Filter by multiple email addresses per row

Prerequisites

 

This solution relies on the following concepts / tasks in Looker Studio:

• Filter by email address
• Data blending
• Creating data sources
• Adding charts to a report

Filtering by email address works by comparing the address of the logged in viewer to a field in your data source that contains valid email addresses. For each row in your data, the filter checks to see if the viewer's email matches the address in that row.

Consider the following data:

Email	Data
[e-mail]	abc
[e-mail]	cde
[e-mail]	efg
[e-mail]	ghi

 

If this data was filtered by email address, and [e-mail] viewed the filtered report, he'd only see the data
"abc" and "efg." If [e-mail] viewed the same report, she'd see the data "cde" and "ghi."

This is fine if you have a 1:1 relationship between viewers and the data. But what if you wanted also wanted [e-mail] to see the data? That is, you want many people to see the same rows of data. (This is known as a many:many relationship.)

Filter by email only works on one address per row, so you can't simply put a list of addresses in your email field. For example, this won't work:

Email	Data
[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]	abc

Solution: Use data blending

You can create a many:many relationship between email addresses and your data by blending a table of addresses with your data, using any common field as a join key.

Fruit stand example

You manage a produce company, and want show your sales representatives how they are performing at the various fruit stands they service. Multiple sales people can service multiple stands. To filter the data so your sales people only see their data, you could do the following:

Step 1: Create an access control list table

In this step, you'll create an access control list (ACL) table that contains the email addresses of the authorized sales people, paired with a data field (a fruit stand name) that can be used as a join key in the blend.

Sales Rep Email	Join key
[e-mail]	Fruit Stand A
[e-mail]	Fruit Stand A
[e-mail]	Fruit Stand B
[e-mail]	Fruit Stand C

Access control list (ACL) table

Note that salesrep1 can see data for Fruit Stand A and Fruit Stand B, while salesrep2 can see data for Fruit Stand A and Fruit Stand C.

Step 2: Create the data table

The data table tracks the sales each representative made to each fruit stand.

Note that this table doesn't need to have the sales rep's email addresses, only the same values as in the join key (the fruit stand name). Also note the name of the join key field is not relevant: blending joins based on the data, not the field name.

Fruit Stand	Fruit	Sales
Fruit Stand A	Apple	50
Fruit Stand A	Banana	26
Fruit Stand A	Orange	20
Fruit Stand A	Pear	93
Fruit Stand B	Apple	98
Fruit Stand B	Banana	86
Fruit Stand B	Orange	7
Fruit Stand B	Pear	85
Fruit Stand C	Apple	21
Fruit Stand C	Banana	61
Fruit Stand C	Orange	3
Fruit Stand C	Pear	78

Data table

Step 3: Apply the email filter to the ACL table

Edit the data source for the ACL table and choose the Sales Rep Email field as the filter.

Step 4: Blend the ACL table with the data table

Finally, blend the data table with the ACL table. Since we want to effectively add the sales rep email as a column to the data table, we will start from the data table and then left-join the ACL table. 

With no email filter applied, you'll see all the records for both sales representatives. However, with the email filter applied, blending the ACL table with the sales data table filters that data according to which sales person is viewing the report. Here's what each representative would see when they view the report:

Sales Rep 1 sees this: Data Fruit Sales Fruit Stand A Apple 50 Fruit Stand A Banana 26 Fruit Stand A Orange 20 Fruit Stand A Pear 93 Fruit Stand B Apple 98 Fruit Stand B Banana 86 Fruit Stand B Orange 7 Fruit Stand B Pear 85

Sales Rep 2 sees this: Data Fruit Sales Fruit Stand A Banana 26 Fruit Stand A Orange 20 Fruit Stand A Apple 50 Fruit Stand A Pear 93 Fruit Stand C Banana 61 Fruit Stand C Orange 3 Fruit Stand C Apple 21 Fruit Stand C Pear 78