You'll also learn the basic access control in Data Studio that helps you share the access securely within and outside of your company.
Video tutorials are always more preferable! Watch the tutorial below to learn step-by-step how to share your completed Data Studio Dashboard to your colleagues.
Multiple Ways to Report Sharing
Share via URL Link
The easiest way to share an updated report would be to share the report via the "Share" button from Google Data Studio. This method of sharing allows your users to always get the latest version of the report, plus they can interact with the report, slice-and-dice the data to gain useful insights for decision making.
The advantage of this link sharing approach is that the stakeholders with view access would get the update instantly when this report and data gets updated, no transfer of files or sharing of report via email or chats is required.
The steps to share a report via URL link in Data Studio are as below:
- Sign in to Data Studio.
- Navigate to the report you want to share.
- In top the right menu, click Share icon to share.
- In the "Sharing with others" dialog, enter the names or the email addresses of the users to be granted access.
- Select the appropriate access level: "Can view" and "Can edit" before sending the access.
- By default, the recipients would get an email with a link to the dashboard once the access is shared. You may uncheck this option if you do not want to send the email. Personally, I turn this on every time so it's easier for my users to find the link to the dashboard once the access is granted. However, I would prefer to turn this off if I am batch sharing access as I do not want to spam others mail box.
Sharing Report to Public
In real world scenarios, we would want to share the report to public or at least open to your co-workers under the same organisation. In Data Studio, we can turn the Link Sharing option to "Anyone on the internet can find and view" to make the dashboard public.
If you are using company email for the dashboard, you can see an extra option to share Data Studio report as "Anyone in the organisation can view" or "Anyone in the organisation can edit". This opens up the access to everyone with the organisation email domain.
IMPORTANT: Check the "Disable downloading, printing and copying for viewers" option to prevent viewers from duplicating and exporting data from your reports. This is important if your dashboard contains sensitive data that should not be downloaded in any way.
Export Snapshots as PDF (Lock the file with Password Protected)
While it's always good to share dynamic report dashboard, there are times we would need to send a static snapshots of report to our clients. In Data Studio, we can export report to PDF file and send the report to the stakeholders via email.
If you wish to send a one-off report to specific users, you may go to File > Download as > PDF. Click Download to export the dashboard as PDF file.
The report would be downloaded to your local computer.
You may also lock the PDF with password if the file contains private and confidential data. To configure this, simply choose Password protect report and add your password when downloading the report. Check out the video above to see it in action.
Email Delivery Automation
What if we need to send the report on a recurring basis?
Data Studio has got you covered! We can deliver a PDF report to specific emails or users on a schedule in Google Data Studio. Basically, the recipients would receive the email with the PDF version of the static report and also a link back to your dashboard.
To schedule the email, you can click on the dropdown beside the share button earlier, click schedule email delivery. Here you can specify who you want to send to, which page, when to send and how frequent the report should be sent. Then just hit schedule and the report would be sent automatically to the recipient inbox. If you want to learn more about how to customise the email and the schedule settings, I’ll leave the link to the full tutorial video on that.
Q&A About GDS Report Sharing
Can I share it with a group of colleagues or a specific team without adding their emails manually?
Yes. If your team has a group email, you may share it with the group email and all the users added to the group would be granted the access automatically. This is a great time saver for the user access management as the process is now easier and less tedious without requiring the report owner to revoke and grant access manually when there's a new joiner or when people resigned from the company.
Do my clients need Google Email to view the report?
No. Google account is not required to view reports. So if your client is not using a Google email, it’s not a problem.
However, to be able to develop or edit a GDS report, you’ll need a Google Account. So what you can do is to go to datastudio.google.com and click on the button “Use it for Free” and you’re ready to go!
Note that Google account does not necessarily use @gmail.com address. It could be:
- A personal account that ends in @gmail.com, or
- A work or school account for Google products like Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides, which usually ends in @<organization_name>.com