Looker Studio Refresh Data to Keep Your Dashboards Up-to-Date

Keeping your Looker Studio dashboards up-to-date is crucial for making informed decisions. This can be achieved by refreshing the data regularly.

To refresh data in Looker Studio, you can use the "Refresh data" feature, which allows you to update your dashboards with the latest information. This feature can be accessed by clicking on the "Refresh data" button in the top right corner of the screen.

Regular data refreshes help ensure that your dashboards are accurate and reflect the current state of your data.

To configure your API and reports in Looker Studio, you'll need to connect your API to TMR and configure your query settings. This involves adding a new query config and setting up your Firebase settings to TMR.

To add a new query config, click the + Add New button in the Query Configs section and choose the data source you added earlier. You'll then need to name your query config, select the method, enter the URL path/suffix, and optionally provide a JMESPath to extract specific data.

Here's a quick rundown of the steps to configure your API and reports:

Credentials play a crucial role in determining how data is handled in reports.

For data sources that use Viewer's Credentials, each viewer has their own data freshness settings, meaning their queries won't affect the data freshness of the report for other viewers.

This is in contrast to data sources that use Owner's Credentials, where all viewers are governed by a single data freshness setting.

If user A owns the data source credential, then user A and all other viewers of the report will see the refreshed data after a query is issued.

For data sources that use Viewer's Credentials, user A's queries don't affect the data freshness of the report for user B, and vice versa.

Configuring Your API with TMR is a crucial step in creating reports in Looker Studio. You'll need to choose which account to get data from and other configurations from that data source.

To start, you'll need to click the + Add New button in the Query Configs section. Choose the data source you added earlier and click Next.

Next, you'll configure your Firebase settings to TMR. You can name your query config, select the Method, enter the URL Path/Suffix, and optionally provide a JMESPath to extract a specific set of data from the endpoint.

Here are the steps to configure your Firebase settings:

Updating your connection is a crucial step in ensuring your data remains accurate and up-to-date. There are two key times when you'll need to update your Looker data connection.

You'll need to update your connection if you've added new fields to your dataset, removed fields, renamed fields, or reordered fields. This is because Looker Studio doesn't automatically detect schema changes in your dataset.

If you add new columns to a Google Sheet, for example, you'll need to refresh the data source fields. The same goes for modifying a SQL query in a custom BigQuery connection to return more or fewer fields.

Here are the specific tasks that require a refresh of the data source fields:

To update your GA4 connection, start by clicking on the "Resource" menu from your Looker report.

Then, click "Manage added data sources" to view the list of connected data sources.

From this list, click "Edit" on the data source you want to update.

This will allow you to modify the settings for your GA4 connection.

Setting the right data freshness for your data sources is crucial to ensure you're getting the most up-to-date information. To do this, you need to edit the data source and navigate to the data source configuration page.

Clicking on Data freshness in this page will give you the option to change the default refresh rate. You can then select a new refresh option from the available choices.

Changing the data refresh rate is a simple process that involves a few clicks. First, you need to edit the data source, then click on Data freshness, and finally select a new refresh option and click Set Data Freshness.

Here are the exact steps to change the default data refresh rate:

Viewing a default report configuration in Looker Studio is a straightforward process. By default, the data freshness setting is 12 hours, which means that data is refreshed every 12 hours.

The default report configuration includes a table with dimensions and metrics, such as Date sold and Item color. This table provides a basic structure for your report.

A date range control is also set to the last 7 days, giving you a specific time frame to work with. This control helps narrow down the data to a specific period.

A filter control is currently unset, meaning that no filters have been applied to the data yet. This allows you to start with a clean slate and add filters as needed.

To view the default report configuration, Looker Studio issues a query to fetch only the necessary data. This query and its results are temporarily stored in memory.

Embedded reports are a convenient way to share data with others, but there's a catch - viewers can't manually refresh the data.

You can't manually refresh the data in an embedded report, unlike report editors who can follow a few simple steps to do so.

The data will automatically refresh when the data freshness threshold expires, so you don't have to worry about it getting outdated.

To give you a better idea of the difference, here's a comparison of what report editors and viewers can do:

Refreshing data in Looker Studio happens in the background, and it's essential to understand how it works. Looker Studio fetches data from the underlying dataset when a data source's freshness threshold has been exceeded or a new, previously unstored query is issued.

Here's what happens when you open a dashboard: Looker Studio downloads every data source for the selected period from an API, stores those results, generates a query for each graph or table, runs the query, and shows the data in the component.

Data freshness works by temporarily storing queries and results in memory, which can speed up report performance and reduce query costs or quota hits. This process applies to every data source in your report, and it's a key feature that helps you get the most out of Looker Studio.

Data freshness is a game-changer in Looker Studio, allowing your reports to serve data from memory to speed up performance and reduce query costs.

Data is stored in memory for a short time after it's generated by your reports, making it available for future queries that meet the data freshness threshold.

This threshold varies by data source, so it's essential to understand how it applies to your reports.

Serving data from memory can significantly reduce the load on your underlying dataset, resulting in faster report generation and lower query costs.

Data freshness applies to every data source in your report, ensuring that your reports always have access to the most up-to-date information.

Once a data source's freshness threshold is exceeded, Looker Studio fetches data from the underlying dataset, ensuring that your reports stay current.

To refresh data in Looker Studio, you need to understand the process of how data is loaded into a dashboard. Here's a simplified explanation of what happens when you open a dashboard:

When you open a dashboard, Looker Studio goes out and downloads every data source for the period selected from an API.

To refresh data, you'll need to run a query for each individual graph or table. This query determines which data is needed from the data source of that graph or table.

Looker Studio stores the results of each data source before running the query. This stored data is then used to generate the query for each graph or table.

To refresh data, you'll need to re-run the query for each graph or table, and re-apply any formatting based on the results of that data.

Here's a step-by-step breakdown of the process:

To refresh data in Looker Studio, you can use the "Refresh" button, which is located in the top right corner of the report. This button will automatically update the data to the latest available.

The refresh interval can be set to automatically refresh the data at regular intervals, such as every hour or every day, depending on the data source and the needs of the report.

When you're ready to refresh your data in Looker Studio, it's essential to understand how return times work.

Data freshness is a crucial setting that determines how often your data is refreshed.

For blended data sources, the data freshness setting will be the minimum refresh time for all the data sources included in the blend.

If you blend a Sheets data source with a refresh time of 15 minutes and a BigQuery data source with a refresh time of 4 hours, the resulting blended data source will have a refresh time of 15 minutes.

This means you don't have to worry about waiting for the longest refresh time if you're combining multiple data sources.