Looker Studio Pro: Explained
In December 2022, Google announced and released a paid version of Looker Studio: Looker Studio Pro.
What is Looker Studio Pro?
In short, Looker Studio Pro is a premium, enterprise Looker Studio plan; designed to enable medium to large sized businesses the ability to scale their Looker Studio environments.
Looker Studio Pro offers users enterprise level functionality that boosts the scalability, security, and accessibility of their reports.
Looker Studio Pro Features
Organizational Ownership
In the free version of Looker Studio, assets such as reports, data sources, and explorations are owned by the individual user’s Google account who created them.
However, in Looker Studio Pro assets are organized hierarchically, with the parent Cloud organization or Google Workspace organization as the owner.
Therefore, ensuring continued functionality of your reports even after the departure of an employee, as the Google Cloud organization has ownership of the content rather than the employee.
Team Workspaces
A team workspace in Looker Studio Pro allows you to group assets together, and assign access to them at scale.
For example, workspaces can be useful for bulk onboarding new employees. Or adding/removing an entire departments access to a report.
Unlike Sandboxes, which are personal content environments, all members of a team workspace can view and edit assets.
There are four basic roles that you need to know:
- Viewers: Able to view the report and interact with filters.
- Schedule Creators: Able to schedule report delivery (see next section: Advanced Report Delivery).
- Editors: Able to edit assets (reports, data sources and explorations).
- Owners: Full control over all assets within the team workspace.
Advanced Report Delivery
With Looker Studio Pro, you can now automate and schedule report deliveries via Google Chat and Gmail.
Users can add up to 20 schedules per report, and select up to 50 recipients for Gmail delivery, and a maximum of 10 for Google Chat.
Also, you can append a custom subject and message. Allowing you to add context, analysis or commentary to your report outside the confines of Looker Studio’s editor.
Personal Report Links
A personal report link in Looker Studio Pro generates an editable separate copy of a report, accessible only to the person who opens the link, ensuring any changes they make will not affect the original report.
To create a personal report link, configure your report and click ‘Get personal report link’ under ‘Share’. Be sure to grant at least a ‘Viewer’ role to the recipient for the original report and its data sources.
As the report creator, you’re able to set filters, date ranges, and other adjustments for the viewer pre-emptively.
For example, if you’d like to send a localized version of your report to colleagues in different countries, you could send them each a personal report link that’s filtered to their region.
Any changes they make to the report won’t be reflected in the original report, or in the other reports generated either.
Note that data sources are either replicated or referenced from the original report based on their scope (embedded or re-usable). If it’s set to re-usable, when you make changes to the original data source, it will reflect in all versions using the data source. For example, adding a calculated field.
Support
Unlike it’s free counterpart, Looker Studio Pro customers have access to support through Google Cloud Customer Care. However, note that you will need to have both a Google Cloud support plan, and a Looker Studio Pro subscription.
Looker Studio Mobile App
Looker Studio Pro offers a mobile app that allows you to access, sort, and filter your reports on the go. This is particularly useful if you’re travelling and unable to access your computer for longer durations of time.
Looker Studio Pro Pricing
A Looker Studio Pro license is currently available at a cost of $9 USD (approximately €8 or £7) per user, and is available with a free 30-day trial.
Looker Studio vs Looker Studio Pro
Looker Studio is a powerful data exploration tool. Enabling users to easily create and share reports using a simple drag-and-drop format.
Looker Studio Pro enhances Looker Studio’s offering by adding enterprise level features. Such as organizational ownership, team workspaces, advanced report delivery, personal report links, and dedicated support from Google Cloud Customer Care.
Which is better? It depends on your use case.
Looker Studio’s free version is ideal for individuals or smaller teams with less to spend. Whilst Looker Studio Pro is more suited to medium-to-large sized enterprises.
Conclusion
Looker Studio Pro is a great addition to Looker Studio for larger teams with more complex needs. It allows users to deliver their reports with flexibility, manage assets at scale, and lean on Google Cloud for support with any issues.
And if you are considering it, Looker Studio Pro is currently offering a free 30 day trial, for any number of users. So you can test it for yourself before committing to a subscription.