Welcome to connecting
to data sources, visualizing reports, and
configuring themes and layouts. After watching this video, you will be able to
connect to data sources, add visualizations to a report, and configure theme
and layout settings. Data sources enable you to manage the connections
to your data and configure the data fields in your data that you will
use in your reports. You may also see
the term connector being used instead
of data source, but they are two slightly
different components. Connectors are the
components that connect your underlying data to
looker studio features, whereas data sources
are the components that represent a specific
instance of a connector. For example, a connection to
a Google Sheets spreadsheet, an SQL server database, or a CSV file. Connectors are used by a
data source to retrieve your data from a given data
platform or database product. Whenever you create a report, you'll notice that you are first asked for a data
source to connect to. As we've seen, on the Connect to data tab of the Add
data to report window, you can create a
new data source for your report by selecting one of many available
connectors, such as the Google
Sheets connector. Then you need to
either navigate to a local file to upload or
connect to a database system, or in the case of the
Google Sheets connector, you will select a worksheet from your Google Drive to add. After you add the data file, the report editor will
open a new report with your selected
data already embedded. Alternatively, if you select the My data sources tab of the
Add data to report window, you can add an existing
data source to your report by selecting one
of your listed data sources. After selecting an
existing data source, add it to your report. The report editor will open, and a chart connected to your existing data source will already be added
to your report. You can add various
types of charts to your reports to help tell a
visual story about your data. In the Report editor window, click Add a chart
from the toolbar. Then select a chart
type from the list, such as bar chart, pie chart, Line chart, map, or bubble chart. After selecting a chart type, you then decide where you want
to place the new chart on your Canvas by clicking the
mouse in that position. The chart will be
added to the Canvas. You can drag and drop a
chart anywhere else on the canvas if you decide you
want to change its position, and you can use the
drag handles in the corners to resize
the chart object. Whenever you select a chart, you will either see
the charts properties pane displayed on the
right-hand side of the page, or if that pane has been closed, you can use the
properties button to display the charts
properties pane again. You use this properties pane to configure all the
aspects of the chart. On the Set-up tab, you
configure the data elements, such as the data source itself, the dimensions and metrics that are displayed in the chart, and you can configure filters. On the Style tab, you can figure the look
and feel of the chart, such as the colors used, the data labels, the legend, and the background and border. The data button on
the right of the page displays the source data
embedded in the chart, and all the fields contained
in that data source. Both of these buttons
can be toggled on or off to show or hide them. With both buttons switched on, you can easily drop a field from the data pane to a dimension or metric field in the Set-up tab of the charts properties
pane to modify it. The chart will update
with your changes. Here, the dimension
has been changed from first name to product line. While here, the metric has been changed from record
count to revenue. Using this approach, you can add multiple
different visualizations to your reports to create an informative and
appealing dashboard. Looker Studio doesn't use a predefined dashboard
template layout for the Canvas as seen in other products such as
IBM Cognos Analytics. This means you have the
flexibility to place your visualizations wherever
you want on the Canvas, rather than in specified panels. What Looker Studio does have is the theme
and layout pane. You can open this pane from the file menu or
from the toolbar. On the Theme tab, you can choose one of the pre defined
themes for your report, or make your own custom themes. When you apply a theme, it gets applied to all
the pages in your report. On the layout tab, you can
modify elements of the canvas, such as where the page
navigation should be, the display mode,
the canvas size, and guides and grid settings. In this video, you learn
that connectors are the components that connect
your underlying data to Looker Studio. Data sources are
the components that represent a specific
instance of a connector. Connectors are used
by a data source to retrieve your data from a
specified data platform. You use the properties pane to configure all the settings
of a chart object. You can drop data fields directly from the data
pane to dimensions or metrics fields to modify the data a
chart is displaying. You can use the theme and layout feature to modify the
look and feel of a chart.