Learn Looker Studio

You can provision data sources directly based on tables in your BigQuery warehouse — e.g. create a new data source out of an entire table like obt_orders. You can also write your own queries to derive new tables based on tables within your warehouse.

The majority of your data source creation needs will be enabled via data coming from your BigQuery warehouse — using the Looker Studio BigQuery connection — so that’s what we’ll focus on in this tutorial.

You can create new data sources directly from your report, or from your Looker Studio home page. The steps for configuring your new data source will be the same, regardless of where you initiate the creation process.

Prerequisite: you must be logged into a Google account that has access to the underlying data you wish to work with within BigQuery

Important Note: Data sources access underlying data from your warehouse using Data Credentials — essentially, users of the data source will have access to all data the Data Credentials account has access to

• By default, the account used to create the data source will automatically be assigned as the Data Credentials for that source
• You can change the Data Credentials for a data source at any time
  • We recommend creating a service account to use as the Data Credential for all of your brand’s managed data sources
    • Documentation on setting up a service account for Looker Studio
• Additional documentation on data credentials

• Data Source Naming
  • We highly recommend having the Data Source name explain the underlying table / data it’s referenceing
    • e.g. if you were to provision your own copy of our [DEMO] Orders OBT table, we’d recommend naming it Orders OBT, Orders, [MyBrand] Orders OBT etc
• Field Naming & Field Descriptions
  • When creating a new data source from BigQuery, you’ll notice computer-friendly field names containing words separated by underscores. These are the field names as they exist in your warehouse (you can look up field definitions using this field name in our Metric & Dimension documentation)
  • We encourage you to rename fields in whatever format is easiest for your team to understand!
    • If you do decide to rename fields, we very strongly encourage you to copy the original field name into the Description field, as is this is the only reference you’ll have to the original field name (in case of needing to look up definitions etc.)
  • For calculated fields, we recommend including the definition in the Description field
    • Data Source Viewers don’t have access to examine underlying logic for calculated fields, so it’s good for all-team visibility to have that logic defined in the field Description.
  • If you’ve made personal duplicates of one of SourceMedium’s template data sources, you’ll notice that we’ve already renamed fields and mapped their warehouse name in the Description field
    • Please do not edit the Description field on these data sources
• Data Source Access & Permissions
  • See Sharing access with your team section at the bottom of this article

1. Log in to https://lookerstudio.google.com/

   • Here you’ll be able to see all of the reports & data sources that you have access to.

2. Near the top-right of the page, find and click the + Create button, and then select Report
   

3. You’ll immediately be moved to a blank report, and asked to select data to add to the report

   Details

   • If have already existing data sources you’d like to connect, navigate to the My data sources tab and select a source to include
     • You can only select 1 data source in this step, but you can always add more later
   • If you’d like to create a new data source from data in your data warehouse, select the BigQuery connector and set up your new data source
   • If connecting a Looker-native data source (Google Ads, GA4, Search Console etc), simply select the connector, follow the authorization instructions, and select the account / view to connect

4. Once you select an initial data source to add, you’ll be able to rename (recommended to do this right away) and begin editing the report!

1. Select the chart or control component you’d like to add your new field to

2. Select Add Metric or Add Dimension, depending on the new field you’d like to create

   • You can also select an already existing field and choose Add Field to replace an already existing metric/dimension

3. An in-page window will open where you can name your new field and enter your custom logic

4. Once you’re satisfied with your new formula, press Apply

5. And you’re done! You can now see your new field within the chart configuration panel, and rendered on your chart

1. Open the data source you wish to create a calculated field on. Near the top-left of the view, select Add a field, and then select Add calculated field

2. A new view will open where you can name your new field and enter your custom logic

3. Once you’re satisfied with your new formula, press Save

4. And you’re done! You can now see your new field within the data source, and it can be used within any report that your data source has been added to. Be sure to update the Description for the new field, so that data source Viewers have visibility.

Looker Studio Reports have 3 levels of available access

• Viewer — can simply view the report
• Editor — can view, and edit the report, and add access for other team mates
• Owner — can view, edit, and delete the report, and add access for other team mates

Learn how to share a report

In the same way that you might want to have Viewers and Editors separately for reports, we recommend setting up a similar access structure for data sources.

• Viewer — this user can look at the data source and all of the field descriptions
• Editor — this user can additionally rename fields & descriptions, edit the data source connection, and can create / edit / delete calculated fields. This user can also add view and edit access for other users
• Owner — this user can additionally delete the data source, and provision access to any user type (including changing ownership of the data source to a different user)

Learn how to share a data source

Note: providing data source access to users is different than setting the data credentials for a data source

To make managing access for larger teams easier, we recommend setting up Google Groups for your different user types. You can add members to these groups separately based on the access they should have to certain resources.

You can find documentation on creating google groups here.