4 Data Studio tricks

I regularly build or help people build Data Studio reports, with a focus on good UX and polished UI. Doing so I started compiling a list of tips that can help improve Data Studio reports. Here are four:

• Transparent clickable zones
• Dimension colors for 1-dimension charts
• Objective display (constant calculated fields)
• Zoomed maps

Transparent clickable zones

Currently the only way to create links in Data Studio is by using the text element:

That’s nice but there is a couple of problems:

• The style of links in Data Studio cannot be changed, whatever color and font style we choose in the style panel, the link will always display in the default 1990's hyperlink underlined blue style:

Yiiiiiiks !

• What if we want to create link on other elements?

The solution is to create a link on big empty characters (say, some spaces):

Then, set the overflow setting to hidden and, voilà! we have a transparent clickable zone that can be put on top of any element.

A transparent clickable zone

Dimension colors for 1-dimension charts

Data Studio has a feature that allow to display a color based on dimension value. For a reason that is beyond my understanding, this option is only available for charts that have a breakdown dimension.

1-dimension chart : no dimension color : (

To enable the feature for 1-dimension charts, create a “fake” dimension containing a constant label identical for all the rows. Then use this in the dimension setting while putting the “true” dimension in the breakdown setting:

Added a constant label dimension (here value = “BU”), now there is colors on my dimensions : )

Objective display (constant calculated fields)

Displaying data is good, but being able to tell if the data is good or bad is better. The best way to do that is by displaying a reference along the data on the charts as much as possible. This reference is often an objective. Sometime the objective is in the Data Source and can be displayed with the data. But when it’s not, we can add it manually with a calculated field. The thing is calculated fields do not accept constant values:

Attempt to add a 200$ objective: fail

The trick is to multiply any metric by 0 and add the constant value:

What do you think of this Data Studio ?

Pay attention that to display the objective correctly its aggregation needs to be set as MAX, MIN or AVG (because max, min or average of a constant equals the constant).

Result

More complex objectives can be defined based on the CASE function.

Zoomed maps

Data Studio maps minimum zoom level is limited. Sometime we just want to focus on a part of a region. We can workaround this by increasing the size of the map and moving most of it outside of the report canvas, leaving only the interesting part inside the canvas, e.g. :

Most part of the Massachusetts map is outside of this report, on the left, we focus on the est side of the state.

We can also combine this with elements order (send to back / move to front) to hide part of the map with rectangle forms of the same color as the report background for exemple:

Rectangle forms of same color as report background hide part of the map and gaph on top.

And you, what are your favorite Data Studio tricks ?

UPDATE : as mentioned in the comments and on Twitter some tricks described here were already published, although the solutions differ a little, by another user Mehdi Oudjida on his blog (here and here) which I was not aware at the time of writing.

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I am learning everyday, if I made any mistake please feel free to correct me and add your suggestions in the comment section.