use in production situations right now (and of course it is a pre-GA feature with limited support); the full list can be found here but the most significant include:

• Inability to define calculated measures, which instead need to be defined in the underlying Looker semantic model, at least for now

• Only Looker and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (note, not Google Sheets) as data source options

• No ability to add external visualisation libraries or community visualisations (or indeed community data connectors), and some of the chart and control options available in standalone Looker Studio, for example URL embed, are not yet available

• Data blending (the equivalent to Looker’s merge results feature) is currently limited in functionality and scalability compared to standalone Looker Studio; for example the blending of large datasets or complex transformations is constrained.

Of course instead of using Studio in Looker, you can still use standalone Looker Studio or Looker Studio Pro with the Looker semantic model configured as one of the data sources. This approach leverages the governed, consistent data definitions and metrics provided by Looker while enabling the flexibility and extended feature set of standalone Looker Studio including:

• Connecting directly to a wide variety of data sources, such as BigQuery, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and external APIs, alongside Looker’s semantic model.

• Performing advanced data blending and transformation, creating complex relationships between datasets from multiple sources.

• Accessing a broader range of visualisation options, including community visualisations, third-party libraries, and custom JavaScript integrations.

• Sharing reports more flexibly with stakeholders outside the Looker environment via direct links, email, or embedding in websites.

• Enabling granular access controls and permissions for sharing and collaboration.

• Seamlessly integrating with other Google Workspace tools, such as Google Sheets, Google Drive, and other parts of the Google Cloud ecosystem.

So How Do I Choose Which Looker (Studio) Version to Use?

So when Studio in Looker becomes generally available and assuming the base features and limitations of the various Looker Studio versions stay as they are today, which version should you use for different reporting scenarios and when would regular Looker dashboards and reports be sufficient? The decision tree below represents our best understanding of what to use and when as of November 2024.

Interested? Find Out More!

Rittman Analytics is a boutique data analytics consultancy that helps ambitious, digital-native businesses scale-up and upgrade their data analytics capabilities using tools such as Looker and Looker Studio Pro.

We’re authorised delivery partners for Google Cloud along with Oracle, Segment, Cube, Dagster, Preset, dbt Labs and Fivetran and are experts at helping you build financial analytics and scalable, cloud-hosted data stacks that are designed for your organisation’s needs, use-cases and budget.

If you’re looking for some help and expertise with your Looker implementation or would just like to talk shop and share ideas and thoughts on what’s going on in your organisation and the wider data analytics world, contact us now to organise a 100%-free, no-obligation call — we’d love to hear from you!