The Google Cloud team just officially announced that Looker Studio will now be called...Data Studio...yes, Data Studio again.

Just official, 2 days ago on the Google Cloud Blog, titling:

“Data Studio returns as new home for Data Cloud assets“

I must admit, that’s a nice way of putting what looks like a rollback at first glance.

The data visualization software will also have a new logo in the form of two connected magnifying glasses, symbolizing data exploration and visualization of shared blue insights…I imagine…or connected blob assets…anyway, I don’t think they’re handcuffs…or maybe…

It is the 4th logo for Data Studio

Discovery of the announcement

I’ll let you read the article that explains the change and the reasons for this step backward, at least in terms of naming.

Without any clue, if we dig a little deeper into the positioning of Looker and Data Studio described in the article, we can easily interpret a number of clues regarding what Data Studio will be, or rather, what it will persist in remaining.

With some additional features as the home of Data Cloud Assets, interacting with variety of data sources and assets, including reports, but also:

• Conversational agents

• Data Apps from Colab notebooks

In addition to this article, The Google Cloud Next event taking place in 9 days will allow us to learn more and reveal what the future of Data Studio will be, mostly in term of upcoming other features.

We need more, we need guarantees for the future

As an expert in this software, and also a member of the analytics community…and by the way, part of the digital industry in general that adopts Data Studio broadly for a while, I had by interpretations about what I read, facing high expectations:

• I hope the tool follows the logical evolution of what we expect from a visualization tool in 2026

• I hope it embraces technologies where humans are not alone in the loop when it comes to producing demanding modes of data exposition of all kinds, including relevant interactive reports.

There are many challenges to address. We need much more today than yesterday, and this impression of a symbolic step backward through a simple name was honestly very annoying as the first touch of this change.

We all want Data Studio (there we go, I’m getting back into the habit) to follow the paradigm shifts, the lightning-fast technological evolutions, and the support for change in operations... that we see everywhere else.

So, let’s see what will be announced during the Google Cloud Next in details and how much it is aligned with our current needs of acceleration.

Sharing my first reactions on LinkedIn…

When I heard about this change, I had to share it with the community, and the place to do so in 2026 is LinkedIn.

I was surprised by the number of passionate people listening on a Saturday on LinkedIn and I was happy to find all my friends, and the whole community sharing the same feeling…a consensus that the communication from Google Cloud opened the door to too much negative speculations and the same interpretations. A form of confirmation from peers.

Thank you Ralph, Brais, Siavash, Gianluca, Marc, Shane, Luis…for your takes.

Personal note

On a personal note, I’ll also have to make some decisions regarding my little ecosystem around Looker Studio... sorry, I would say Data Studio.

After nearly 10 years of external advocacy and collaborating with every PM who has worked on this product, I would have preferred to find out some other way than through a blog alert a Saturday morning... but it is what it is.

The final clarifications

To end on a positive note, my contacts in the Looker and Data Studio teams reached out after hearing my concerns. They reassured me about the future and what will be announced in 11 days in Las Vegas.

Even though it looked like a bad joke to those outside the organization, they explained that reverting to the original name was the best way to end over three years of confusion. I understood this as an admission that trying to turn Data Studio into Looker Studio was a mistake, something many of us agree on.

Long live Data Studio! Here’s to fewer unpatched bugs and more innovation that truly embraces how we want to showcase analytics data.

Nevertheless, we’ll be keeping a close eye on every sign that things might be going off track and won’t hesitate to make the tough calls when needed.

Forewarned is forearmed, especially for a digital analyst.

…so “With Looker Studio” becomes “With Data Studio”

And now, I’m embarking on a long find-and-replace journey now that I’ve mapped out the action plan.

A lot of steps involved because the digital ecosystem has become quite distributed.

I’ll be chipping away at it gradually…piece by piece, as it is pretty tedious and I don’t want to put my other side projects on hold.

Official announcement on Google Cloud blog

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/looker-studio-is-data-studio

Voilà

If so, I have a new little custom visualization cooked up just for you. 🎨

Let’s build later the funnel chart I need …or maybe now

It could get you out of some sticky situations that are hard to handle with the funnel chart offered by Looker Studio or through a table chart on steroids, as I often do for my clients.

I had planned to create this type of visualization later, one where I have full creative freedom and flexibility, as part of a larger project.

However, an event accelerated things.

A few weeks ago, I learned through a discussion with Michele Kiss on #measure Slack channel (the place to be if you want to join an amazing community of analytics practitioners helping each other - end of the promo moment) that a custom funnel chart visualization created by the Ayima agency had been decommissioned.

This custom viz was practical for some Looker Studio users because it took a list of metrics as input to draw the funnel, rather than a single metric broken down by a dimension as Looker Studio’s native funnel chart does.

The Funnel Chart proposed by default in Looker Studio

On the other hand, personally, the funnel chart provided by Looker Studio can handle simple needs. But the overly automatic responsive behavior of the elements it includes makes things difficult when you want to add it to a specific area of a page…and keep it easy to read.

My operational version of funnel chart

So, tackling these two major limitations was what I had in mind:

• The data model flexibility

• A purely tabular drawing approach with numerous styling options to calibrate the visualization exactly as desired

It’s done, and it’s a gift!

I've lost count of how many times writing an article or developing a component started with a discussion on our measure Slack channel. Here's one more.

Free and maintained as part of a whole

This version is completely free and it will be permanently available as part of an encompassing product roadmap. Don’t worry, it won’t disappear, and in fact, it will get better over time. I already have upgrades in mind.

I would be happy to get your feedback.

More information about the Funnel Chart

Now, if the way I’ve addressed my own needs resonates with the challenges you’re facing with funnel charts, I invite you to try out this new custom viz. You can find all the details on this page. And if you have any questions, you know where to find me!

Funnel Chart Overview & Installation

Post Scriptum

However, watch out, I can see the funnel critics coming: We agree, UX is anything but a funnel, but I’m sure you use plenty of other modelling and abstraction tools that are only there to represent a form of digestible reality 😛

Voilà!

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This kind of framing is a terrible way to start a productive conversation, but let’s look past that for a moment.

The truth is, it is never normal. Anomaly flags usually pop up because:

• Missing Context: The person looking at the data lacks the specific business context needed to understand the observation.

• Broken Thermometer: The analytics setup is partially broken and no longer reflects actual business performance.

• Hidden Complexity: The situation requires a deep statistical dive to decode what’s happening and find a workaround.

• Misunderstanding: In rare cases, the observation itself is simply wrong due to a lack of knowledge.

• …

Regardless of your maturity level or the resources at your disposal, you need the right tools to react quickly.

Designing for Clarity

The way we design dashboards and interactive reports should serve as the first and second lines of investigation. A digital analyst’s job is to live and breathe the client’s business context and translate those stakes into a robust data collection environment.

Whether you are a data viz specialist or a generalist, your reports must leverage circumstantial knowledge, which includes knowing exactly who is going to read them.

If you know me, you know I love this part of the job: 🎨 creating interfaces that fit the context, stripping away cognitive load, delivering clear insights (or at least clear data) as efficiently as possible, and pushing the boundaries of Looker Studio 😉...for sure...there is no spoon.

It is also important to find solutions that work for the many:

• High standards of quality

• Using the most widely deployed software, often free

• Accounting for real-world constraints

Store of Premium Looker Studio templates, soon

This is why I will launch soon a store dedicated to Premium Looker Studio templates. I know I’ve been saying “soon” for a while now... but you know how side projects go.

The first template will be dedicated to GA4. Among the thirty-odd pages currently in design, it includes the tool shown in the video below: a reporting page designed to give you an instant status assessment when you or your team spot a temporal anomaly.

Unsuspected sophistication data preparation and visualisation inside Looker Studio

I’ve managed to reproduce Shapley values directly within Looker Studio, without any external data preparation. Challenging but possible 😁

This type of data modelling and its related data viz are incredibly effective at confirming or clearing the usual suspects during a data investigation. In our case, it simply involves calculating the contribution of each dimension and its associated value to the observed variation.

An alternative version of my custom date range comparator

To make this work, I also rebuilt a custom period selector & comparator 📆. It’s much more user friendly than my previous versions, featuring sliders that make easier the selection of short time frames. I shared on LinkedIn a sneak peek of this a few days ago using Google Search Console data.

That’s all for now, just a first taste of the Premium Looker Studio Template for Google Analytics that will kick off my store 🛒 . And it is built on the native GA4 connector.

I probably won’t be able to resist showing you a few more innovations before the launch... I have some very cool things in the works regarding year-over-year analysis, e-commerce journey...but I’ve already said too much.

Mehdi, With Looker Studio

Stay tuned.

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Let’s dive in!

Link to component

You can now generate a link directing a specific chart or component in your report.

A nice way to refer to data in a report and drive team members to the good section in the report.

• Right click on a component of the page

• Click on “Link to this page”

• Turn off “Link to your current report view” if you don’t want to keep the applied current filter settings (so keeping or not the context of exploration)

• Copy the link in your clipboard

• End Use it in your communications!

Small suggestion:
Now, imagine if those links to component could be used also directly in your report links as anchors?! Unfortunately, it is not possible for the moment. My first reflex was to test it when I heard about this new feature.
We definitely need anchors: going to a section in the middle of the page, back to the top of a page, sending to exploration section...

Asking to the LS team to get this extension of feature is in my todo list 😇🤞

Export Chart to PNG image

An feature to streamline the collection of yoru report assets for external usages, like preparing slides for a presentation.

I have mixed feelings about this feature. When designing Looker Studio reports, we often rely on workarounds, tricks or combine multiple charts to create what appears to be a single visual for the reader. In such cases, the exported image might lead to confusion due to the discrepancy between the export and the actual report. We will have to see...

Additionally, I noticed some side effects depending on how style configurations are distributed across the chart, page, and report levels. For instance, a chart will be exported as white on white if the background color is set at the page level (ex: black) while the text color is configured at the chart level (ex: white).

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Conversational Analytics: Show reasoning

(only for Looker Studio Pro Users)

A new feature to display the way your prompt have been interpreted by Gemini through several steps.

For simple prompts, the reasoning text just aligns with the initial wording leading to “how was this calculated”. However, for more analytical prompts, this information helps identify potential formula or interpretation issues.

Beyond this welcome addition, Conversational Analytics is becoming increasingly powerful, and the SQL generated and executed on BigQuery tables has significantly improved regarding aggregation logic.

Looker Studio Pro subscription from Google Workspace Admin console

For Google Workspace administrators, this offers a more centralized way to manage Looker Studio Pro subscriptions, one that is more natural from a governance standpoint than using the Looker Studio interface.

Voilà for this release.

Still energized by last week’s Superweek event, I’m back with a full tank of content ideas. If you’re interested, you know where to find me. And if not, I’ve got you covered below.

Subscribe now

Hello,

It’s been a while since I last wrote to you, and it’s time to get back into a good routine. For 2026, I’ve decided to migrate the “With Looker Studio” newsletter management to Substack: This platform is very practical and perfectly meets my needs, which are, after all, fairly simple...and it’s free, unlike the previous software I was using.

Through a different distribution channel, Substack will also allow me to share posts that aren’t directly related to Looker Studio, but rather to the fields of data and digital analytics in general, or to publish “Notes”.

I’ve created a publication called As we see it now to share these kinds of articles and general thoughts. It’s also a way to compensate for the increasingly limited possibilities on LinkedIn. Consequently, 2026 for me will likely mean less LinkedIn and more Substack.

Enough about Substack, let’s get back to Looker Studio. In this 13th issue of the newsletter, you will find the following content:

• A first Looker Studio hack to create text boxes with styles and HTML formatting

• A second hack to roll back modern-chart based reports to former charts

• The main new features released these last 3 months in Looker Studio

• 3 just-for-fun shared reports about video clips generated with Gemini, Mirrored line chart ans Superweek 2026 program

Mehdi

Looker Studio Hack
HTML formatting & styles in text boxes

Since the release of Chips and Query Result Variables inside Looker Studio, text formatting in text boxes is based on HTML with hidden tags.

You probably noticed it, copying & pasting texts from Looker Studio text boxes to external text editors carries over those hidden tags. Not convenient.

💡 BUT! The reverse is also true!
You can take this opportunity to improve the formatting and styles of your text boxes with HTML tags and style attribute.
You just need to prepare your HTML code outside of Looker Studio, then copy it in your Looker Studio text box.

Here an example of warning box with a list and blinking elements, introducing the access to a new report.
To do it, I've used span, strong, br, ul and li HTML tags, with style attributes.

I would not be surprised to see the addition of a rich text editor for text boxes in the future...

PS: This capability is not officially documented, so use this hidden gem with caution.
All the tags and attributes are not allowed. For instance, "style" tags are not allowed and "A" tags are transformed automatically to built-in link components. You need to test if your use case is feasable.
Not perfect but this hack allows some new possibilities of sophistication.

Looker Studio Hack
Rolling back modern-chart based reports to former charts

Here's a little hack about managing charts within a Looker Studio report.
Contrary to what the official documentation says, you can still roll back even if your report already uses modernized charts. The hack is applicable also to a fresh new report.

To do so, simply add an image to your report and right-click on it to use the "Extract theme from image" feature.

It seems that this feature hasn't yet been updated to be compatible with modernized charts, even better, it actually lets you revert reports based on the new chart generation back to the old version. 🥚

Here's how:

• Add an image if there isn’t one already

• Right-click the image and select "Extract theme from image"

• Choose one of the proposed themes

• Refresh your browser tab

Next time you open an old report, you will know there is still a fallback solution if you realize that migrating it to modernized charts wasn't such a good idea (...or too much work do it now).

I'm not sure how long this hack will remain valid, maybe this post will even cause its demise 😁, but since the old chart generation is destined to disappear anyway, let's consider this tip as a reassuring way to migrate reports while keeping a backup plan handy for a rollback.

Looker Studio released features

1. New Shape Elements

Until today, only circle and rectangle elements were available.
But you can now add the following elements in your report pages, like inside Google Slides:

Triangles, Stars, Hearts, Diamonds, Pentagons, Hexagons, Octagons, Cylinders, Arrows and Callouts with options to customize the position of the tail.

My favourite new shapes are callouts, stars, and diamonds. I'll probably use them the most, avoiding the upload of pictures.

2. Hourly frequency for alerts and scheduled reports (only for Looker Studio Pro users)

For several years now, Looker Studio Pro has offered a configurable alert system on report charts. Until now, the highest available frequency was daily.

A new preview feature now allows you to create the same alerts on an hourly basis and to define the specific time window during which you want to receive them.

This is yet another reason to consider getting a Looker Studio Pro user license.
Beyond governance and report management capabilities for an organisation already using Google Cloud Platform, you can now add a technical or business monitoring layer with information delivery times, and therefore responsiveness, that will satisfy any functional or marketing team (without relying on observability tools usually handled at lower data engineering layers).

It is also now possible to schedule report deliveries on an hourly frequency.

This update will help address many use cases I encounter. Of course, it only makes sense if your data warehouse or analytics tool is capable of providing fresh data on an hourly basis as well, and not with a five hour delay...I am sure you can guess which solution I am referring to (sorry, I like bashing it for 6 years 😁).

3. Component visibility control in report view mode

It is now possible to hide a page element or an entire page based on the value of a variable or the configuration of a 'group membership variable':

• Group membership variables: This is a feature that links a component's visibility in view mode to a Google Group or email address. This use case is directly related to organization data governance, so it is natural that Looker Studio offers it exclusively to Pro users.

• Variables: Using variables to trigger the visibility of an element or a page in view mode is available to everyone. Excited about this feature and what it allows.

4. Overriding field id to filter across data sources

This feature highlights one of Looker Studio's long standing but lesser known capabilities: filtering across different data sources that share common field IDs and are populated with the same values.

With this addition, you can specifically declare this override within the interface and configure filter controls that will impact all data sources sharing the same field ID. The documentation notes a few limitations, though they are quite logical, The main one: any change to an ID will require an update to all instances where that field is used, as the override ID replaces the original one.

Until now, it was possible to achieve the same result by creating calculated fields sharing the same IDs across each data source. For now, let's consider this feature as a way to make an existing capability more explicit.

5. New chart type: The Histogram

To put it simply, this is a version of the bar chart that allows you to include bins directly within the chart configuration. This makes it easy to group numerical values and aggregate their distribution.
I don't personally have a use for it, making usually the same with data preparation outside of Looker Studio or using simple dimensions...but why not...

Just-for-fun Shared reports

Insight video clips with Gemini 3 for your standalone data story telling

A few months ago I created a just-for-fun report that displays product ranking data and track the associated volatility. At that time I created two characters, Don Hutchart and Anna Lyz, whose role was to dynamically comment on the interactive report.

Here the next level with the generation of video clips thanks to genAI for a standalone data story telling.

Read the article and watch the videos to discover the results of this very funny experimentation based on Gemini Veo 3.

Mirrored line chart Vs 100% Stacked Area Chart with Looker Studio

I’m not a big fan of mirrored line charts and that’s putting it mildly. So, in this article, I decided to revisit one of the example I found in an article about AI.

Superweek 2026 - The International Analytics conference

As I do every year ahead of Superweek Analytics Summit, I rolled out a new version of my shared Looker Studio report, shared and available through this blog post.

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Hello,

Time is flying by, and so much has happened since the previous edition of this newsletter. I’ve been passionately working on the LS Premium Templates project and its offshoots. Little by little, the project is growing, new tasks and developments keep piling up as ambitions rise, new key elements are identified within the templates ecosystem.

I can't wait to share all of this with you, but in the meantime, let’s talk a bit about what’s new with Looker Studio and the content I’ve put together for you:

• How to transform a pie chart to an advisable bar chart
   

• Customizing your line chart to look like as a slope chart in Looker Studio
   

• A demo of Conversational Analytics, under steroids with Code Interpreter
   

• An important update of Looker Studio
   

• A minor version of my Chrome Extension: Fixing problems of incompatibilities with the overhaul of the edit UI
   

• A new just-for-fun shared report: Ranking volatility & top-selling products for e-commerce

Mehdi

Transform a pie chart to an advisable bar chart

Back to basics with this blog post.

"I understand, you like pie charts but let me propose you an alternative before deciding"

I've had to say this sentence many times, and I imagine you have too. So, here's how I usually replace that pie chart with a bar chart using Looker Studio modern-ized charts.

This article is available in English and French.

Customizing your line chart as a slope Chart

With this tutorial, let's take advantage of the new style capabilities in Looker Studio to create a nicer slope chart than before with line chart customizations.

Demo of Conversational Analytics with Code Interpreter

When Python and its libraries meet Gemini & Looker for data exploration and analysis.

This article explores what Conversational Analytics, the Looker Studio Pro's Gemini-powered AI feature, can do when supercharged with Code Interpreter. These preview features show great promise for the future.
I've played with it through a use case of multiples generation for correlation analysis, prompted with natural language 🗣️🤖.

Visual Overhaul of Looker Studio edition panels

2 months ago, all the edition panels have been graphically revamped. You will find the details in the LinkedIn post.
Beyond the fresh and new feeling of discovery, there have clearly been many modifications, some beneficial to the interface, others that may raise concerns regarding usability and the cognitive effort needed to locate & identify quickly the same options.

We also noticed some bugs that avoid style changes to be saved or fields list to be loaded. Fortunately, these bugs are raised by the community and fixed by the LS team.

Chrome Extension: Compatible with the new edition panels

After the release mentioned above, I had to update the Looker Studio Companion to be compatible with the new design. Few minor fixes were necessary to retrieve all the features of settings.

A new just-for-fun shared report

Top-Selling Products & Ranking Volatility for time machines e-commerce business. 

I'm very happy to share with you my latest creation in Looker Studio.
As always, it's a mix of business thinking, data modeling, Looker Studio hacks, and visual design inspiration. It was super fun to design it. Don't tell me you don't like time traveling, pop art comics and interactive ranking visualization.

Discover all the details of this project, then jump on the report to play with it.

9 just-for-fun reports are now available on the blog.
In retrospect, I realize how eclectic the topics and inspirations are. It goes in all directions which makes perfect sense for this kind of creations, often squeezed between more important side projects... but often, when an idea strikes....

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert

Hello,

I'm back for this 11th issue of "With Looker Studio" Newsletter! It's been a while, but don't worry, I summarized all the important news of these latest months to continue sharpening your LS skills, today with:

• A free Template sample for GA4Dataform
   

• An educative way to discover Looker Studio Pro with courses
   

• The latest updates of Looker Studio
   

• The review of a freshly released feature: The Query Result Variables
   

• The addition of a new feature in my Chrome Extension: Expandable sections for chart style tab
   

• 2 new free-to-use reporting tool for Google Analytics 4

A lot of contents and news...so let's start!

Mehdi

Template sample for GA4Dataform

GA4Dataform is a free solution that simplifies the process of transforming raw Google Analytics 4 data in BigQuery into actionable insights.
It offers pre-built SQL models that generate user-friendly tables. This eliminates the need for manual data cleaning and transformation, saving users days, weeks, or even months of work. GA4Dataform transform your raw GA4 event data into actionable insights with industry-leading, enterprise-level efficiency and precision. Designed for digital analysts, technical marketers, data teams, and developers.

So, this free template is a sort of starter pack based on one of the demo tables generated by GA4Dataform: A session aggregation table
If you’ve deployed the solution & scheduled the daily data refreshes in Dataform, the table is already available in your BigQuery dataset. If that’s not the case, it’s an opportunity to activate the BigQuery export of GA4 data and test GA4Dataform.

I strongly recommend to adopt GA4Dataform, built by a super talented team - Superform Labs - I had the chance to work with for this template.
Trust me, life will be smoother if you already deal with GA4 BigQuery exports.

Looker Studio Pro Essentials: New Course

Ready to learn about Looker Studio Pro (LSP) features and their benefits? You will find a new official course on Google Cloud Skills Boost.

Through educational animations - clear / nicely executed - commented with relevant examples, you will discover the following features:

• Team workspaces and folders

• Scheduled reports and delivery

• Personal links

• Advanced user management and permissions

• Audit logs and security

• Cloud Customer Care plans adapted to the level of requirements

• And the Looker Studio community, launched last year

I reviewed the course and found it super adapted for people wondering what benefits LSP could provide and what you need to know if you've just subscribe to the offer. It will probably trigger some additional questions but the LS Community is made to find the related answers.
For the future, I would love to see additional contents in the syllabus about not covered LSP features like Alerts. Alerts feature is an important benefit of LSP.

Looker Studio new features

What a prolific beginning of year when it comes for Looker Studio team to releasing new features.

And you know what? All the additions announced last year in November for the 2025 roadmap are already available! A good signal for the future.

For now, you already have enough to explore new playgrounds, improve your reports, and without falling too far behind. Trust me by getting ahead... you will still have other things to handle and adopt later. Jump into the following and more important features / changes:

• Modern(ized) charts
  Graphical refreshment of charts with new welcomed style options, manually enabled for existing reports

• Responsive layouts for your reports
  The alternative of free form layouts for adaptative design following the width of the browser. Perfect for mobile reports. Here a demo video on LinkedIn.

• Query results variables
  Data injection through chips in text element (see the dedicated article in the next newsletter topic)

• Data preview
  Explore easily the data of your sources with a table visualization like inside BigQuery Studio

• Warning for external links
  Interstitial alert when clicking on an external links. I would be nice for the future, to switch this feature as optional and based on a governance decisions, and not automatic for all links.

• Scorecard for dimensions

• New limitations & quotas for scheduled mails
  The 3 features described below will be available only for Pro users and the quotas here will be applied

• ...and more, including improvements for Looker and partner connectors

Feature Review: Query Result Variables

Query Result Variables are insertions of dynamic data in your text elements. Discover this Looker Studio new addition through my latest post including:

• Definition and use cases

• How-to add it in a text element

• Data configuration and selection

• Styles customization capabilities

• Access to the variables

• Review Video

• Additional remarks and limitations

This article is available in 🇬🇧 English and in 🇫🇷 French.

The LS Companion - Chrome Extension: New Feature

If you’re not yet familiar with the Looker Studio Companion, it’s an extension I developed to improve productivity when creating reports and dashboards.

It includes now the feature in action below: Expandable sections for chart style tab.
The Style tab for charts has become, over time, very rich in options. Recently, the modern(ized) charts have also brought their share of additional and very welcome customizations.
The scrolling depth needed - and the up&down scanning - to find and change a simple option has become more complicated, especially on charts like time series or tables. While waiting for an official revamp by the Looker Studio team, I addressed the issue with a new option in the Companion’s "Settings" tab with expandable sections. It makes my life easier 😁.

I hope it will also improve your experience inside Looker Studio.

Free new tools inside Withlookerstudio.com

At last, I'm happy to introduce 2 new free tools I've created with Looker Studio for Google Analytics 4 data from the native connector:

• The Podium Chart
  Allowing the generation of top 3 rankings using dimensions suitable for logos & pictures: GenAI traffic, Browsers, Operating Systems and Countries. Playing with perspective effects and pictures, very fun but complicated to build.

• The Days of Week X Hours Heatmap
  The kind of visualization to identify the time slots when there is concentration of traffic, engagements or conversions.

2 ways to display directly your GA4 data through advanced interfaces. Your turn to play.

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert

Hello,

Through this 10th issue of "With Looker Studio" Newsletter, you will find the following news and contents:

• A tutorial to create a time frame control for your series charts
   

• A quick-win solution to adapt your data model to fit with funnel chart setup
   

• The roadmap and features announced last week by the Looker Studio team
   

• The latest updates of Looker Studio
   

• A new just-for-fun shared report
   

• The recording of my talk at the first edition of the Piwik PRO Day

Mehdi

How to create a time frame control for your Looker Studio series chart

A tutorial to create a custom time frame control for your time series charts inside Looker Studio with parameters and data blending. 
(article available in 🇬🇧 English and 🇫🇷 French)

How to adapt your data model to fit with the setup of the new funnel chart

The new funnel chart requires to set up 2 fields as incomes. Let's see how to adapt your existing data model when it provides a series of metrics with this blog post.
(article available in 🇬🇧 English and 🇫🇷 French)

Announced roadmap and upcoming new features

Last week, the Google Cloud BI team introduced the roadmap of Looker & Looker Studio products. Let’s debrief the announcements about Looker Studio and Looker Studio Pro and the mentioned upcoming new features. with this article.
(article available in 🇬🇧 English and 🇫🇷 French)

Looker Studio new features

These 2 last months, Looker Studio team has released the following features:

• The Funnel Chart Type

• The Microsoft Excel Connector (no more in preview)

• Some new partner connectors

• User interface improvements and preparations for coming new features

Just-for-fun shared report

Dorothy wasn’t supposed to leave the Yellow Brick Road, like a metric that is not supposed to go out of the expected ranges. So, let's go for this just-for-fun shared report inspired by The Wizard of Oz and anomaly detection series charts.🧙🏻‍♀️

Piwik PRO Day: Talk recording

Last October 22, it was a pleasure to talk at the first edition of the Piwik PRO Day. If you missed this nice virtual event, don't worry: A catch-up session is possible. All the recordings of the conferences are available on Youtube. Mine was about Visualizing Piwik PRO data, inside the interface of the Analytics Suite, but also with Looker Studio.

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert

Hello,

Here comes the 9th issue of With Looker Studio Newsletter and my aim is to send it every month.
For now, I'm happy to share with you some news and contents:

• My latest blog post about the preview release of Excel connector!
   

• 3 freshly updated blog posts, available in English, but also in French. 3 posts that became classic solutions
   

• The latest important releases of Looker Studio
   

• A teaser about a new project I'm working on right now and I wish to release before the end of the year

Mehdi

The Looker Studio native connector for Excel is available in preview

The native Looker Studio connector for Excel is now available in preview for all and I wrote last July about my first tests in this article.

3 freshly updated classic blog posts

Let's go back to basics with these 3 tutorials I've just refreshed.

Few years ago, I wrote them after the amazing release of the "parameter" feature.
It was a way to demonstrate how we can improve the reader experience of our Looker Studio interactive reports.

• How to add a dimension selector to control dynamically which data is displayed in your charts

• How to create a metric selector to choose which measure is displayed

• How to configure a time granularity slider & control the date dimension of your time series charts

I'm trying to keep them up-to-date and as clear as possible after all the features released these last years.

Cerise sur le gâteau : These articles are now all available in French 🇫🇷 through the side bar of the English version.

Looker Studio new features

These 2 last months, Looker Studio team has released the following features:

• Conditional formatting for collapsed pivot tables

• Partner Connectors, including the official connector of Piwik PRO

• The Gemini AI formula assistant to help to create calculated fields (only for Looker Studio Pro users)

• The automatic generation of Google Slides, powered also bo Gemini AI for insights and annotations (only for Looker Studio Pro users)

A new project is coming

Let's finish with a small teaser :)

I'm thinking about this project for a while and it is probably the best moment to launch it regarding what is happening in the digital and data industry. In addition, my recent discussions with friends, peers, and partners reassured me in the idea of doing it, but of course, only in my way.

Each main side project around Looker Studio is a different opportunity for sharing, discovering new playgrounds, exploring other skills, something different comparing to what I usually do as a digital analyst.

The blog helps me to progress for knowledge transfer, English copywriting, website management. For the Chrome extension, it is funny to consider myself as a tiny product owner making decisions of UX/UI, the dev side is also enlightening.

And now, this upcoming 3rd brick will be also different for me. This time, it is more about playing with marketing, creating a new positioning in a landscape I know a little bit. Keep sharing & helping of course.
And what if I also do for this new side project what I usually do for my clients? If you are a digital analytics consultant or a digital marketer, I'm sure you already asked yourself this question.

Stay tuned for the launching.

 

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert

Hello,

Before the summer holidays, I'm happy to share with you some news and contents about Looker Studio:

• Gemini AI integration in Looker Studio Pro and Looker: Preview demos of 2 features releases soon
   

• Some recent features additions in Looker Studio
   

• A teaser about an upcoming publication of blog post

Mehdi

Gemini is coming inside Looker Studio Pro & Looker BI

Few months ago, a restricted preview program gave a chance to some power users to start to test very promising features. And the program is progressively expanded to more and more users: The first implementations of Gemini AI inside Looker Studio and Looker.

I’m convinced that each announced feature will boost our productivity and provide faster answers to specific concerns for data exploration, document preparation and data viz executions with upcoming:

• Conversational Analytics

• Report and chart creation by prompts

• Automated generation of annotated reports inside Google Slides

• Formula assistant for calculated fields

For the moment, you will find below 2 preview demos with videos and details about my experimentations: Formula Assistant & Slides automatic generation.
 

Looker Studio new features

These 2 last months, Looker Studio team has released the features below:

• Totals & comparison metrics option to ignore any applied filters by the report viewer

• New partner connectors in the report gallery

• The group "Others" for all chart types with an option to limit the number of rows

• New customization options for data labels in bar & line charts

• Bin calculated field type for numeric tiers (numeric dimensions)

• Color by tooltip dimension for Timeline charts

Blog post teaser

Any new tutorial blog post soon? Yes, it is planed!
I've cooked an original Looker Studio recipe I will share soon in a new step-by-step tutorial. Let's say for the moment that it is about diagrams and click maps, and how the report readers need to explore UX metrics. But maybe, with this GIF, you will understand what is about ;)

So, stay tuned if you need frequently to design funnels or graphical CRO reports.

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio expert

Hello,

Today, I'm happy to share with you some news and contents about Looker Studio:

• My participation to an upcoming free and online workshop
   

• Some latest nice features additions in Looker Studio
   

• A new category I added in my blog

Mehdi

Webinar - Productivity Tips & Tricks for Looker Studio

I'm honored and very excited to be the guest of Siavash Kanani for an exclusive and free online workshop, broadcast tomorrow. I will present my tips and tricks to be more productive using my favorite tool. Discussing with Ahmad, and answering to your questions. It will be funny, educational, and practical.
 

Presentation

Productivity is about:

• Avoiding unnecessary works and reworks,

• Reducing repeated actions,

• Choosing the best solutions and task flows,

• Taking care of the maintainability

…and all of this, with a constant requirement of efficiency, facing Looker Studio as a software offering a lot of freedom of actions, so a lot of risks to be distracted by wrong tracks of design.

This workshop is the opportunity to cover various aspects of Looker Studio and discover what I recommend to tackle operational challenges, punctuated with friendly discussions with Siavash.

Agenda

• Intro

• Working with Looker Studio

• Taking the control with your own workflow

• Initializing the good setup to save time

• Keeping simple the management of data sources

• Going fast to configure charts & pages

• Fixing errors quickly

• Recap

• Q&A

Looker Studio new features

Last month, Looker Studio team has released the nice features below:

• Creation of report directly from the Google Sheets user interface

• Creation of Google Cloud Project while subscribing to Looker Studio Pro

• Timeline chart to display planning and any date ranges

• Chart title

A lot of other promising features are coming and we notice also new communication dynamics and investment in user feedback by the Looker Studio team. Nice to see. Promising for the future.

New category in my blog: Just-for-fun shared reports

I decided to create a new category in my blog to include all my latest just-for-fun reports.
All the posts added in this section get access to shared reports I had fun to do just to explore some tracks of data visualization and Looker Studio capabilities.

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert

Hello,

Coming back from superweek conference, full of energy, ideas and new projects. Let's share some news & contents today:

• My latest blog post: How to create an interactive and custom date range comparator with Looker Studio & BigQuery, published today
   

• The release of a new feature for the Looker Studio companion, the Chrome extension, to display the dimension & metric names directly in style panel for your table charts
   

• A super offer of Looker Studio courses, proposed exclusively to my readers, & cooked by my friend Siavash Kanani

Mehdi

Interactive & custom date ranges comparison with Looker Studio & BigQuery

In my latest article, I describe a way to build a system of date ranges comparison inside Looker Studio to fill a gap in the tool using available advanced feature and BigQuery as our data preparation layer. 
BigQuery has become an almost systematic ally as a data preparation layer for sustainable Looker Studio reports, integrated into a complete analytics device, regardless of the data collection software, with or without a real data warehouse for ingestion and processing.
 

Looker Studio companion: Display field names in the style panel of table charts

The new version of Looker Studio Companion - my Chrome extension - is available (v 0.6).

Tired to count your table chart columns to change their styles & display options?
A new feature will help you: Let's display the dimension & metric names directly in style panel.

Looker Studio Masterclass 2024 - Special offer for you

When people ask me what is the best way to learn Looker Studio, I recommend some resources and one courses offer - systematically the masterclass of my friend Siavash Kanani.
As you might have heard, he is hosting a new version of his Looker Studio Masterclass this year. I had nice talks with him at Superweek.

So, I've got great news for you...Siavash is offering 100 free Live Seats in his upcoming program to the readers of my newsletter! Subscribers will enjoy 36 weekly live lessons from March to November, for free (instead of $81). 

So, if you want to take advantage of Looker Studio as a power user, click on the secret link below to grab one of those live seats.

 > I subscribe for my free seat

And you know what? Icing on the cake, I've got also the pleasure to be the guest of live sessions. A super opportunity to share nice moments with Ahmad and his students. If you follow me for a while, you know how I enjoy a lot this kind of collaboration with analytics experts. Fun fun fun.

Voilà, c'est tout pour le moment.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio expert

Hello,

Today, the newsletter is about:

• My latest blog post describing how to create a weighted sort directly inside Looker Studio
   

• The release of a new feature for the Looker Studio companion, the Chrome extension: Mixing text and numeric values for obfuscation purposes
   

• A just-for-fun-report, shared to celebrate the 2024 edition of Superweek, where I will talk about Looker Studio

Mehdi

How to create a weighted sort with Looker Studio...

...to order dimension values by rates efficiently. A tutorial applicable to any rate in any data source, and inspired by a nice article written few years ago by Yehoshua Coren. With Google Search Console CTR as an example of use case.
 

Looker Studio companion: obfuscate your confidential data

The new version of Looker Studio Companion - my Chrome extension - is available (v 0.5.1).

You want to show your nice reports without revealing confidential data? To make some screenshots for your reports portfolio? During a meeting or a conference?

2 options have been added in the Settings tab, in addition to the existing feature to obfuscate everything:
- Mix text values
- Mix numeric values

Just-for-fun report: Superweek speakers

I'm super excited to go to Superweek 2024 in 2 weeks, to enjoy 5 days of analytics talks during this unique international conference, and get the opportunity to speak about "Looker Studio learnings & advanced tactics for a non-negotiable exacting results".

So, just for fun and to celebrate the event, I built an interactive report with geo data of the announced speakers using 2 recent Looker Studio features:
- Connection map
- Transposed table, helping me to create a ribbon of speaker photos

There is also a 3rd chart. I let you find where it is ;)

Voilà.

That's all for the moment, but I can tell you that I'm cooking new contents for the blog & new features for the Looker Studio Chrome extension.

So stay tuned ;) 

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert

With Looker Studio - Newsletter #4

Hello,

The Looker Studio team has released yesterday nice new features before Christmas holidays.

• You can now transpose a table to get rows of metrics for columns of dimension values. Welcomed feature!
  
  Contrary to my trick with Google Sheets and data blending (described in this blog post), this new built-in feature keeps the format of each metric, below number and currency.
   

• There are new style options for table charts: Resizable height of rows, option for auto-height, freeze one or more columns
   

• Value groups: A way to create a classification of values for a specific dimension with cascading rules. A simple alternative of calculated fields with CASE statement.

And, in case you missed it, here my latest blog article: 

• How to explore schemas of BigQuery tables with Looker Studio

Mehdi

Looker Studio release - December 14, 2023

If you missed my latest blog post... How to explore schemas of BigQuery tables with Looker Studio

Usually, BigQuery helps so much to create high-level Looker Studio reports. In this article, it is the opposite, LS comes to assist BigQuery!

Voilà.

That's all for the moment, but I can tell you that I'm cooking new contents for the blog & new features for the Looker Studio Chrome extension.

So stay tuned ;) 

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio addict

Hello,

Before going on holidays, I have some new contents to share with you.

Today, the newsletter is about:

• My latest blog post freshly published about how to build an interactive funnel report with controls to select the type of values and drop-off the reader wishes to display

• 3 previous blog posts I updated and translated in French

• The release of a new feature for the Looker Studio companion, the Chrome extension: Obfuscation of content

• The content of the latest Looker Studio release (July 20)

Mehdi

New blog post

Let's build a funnel report and give the choice to readers to select between types of drop-offs and values to display.

July 20, 2023 - How to create an interactive funnel report with a Looker Studio bar chart - Read the article

Updated & translated blog posts

Here 3 how-to articles I've updated ♻ and translated in French 🇫🇷:

• Split comma-separated values to single values with Looker Studio >>>

• Mimic UNION ALL operator and combine sets of data >>>

• Truncate long text with customized ellipsis position >>>

Obfuscate your report content

This week, I just added a new feature as part of the Looker Studio companion, the Chrome extension

A setting option to obfuscate temporarily  your report text contents:
A useful feature to hide confidential. Perfect to capture & store snapshots in your data viz portfolio (avoiding wide blur areas).  

>>> Go to the Chrome extension page

Looker Studio release - July 20, 2023

New features:

• Intervals for time series charts: For confidence intervals, anomaly detection & forecasting 🤩

• Quick filter: Layer of filtering, external to the report configuration (Pro feature)

• Personal report link:  Isolated editable report with personal ownership & edition (Pro feature)

Mehdi Oudjida
Digital Analytics freelance
& Looker Studio addict

Hello,

I'm happy to send you this 2nd issue of "With Looker Studio" newsletter.

I had not suspected the success of the first issue. Thank you for your precious feedback, and to all the community spreading the word.

Today, "au menu":

• Release note of April 17

• My latest blog post about adaptative time granularity for scorecard sparkline

• Just-for-fun shared report: Moving bikes from Tron movie   

Mehdi

Looker Studio release - April 17-20, 2023

Scorecard charts can now include:

• Sparklines

• Progress bar or circle towards a target

• Metric comparison to a time period, target value, or metric

Blog post

So, let's take advantage of the new sparkline feature for scorecards with this custom recipe. A way to improve trends consistency and visualization.

May 5, 2023 - How to build a scorecard sparkline with adaptative time granularity - Read the article

Just for fun

For infographics, changing the position of a picture following dynamic data.
I used the universe of Tron movie and Daft Punk for the Proof of Concept.

Ingredients:
- Lines for perspective grids
- Parameters & sliders to move the bikes
- Bar charts for the trails of bike light
- Table charts for the dynamic position of bikes
- Pictures

Nothing will derezzed🎵

Go to the Looker Studio report to play with the sliders & move the bikes!
 

See the Looker Studio report

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert

A new...newsletter

I'm very happy to send you this first newsletter. I've decided to create this channel to communicate easily with you. It becomes quite complicated to do it on social networks, especially on Twitter. My goal is simple: sharing what I wrote & learned about Looker Studio and what could be useful for other data analysts & marketers.

Mehdi

Blog post

My latest blog post was about fighting against one of the limitation of Looker Studio connector for GA4 source.

April 7, 2023 - How to insert your conversion rate & other event metrics from Google Analytics 4 with the native Looker Studio connector - Read the article

Looker Studio release - April 10-13, 2023

• Sankey chart

• Preset filter & button control

• Chart zoom & pan

• New features for mail/scheduled delivery

A nice release with new developments for various aspects of the tool:
- visualization type
- Controls
- Exploration
- Communication

You can find in this silent video a demo of button controls usages and zoom feature.

And below, an example of Sankey chart.

Just for fun

Why not using Looker Studio and charts as a drawing engine.

Here a tribute to Dragon Ball manga:
- A bubble chart to draw crystal balls with stars unicode characters as labels, sizes/positions for the perspective, additional white bubbles for specular light
- 3 close lines chart for the dragon Shenron in the background.

See the Looker Studio report

That's all for this first issue of my newsletter.
Thank you for reading it and let's keep in touch. I've planed a lot of contents for the following weeks and months.

Mehdi Oudjida
Independent Consultant in Digital Analytics
& Looker Studio Expert