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Release notes (2021)

Request new features or upvote existing feature requests here.

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December 16, 2021

Product updates

More data from Google Ads

You can now visualize the following dimensions using the Ads connector:

  • Account Budget Order Amount,
  • Account Budget Order Adjustable Amount,
  • Account Budget Amount Spent,
  • Campaign Bid Strategy Type,
  • Ad Group Bid Strategy,
  • Target CPA,
  • Target ROAS,
  • User Ad Distance
  • First Position Bid

To see these fields in your existing data sources, refresh the fields.

December 9, 2021

Product updates

View more data in tables

You can now visualize up to 100 dimensions and 100 metrics for tables based on "flexible schema" data sources, such as Sheets or BigQuery. (For data sources based on "fixed schema" connectors, such as Ads and Google Analytics, you can have 10 dimensions and 20 metrics.)

You can also now enable horizontal scrolling for tables:

  1. Edit your report and select the table.
  2. On the right, select the the STYLE tab, then under Table Body, check Horizontal scrolling.

Respect report theme for page navigation

You can now have page navigation in your reports match the selected report theme:

  1. Edit your report.

  2. In the toolbar, click Theme and layout.

  3. On the right, select LAYOUT, then check Respect report theme.

  4. View your report.

The page nav background and text colors will appear in a style that matches your theme.

Tip: For dark themes (Constellation, Lagoon, Simple Dark) also uncheck Has margin to create an undivided, "app-like" appearance.

December 2, 2021

Product updates

Visualize data from Amazon Redshift (beta)

You can now connect to Amazon Redshift and then visualize that data in your Data Studio reports and explorations. Note: this connector is currently in beta testing.

Learn more about the Amazon Redshift connector.

November 4, 2021

Product updates

Interact with your report in edit mode

You can now interact with your reports in edit mode in many of the same ways as you can in view mode. For example, you can apply a filter and adjust the date range without having to switch to view mode. This makes it faster and more convenient to get insights from your reports and analyze your data.

New data panel

Also, with this release, we've added a new Data panel to the report editor. You'll see this panel whenever nothing else on the report is selected.

You can use the data panel to switch between data sources and see all of the available fields for that data source. To create a new chart, just drag a field from the list to the canvas. If you drop a field on an existing chart, you'll add that field to the chart.

Watch a demo

Animation showing a report in edit mode. The user adds a title, then applies a filter and changes the date range on the report. Next, the user clicks in the report margin to display the data panel, then selects a data source and drags fields from the panel to the canvas to create a new table.
To replay the demo, refresh this page.

More data from Display & Video 360

You can now visualize the following dimensions using the Display & Video 360 connector:

  • Budget Segment Name
  • Budget Segment Start Date
  • Budget Segment End Date
  • Budget Segment Pacing Percentage
  • Budget Segment Budget
  • Line Item Start Date
  • Line Item End Date
  • Line Item Budget
  • Line Item Pacing Percentage
  • Insertion Order Goal Type
  • Insertion Order Goal Value
  • Percentage from Current IO Goal
  • Budget Type (Segment)

To see these fields in your existing data sources, refresh the fields.

Documentation updates

Now that you can interact with your reports in edit mode, you'll see fewer references to "viewers" and "editors" in the Help Center. Instead, when we say "you" or "people" we generally mean either viewers or editors. We'll still point out when something is only possible for report or data source editors.

We've refactored the About controls article. You'll now find information on specific controls in individual articles in Make reports interactive topic.

October 21, 2021

Product updates

Google Maps in embedded reports

You can now include Google Maps in embedded reports. When embedding is enabled, a Data Studio report supports up to 30,000 free Google Map loads per month. You can increase the number of map loads allowed by adding a Google Maps API key to the report.

Learn more about adding a Google Maps API key.

Visualize GA4 ecommerce fields

You can now access the following Google Analytics 4 ecommerce fields using the Google Analytics connector:

  • Item brand
  • Item category
  • Item category 2
  • Item category 3
  • Item category 4
  • Item category 5
  • Item ID
  • Item name
  • Item list ID
  • Item list name
  • Item promotion creative name
  • Item promotion ID
  • Item promotion Name
  • Order coupon
  • Transaction ID
  • Add-to-carts
  • Checkouts
  • Ecommerce purchases
  • Item purchase quantity
  • Item revenue
  • Item list clicks
  • Item list click through rate
  • Item list views
  • Item promotion clicks
  • Item promotion click through rate
  • Item promotion views
  • Item views
  • Cart-to-view rate
  • Purchase-to-view rate
  • Total purchasers
  • First time purchasers


To see these fields in existing data sources, refresh the field list.

Visualize data from Microsoft SQL Server 2017 (beta)

You can now connect to Microsoft SQL Server 2017 and then visualize that data in your Data Studio reports and explorations. Note: this connector is currently in beta testing.

Learn more about the Microsoft SQL Server 2017 connector.

October 7, 2021

Product updates

Improved page navigation

You can now create more organized reports by adding sections, headers, and icons to page navigation.

Learn more about adding, removing, and reordering pages.

Report navigation displays three sections: Overview, Campaign Performance, and Audiences and Assets.

September 30, 2021

Product updates

Visualize BigQuery GEOGRAPHY data as bubbles

You can now plot BigQuery GEOGRAPHY fields using a bubble layer in Google Maps without having to convert the data to latitude and longitude first (see that workaround below).

Google Map displays Alaska census areas as bubbles with a cursor highlighting the Yukon-Koyukuk Cenus Area bubble.

Visualize points: previous workaround

Prior to this feature release, if you had a GEOGRAPHY field that contains points and you wanted to visualize that data in Data Studio, you needed to use the following workaround. This is no longer necessary (just use your Geography field in the Geospatial setting of your Google Map). This workaround is simply preserved here for posterity:

  1. Return the coordinates in the format lat,lng (e.g., 47.4073238,-120.5757999). For example, if you have a GEOGRAPHY field point_geom_field, you can use the following SQL expression:
    ST_Y(point_geom_field) || "," || ST_X(point_geom_field)
  2. In Data Studio, set this field’s data type to Geo → Latitude, Longitude.
  3. Choose Bubble map and choose this field as the Location.

September 23, 2021

Product updates

Updated data source pickers

We've updated the styling of the data source pickers to be more intuitive and useful. It's now easier to distinguish the connector used by the data source, as well as easier to manage your data in the report via a link in the picker.

The new style applies to the data source pickers used by the copy report dialog, blend editor, extract data screen, and the filter editor. The data source pickers in the main properties panel will be updated in a future release.

The data source picker displays multiple data source types with colored icons and Add data and Manage data buttons.

September 16, 2021

Product updates

Single-table blend bug fix is live

We've fixed the single-table blending bug described below.

September 9, 2021

Product updates

Search for reports and data sources by owner name or email

It's now easier to find reports and data sources created by people you collaborate with. You can search for an owner’s name or email address on the Data Studio homepage to find assets that person has shared with you.

Single-table blend bug fix

We are fixing a bug that affects blended data sources based on a single table. The fix will be released next week, but because this may change the behavior of a small number of reports, we're announcing the fix in advance.

Before the fix:

Charts that use only a subset of the available fields from a blend based on a single table don't properly group dimensions or aggregate metrics, resulting in duplicate rows in the chart.

After the fix:

Charts that use only a subset of the available fields from a blend based on a single table will properly group and aggregate the data.

Note: This change doesn't impact charts using multi-table blends, or charts using all available fields of a single-table blend.

August 19, 2021

Product updates

Improved text functions

We've removed the limitation in several text functions that required you to use literal values for the starting and/or length parameters. Now, you can use fields and expressions to provide those parameters. The following functions have been updated:

For example, SUBSTR() previously required a literal number for the starting index and offset. Now, you can do things like:

SUBSTR(my_field, some_expression, LENGTH(another_field)-1)

New REGEXP_CONTAINS function in calculated fields

You can now use the REGEXP_CONTAINS function in calculated fields. This function returns true if a piece of text matches a regular expression. Learn more about REGEXP_CONTAINS.

August 12, 2021

Product updates

New gauge chart

Gauge charts give you a way to quickly see how well a given metric is performing against a target goal. Learn more about configuring a gauge chart.

August 5, 2021

Product updates

More report templates

Get started visualizing your data quickly with new marketing templates. To visit the report gallery:

  1. Sign in to Data Studio.
  2. On the left, click Templates.

The Looker Studio report template gallery displays both the Templates link in the the left navigation panel and the Google Ads report templates.

Be sure to expand each section to see all the available reports.

July 29, 2021

Product updates

Increased limits for Google Maps

You can now plot up to 100,000 Latitude and Longitude values in a Google Map (previously 10,000). For Latitude, Longitude, and BigQuery geospatial data, you can also increase the limit from 100,000 to 1 million. Note that the map may take longer to load if you increase the limits. Learn more.

July 22, 2021

Product updates

Updated page navigation

We've updated the styling of the "Drop down" page navigation option to be consistent with the other navigation styles. This option is now called "Top left" and looks like this:

The top left navigation option displays report navigation in an expandable and collapsible left-hand panel.

July 1, 2021

Product updates

Support for Google Analytics 4

You can now use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to gain insights about your Data Studio reports.

With Google Analytics 4 you can get automated insights and utilize Analytics' flexible Explorations feature to dig deeper into your data. Learn more.

June 24, 2021

Product updates

Google Maps 2nd-level country subdivisions

We've added a Country subdivsion (2nd level) field to the available Geo data types. You can use this to visualize US counties and other 2nd-level country subdivisions (for example, French departments, Italian provinces) in Google Maps. As part of this change, the Country subdivsion (1st level) field replaces Region.

In addition, we've simplified the Geo data types. Previously, we had separate fields for Continent and Continent Code, Country and Country Code, etc. We've combined these into single fields which accept either a name or a valid code. For example, Country accepts either a 2-letter or 3-letter ISO code ("AU" or "AUS" for Australia), a 3-digit country code ("036" for Australia), or you can specify a country by name ("Australia").

We've also combined the Metro and Metro Code fields into Designated market area. This accepts either a geographical targeting criteria ID or a DMA name.

Note: These changes only affect the Geo data types: any geographic dimensions in your data sources will still work as before and their names are unchanged.

Learn more.

Currency conversion support in Google Ads

You now have the option to convert multiple currencies in Google Ads manager accounts.

If you select All currencies, and choose accounts that use different currencies, Data Studio converts all revenue-related fields to the currency of the top level Google Ads manager (MCC) account. Learn more.

Visualize more data from Google Ad Manager

You can now access the following fields in Google Ad Manager data sources:

  • Line item ID
  • Order ID
  • Creative ID
  • Ad unit ID (top level)
  • Placement ID
  • Country ID
  • City ID
  • Master and Companion creative ID
  • App ID

Preserve formatting in data export

You now have the option to preserve data formatting when exporting to CSV, Sheets, or Excel. Enabling the Keep value formatting option causes Data Studio to preserve the number and date formats applied in Data Studio to the exported data. For example, with this option turned on, numbers formatted as percent also appear as percentages in your CSV or spreadsheet data. Learn more.

June 17, 2021

Product updates

Enable or disable comparison date ranges in community visualizations

There is now a features section in the configuration file for community visualizations which allows developers of visualizations to enable or disable date range comparisons. The Data Studio Community Component (DSCC) library has also been updated to support date range information. Learn More.

Google Maps default zoom improvement

The map now auto-zooms to a smaller area around the plotted locations in some cases when it previously auto-zoomed to the entire world, such as when the plotted locations straddle the 180th meridian.

June 10, 2021

Product updates

Create calculated fields in blended data source tables

Report editors can now create calculated fields when configuring a blended data source. Learn more.

May 20, 2021

Product updates

Named versions

You can now manually create named versions of reports and data sources. This gives you more control over when versions are captured and allows you to integrate version control into your workflows.

In addition, you can now rename and delete existing versions from the version history panel. Learn more.

May 13, 2021

Product updates

Return non-numeric literals in aggregated CASE statements

You can now use non-numeric (e.g., text, date) literals in CASE statements based on aggregated WHEN clauses. For example:

CASE
WHEN AVG(satisfaction) >= 4 THEN "Good"
WHEN AVG(satisfaction) >= 3 THEN "Fair"
WHEN AVG(satisfaction) < 3 THEN "Poor"
END

(Previously this returned an error.)

This update also fixes an issue where calculated fields that pass metrics and aggregate expressions into text functions were incorrectly detected as dimensions. With the fix, they're correctly detected as metrics.

Manually enter dataset and table names in BigQuery connector

You can now type in the dataset and table names when connecting to BigQuery. These entry fields appear when there are too many tables or datasets to display in the list.

The Edit connection panel for BigQuery data sources includes the options to Enter dataset manually and Enter Table Id manually when a user searches for datasets and tables.
  1. Enter dataset manually.
  2. Enter table ID manually.

Documentation updates

We've added supported versions and limitations information to the following articles:

May 6, 2021

Product updates

Display a report in full screen and cycle through pages automatically

You can now display a report as a presentation, similar to Google Slides. You can show the presentation full screen, and choose to automatically display each page the report for a specified amount of time.

To present a report:

  1. View the report you want to present.
  2. In the upper right, click More optionsMore options..
  3. Click Present icon.Present.

Learn more.

More streamlined toolbar

In addition to present mode, you'll also find the copy and refresh data buttons in the More optionsMore options. menu.
The More options three-dot menu for a report includes the options Present, Make a copy, and Refresh data.
 

Documentation updates

We've updated the calculated fields tutorial to include the improved functionality in CASE statements announced on March 11.

April 29, 2021

Product updates

MySQL 8 support

You can now visualize data from MySQL 8 using Data Studio.

April 22, 2021

Product updates

Get notified if your scheduled email doesn't send

You'll now receive an email if your scheduled email report fails to go out.

JDBC connector improvements

We've made several improvements to JDBC-based connectors (Google Cloud SQL for MySQL, MySQL, and PostgreSQL). In particular, we've fixed a bug that prevented COUNT_DISTINCT from working properly.

Page path dimensions in Google Analytics 4

You can now visualize the following GA4 dimensions using the Google Analytics connector:

  • Page path + query string
  • Full page URL

April 15, 2021

Product updates

Reset report filters and selections

Report viewers can now use the new Reset report. Reset button to reset all filters and selections they've made. This restores the report to its default view state.

Use community visualizations in embedded reports

You can now use community visualizations in an embedded report.

April 8, 2021

Product updates

Better BigQuery SQL parameters

You can now use any parameter in a BigQuery custom SQL query, regardless of where you created the parameter. (Previously, you could use only those parameters you created on the custom SQL query page.)

Also, you can now define a range of permitted values, allowing you to bind a Slider control to these parameters.

April 1, 2021

Product updates

New conditional functions

You can now use 3 new conditional functions in calculated fields:

  • COALESCE. Returns the first non-missing value found in a list of fields.
  • IFNULL. Returns a result if the input is null, otherwise, returns the input.
  • NULLIF. Returns null if the input matches an expression, otherwise returns the input.

BigQuery GEOGRAPHY support

You can now visualize polygons from a BigQuery GEOGRAPHY field on a Google Maps visualization. Want to try it out? Take this quick tutorial.

March 25, 2021

Product updates

Event-scoped campaign dimensions in Google Analytics 4

You can now visualize the following GA4 dimensions using the Google Analytics connector:

  • Campaign ID
  • Campaign
  • Google Ads account name
  • Google Ads ad group ID
  • Google Ads ad group name
  • Google Ads ad network type
  • Medium
  • Source
  • Traffic origin
Note: these dimensions apply only to GA4 conversion events.

Improved text functions in PostgreSQL

We've fixed a bug that prevented the CONTAINS_TEXT, STARTS_WITH, ENDS_WITH, and REGEXP_MATCH functions from working correctly with the PostgreSQL connector.

March 18, 2021

Product updates

Report publishing

You can now control when viewers see the changes you make to a report. By default, viewers see changes in real-time. Report publishing lets editors make changes to a draft version of the report, and then publish the draft when it's ready to go. Learn more.

March 11, 2021

Product updates

Simpler and more powerful conditional expressions

Conditional expressions evaluate some input and return a result when that input meets a condition you specify. Data Studio now gives you 3 ways of writing conditional expressions in calculated fields:

  • Searched CASE
  • Simple CASE
  • IF() NEW!

IF function

The new IF function lets you create simple "if / then / else" statements. For example:

IF(Actual Sales > Forecast Sales, Bonus * 1.2, Bonus)

Use parameters and functions and do math in conditional expressions

You can now include any valid expression in CASE expressions and the IF() function. For example:

CASE WHEN AVG(NumericDimension) > .75 THEN AnotherMetric * 2 ELSE YetAnotherMetric / 3 END

You can also now directly reference a parameter in a conditional expression:

IF(MyParameter="some value", ThisDimension, ThatDimension)

Raw string literal

You can now use the "raw string literal" R in quoted strings. This can simplify writing formulas, such as regular expressions, that require special characters to be "escaped." For example, a raw quoted string uses a single backslash to escape metacharacters in regex, making it easier to read:

With the Raw string literal prefix:

REGEXP_REPLACE(String, R"(\[.*\])\+(\[.*\])",R"\2 \1")

Without the Raw string literal:

REGEXP_REPLACE(String, "(\\[.*\\])\\+(\\[.*\\])","\\2 \\1")

Deprecating YouTube analytics watch time dimensions completed

As announced last year, we've deprecated the old watch time dimensions in the YouTube Analytics connector. You should now use the new Average Watch Time and Total Watch Time metrics instead.

Documentation updates

We've updated and improved the documentation of conditional expressions, regular expressions, and calculated fields in general:

New articles

Updated articles

March 4, 2021

Product updates

It's now easier to connect to your BigQuery projects. The new Recent projects tab shows you up to 50 projects you've accessed recently in the GCP Cloud Console.

The Recent Projects tab appears on the BigQuery Add data to report panel.

February 25, 2021

Product updates

New page navigation styles

You now have more control over the look and positioning of the page navigation in your reports. Choose between 4 styles:

Left

Pages appear in a collapsible drawer in the left margin of your report.

A user expands the collapsible left-hand navigation panel on a report to access the navigation menu and access Page 1, Page 2, or Page 3.

Tab

Pages appear as tabbed links at the top of the report.

Dropdown

Pages appear in a drop-down menu above the report.

Drop-down page navigation menu with 3 pages.

Hidden

No page navigation is displayed.

Chart data label compact numbers and decimal precision

You can now use compact numbers and set decimal precision for data labels in time series, bar, line/combo, and area charts. Note that these settings apply to the data labels in your charts. Tooltips ("hover cards") show the full metric value.

A time series chart displays active users over time with compact number data point labels, and a tooltip displays that the 4.6k data point represents 4,573 users as of Feb 3, 2021.

Learn more in the chart references.

February 18, 2021

Product updates

Data Studio is now available in Sudan

Users in Sudan can now tell beautiful data stories with Data Studio. Welcome!

February 11, 2021

Product updates

Improved data source collaboration

Data source editors can now edit the connection, refresh fields, and update credentials of data sources. (Prior to this, only the data source owner or credential owner could do these things).

This makes collaborating on reports and managing your data sources even easier. In particular, collaborating on reports with embedded data sources is more convenient, as your fellow report editors now have greater control over those data sources.

Learn more.

Documentation updates

Restructured data source and data modeling topics

We've reorganized the Help Center topics covering connecting to your data, creating data sources, and modeling your data a bit. Create and edit data sources now has 2 child topics:

February 4, 2021

Product updates

Improved handling of unrecognized date formats

If you connect to data that contains ambiguous dates or times, you may now see a message saying "Data Studio can't convert [field] to a date" and some tips on how to resolve the issue.

Learn more.

January 28, 2021

Product updates

Traffic source fields from Google Analytics 4

You can now visualize Google Analytics 4 traffic source fields:

  • Session Google Ads ad group ID
  • Session default channel grouping
  • Session medium
  • Session campaign
  • Session source
  • User Google Ads ad group ID
  • User Google Ads ad group name
  • User Google Ads ad network type
  • User medium
  • User campaign
  • User source

To see these fields in your existing GA4 data sources, refresh the fields.

Restoring data source versions now requires proper credentials

To view or restore version history for a data source, you must now either own the credentials for that data source, or the data source must use Viewer's Credentials. This helps prevent possible unauthorized access to the data.

January 7, 2021

Product updates

News searches in Search Console

You can now see news search results data in your reports using the Search Console connector. Learn more.

Create Boolean calculated fields without CASE

You can now use a Boolean expression as a calculated field formula. For example, Revenue > Forecast, which returns true or false. You can then use these fields within other calculated fields. (Previously, you had to use CASE statements to achieve the same result.)

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