At the top of the page you can see a toolbar where you can find different options for creating a report.
Pages, names
First of all, your report needs a title. You can simply name it at the top left corner and the changes will be automatically saved. Then you can add multiple pages to the report which you can also name and easily switch between them.
Types of data visualization
The next part of the toolbar is the data visualization tools. You can select the graph type you want to build.
For example, a bar chart requires you to select one dimension and at least one metric. If you add multiple metrics, you will see multiple bars for each category.
Inserting text and images
You can insert text, images, rectangles, and circles to the report depending on your purpose.
Layout and theme give you the possibility to play with the style of your report. You can change the background, colors, text styles, and display options and create a unique style that can represent the style of your company.
Styling and controlling menu is a great help in the process of creating a report. You can select the chart type, experiment with metrics and dimensions, change data sources, apply a filter, etc.Now let’s switch between view and edit mode to see how our sample report looks like:
Sharing the visualization
You can do a few things with the share feature. You can collaborate on the visualization with your team or clients. Depending on their level of access, they can view or edit the reports through an invitation or a shared link.
The visualizations also can be shared by embedding them into online and offline content, from websites and blog posts to annual reports.
Create New report on Airbnb Boston reviews
To create a new report from scratch, a portion of the Kaggle dataset of the Airbnb reviews in Boston has been uploaded into a shared Google Sheets to be used as data source for Google Data Studio.
the full Kaggle dataset of the Airbnb reviews in Boston is available at https://www.kaggle.com/airbnb/boston
the Google Sheets, with approximately 10k reviews, to be used as data source is available at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a2c9vCMFFfDXmhjoEoX2EwS2lYTbqE4WfZY72TXW9co/ edit#gid=285360760
Spend some time to understand the data by reading their description on Kaggle and looking at the table on Google Sheets.
The data-source table has been created by joining the “Listings” and “Reviews” original tables provided by Kaggle, and exporting the first 10k joined rows sorted by ascending “listing_id”.
Create a new report
Go to the Data Studio home page
Click on “Start a new report” (Blank)
Rename the “Untitled Report” with a name of your choice by clicking on the name itself
Create a new data source by clicking on the blue button on the bottom right, or select the Airbnb data source if it is already present in the right-pane list
Connect to the Google Sheet data source by using its URL:
Choose the “Google Sheets” connector in the list of connectors on the left
Choose the “URL” option in the first column
Paste the Airbnb-data Google Sheet URL in the specific field: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a2c9vCMFFfDXmhjoEoX2EwS2lYTbqE4WfZY72TXW9co/ edit#gid=285360760
Choose the “Reviews Query DW” worksheet in the next column
Tick the option to “use the first row as headers” if it is not ticked yet
Click on the “Connect” button to execute the connection to the data source
Dimensions, metrics, and transformations
Check the type and aggregation of each field and that all the fields are correctly interpreted as either dimension or metric.
Create new useful fields (dimensions or metrics) from the existing ones by exploiting formulas, such as in the following (click on the “+” and “fx” placeholders). For details on this step, see: https://support.google.com/datastudio/answer/6299685?hl=en
CONCAT(latitude, CONCAT(', ', longitude)) → to generate a (lat, long) field useful for map charts; before generating this new field, set “Aggregation=None” for latitude and longitude fields, so that they become dimensions (by default, Data Studio considers them as metrics)
After creating new fields and updating the existing ones, click on “Add to report”
Analyze the data
Analyze the data by building the following visualizations. Then, explore and create new visualizations to find interesting insights on your own.
Analysis (1): Number of Records over time
Analysis (2):
analyzing the number of different reviewers for each (lat, long) locationnote that the Kaggle dataset of the Airbnb reviews is in Boston, Massachusetts, US
Allow end-users to filter the data under analysis by selecting a date range and city name.
Step 1: Navigate to
Step 2: Click on "use it for free button
Step 3: Sign in with your Google account and password. You should now see the home page of the Data Studio
Step 4: click on 'Create' button on the top left:
Step 5: Click on 'data source'
Step 6: Find and Click on Google sheet connector
Step 7: Find and Click on the Google sheet
Step 8: Once you select the worksheet, there are still some decisions to make. You have three options:
Use the first row as headers. Selected by default. Does what it says on the tin.
Include hidden and filtered cells. Selected by default. If you want to keep data out of Data Studio by hiding its columns in Google Sheets, deselect this.
An optional range of cells containing your data. Data Studio looks at the entire worksheet by default. If your table lies in a certain range, specify that here.
Step 9: Click “Connect” to give Data Studio access to the Sheet:
Step 10: You should now see a screen like the one below. Next we need to help Data Studio understand what kind of data you’ve given it.
Step 11: Google Data Studio doesn't always determine the correct data type for each field. so you need to make sure that each field is of the correct data type.
Step 12: Create calculated fields (optional)
Data Studio allows you to add custom fields to a data sources. So instead of adding all sorts of columns and formulas to your sheet, you can add them to your data source. That’s great because you can add calculated fields on the fly, without modifying your source data. Your new fields will be accessible in any reports that use this data source.
Step 13: Once everything looks right then click on the "create report" button, this will create an empty report with your Google Sheets data source connected to it:
Step 14: Charts in this report will use your new data source by default. Now you’ve got a data source and report to work with. The rest is up to you!
All the green fields represent dimensions (fields that can be counted) and all the blue fields represent metrics, usually categorical data. See the documentation for .
