Before getting into Google Data Studio real time reporting, let us talk about Google Data Studio. Data Studio is a business intelligence tool provided by Google along with its cloud platform. It can be used to explore, visualize, and create dashboards based on various data sources. Having access to such tools spare organizations the effort in implementing their own reporting dashboards.
Data studio also comes with granular scheduling capabilities for both reports and data extracts. Since it is built on top of Google applications, it tightly integrates with Google based data sources like Google Analytics, Bigquery, etc. It also inherits the intuitive sharing and access control settings that are part of Google suite.
This post shows you how you can set up Google Data Studio real time reports by using the Data Studio Auto-Refresh extension.
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- Data Transformation: It provides a simple interface to perfect, modify, and enrich the data you want to transfer.
- Schema Management: Hevo can automatically detect the schema of the incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
- Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
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Understanding Data Freshness in Google Data Studio
Google data studio works using the connectors provided by Google, its partners, and the outside community. Most data connectors support a live connection to its data sources. A live connection means that the data is fetched every time a dashboard or report is loaded. An example of such a data source is the Google Sheets application. Reports based on large data sets results in the Data studio being slow because of this data load.
In cases where a user can sacrifice freshness of data for faster load times, Google provides the option of data extracts. This works based on a snapshot of data from the defined data source and does not maintain a live connection.
The schedule of the extract can be configured up to hour level granularity. Whether you use a live connection or an extract, for the data to be reflected in a report, Data Studio needs to be refreshed using a button in the dashboard. The need for this manual refresh prevents Data Studio from acting as a true real time dashboard.
Steps to Set-up Google Data Studio Real time Reports
In this post, we will set up real time reports in Data Studio using Google Sheets. The reason for selecting Google Sheets is because it is one of the data sources that support live connection allowing for Google Data Studio real time analytics. You will begin by creating a new Google Sheet.
- Login to your Google account and create a new Google Sheet. For now, let us name it ‘report_source’ and fill in data as shown below:
| Date | Top Sales | Region |
| 10 Jan 2020 | 4 | Amsterdam |
| 11 Jan 2020 | 5 | Amsterdam |
| 12 Jan 2020 | 5 | Amsterdam |
| 13 Jan 2020 | 5 | Amsterdam |
- Navigate to Data Studio and create a report by clicking the Report button.
- When it asks for the data source, click on ‘Google Sheets‘ as shown in the below screenshot.
- Once the sheet is selected, Data Studio will automatically recognize dimensions and create an initial report for you. You can change this by dragging and dropping dimensions. For our objective, we will stay with the default one. Pay attention to the refresh button at the top. Any time data in your Google Sheet changes, you will need to use this button for the dashboard to refresh.
- To avoid this manual refresh, install an extension called Data Studio Auto-Refresh in your chrome browser. It is available here. Once installed, manually refresh the page once. Please note you should refresh the page via browser refresh button and not the dashboard refresh button in the above image. Click on the extension button and you should see a panel where you can schedule your refresh interval.
Any changes that you make in the Google Sheet will now reflect in Data Studio at most by a minute. Even though this is not truly real time, it can serve the purpose in most cases where the requirement can actually be managed by having near real time updates.
Challenges
Using the above approach comes with a number of challenges.
- The most critical bit is to have the data updated in real time in one of the data sources for which Google supports the live connection. In this example, you need to get your source data updated in Google Sheets in a real time manner. This will need a custom developed module in itself. A workaround is to use Google Sheets’ App Scripts to pull data from your source based on a trigger or schedule.
- Google Sheets data transformation abilities are limited and hence you will need to execute any transformation before writing to Google Sheets. Such a transformation will require an ETL tool or custom development.
A better option is to use a cloud-based ETL tool like Hevo that can handle such real time loads from most popular data sources to Data Studio.
Why Is Real-Time Data Visualisation in Google Data Studio Necessary?
Although GDS has several options for building live dashboards, it doesn’t give real-time updates. Therefore, in order to get current information and update real-time data, customers must refresh their Google Data Studio SEO reports.
Data Studio real time analytics pulls data from several sources to feed its dashboard widgets, which is why it displays outdated information. Looker Studio real time data, on the other hand, provides a solution to this challenge by offering live updates without the need for manual refreshing.
Because of this, the program maintains a temporary cache of the data and updates it only when the user presses the refresh button—either manual or browser—on the device. You must utilize GDS’s refresh button in order to update static data; otherwise, your report widgets won’t change.
Using Hevo
Hevo Data provides a more user-friendly platform for integrating data from multiple sources for analysis.
Hevo is a No-code platform. So you can combine data from dozens of sources and analyze on Google Data Studio without writing a single line of code. You do not have to worry about manually configuring the schema because Hevo detects the schema of the incoming data and maps it to the destination schema automatically.
You can manage your data securely in real time and have it analysis-ready in your desired destination at any time. To collect data from your chosen data sources, you might need to use Google Sheets’ App Scripts. Use of a cloud-based real-time reporting solution such as Hevo may be necessary because GS does not have the necessary functionality to alter data in several ways. Unlike Google Sheets, it can manage large amounts of data without becoming sluggish. Hevo allows you to get information from several sources and import it into Google Data Studio real time dashboard.
Key features of Hevo
- Data Transformation: It provides a simple interface to perfect, modify, and enrich the data you want to transfer.
- Schema Management: Hevo can automatically detect the schema of the incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
- Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
If you want to take Hevo for a spin, try it out over here!
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Share your views on setting up Google Data Studio real time reports in the comments below!
With around a decade of experience, Sarad has designed and developed fundamental components of Hevo. His expertise lies in building lean solutions for various software problems, mentoring fellow engineers and exploring new technologies.
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