As Google releases another new connector for Data Studio, we show you how to upload CSV data from almost any source with Data Studio’s File Upload.
Why you should care
Keen followers of Data Studio 101 will know how excited we get when Google release a new data connector for Data Studio, and this is no different.
There was already a comprehensive set of connectors which allowed you to link directly to a data source (Google Sheets, MySQL, etc.). But what if you needed to analyse over a large set of existing or historical data?
How you should do it
Previously, a commonly used solution was to import a CSV data set into a Google Sheets document, and subsequently set that as a data source. However, this was often cumbersome and added unnecessary steps to performing simple visualisation tasks. This has been hugely improved with the addition of the ‘File Upload’ connector. You can now create ‘data sets’, which allows you to upload multiple CSV files to a single data source using a simple drag & drop interface:
You can upload up to 100MB of CSV data to the Google Cloud Platform per data set, which will then be accessible as a data source across your reports. This data source will be shareable (like any other in data studio), but only you will have access to the raw data set:
Once uploaded, Data Studio will analyse the data to break it down into Dimensions & Metrics to use in your report. It’s from here where you can also add your own calculated fields using Data Studio’s set of available formulae.
How we can use the data
Once your fields have been analysed, you’ll be able to use your CSV data as you would any other data source. Although data source joining is not yet a feature in Data Studio, you can add multiple data sources to your report to provide context to other underlying data such as Google Analytics, such as the data below:
(Data source: Ofcom (published under Open Government Licence v3.0))
Considerations & Limitations
There are a few considerations to make when importing data via File Upload, but these shouldn’t cause much of an issue for most data sets. Current limits stand at the following:
- 1000 data sets per user
- 2GB total storage per user
- 100 uploads per data set per day
- 100MB file size limit per data set
You should also ensure that your source file is in a valid format, such as using commas as a delimiter to separate entries and line breaks to separate rows, but most platforms which allow data to be exported as CSV will handle this automatically.
If you are looking for support or just some advice on Data Studio 360, please get in touch with our experts.
