Studio in Looker incorporates the Looker Studio report creation and viewing experience directly into your Looker instance. From Looker, you can create a Looker Studio Pro report, add embedded data sources to visualize your data, and then save the report in Looker's content management system.
During Preview, some Looker Studio features and resources may not be available or may behave differently from how they behave in Looker Studio.
To help you understand the key differences between Studio in Looker and Looker Studio, this page lists the availability of features or resources for both products and describes any behavioral differences between Looker Studio and Studio in Looker. For a comprehensive list of Looker instance requirements to enable and use Studio in Looker, see Enabling and disabling Studio in Looker.
Availability of Looker Studio features in Studio in Looker
The following table indicates the availability of Looker Studio features and Looker functionality in Studio in Looker during Preview. This table lists only those features that are part of Looker Studio's report viewing, editing, and sharing experience and is based on the type of authentication that your Looker instance uses. You can still access any Looker Studio Pro resources that are unavailable in Studio in Looker directly within Looker Studio.
| Feature or capability | Google OAuth | All other authentication methods |
|---|---|---|
Connect to and use data sources These actions are typically performed in Looker Studio. |
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| Connect to Google Sheets | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Microsoft Excel | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Looker | Available | Available |
| Connect to BigQuery | Available | Not available |
| Connect to BigQuery with a Service account | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Google Analytics | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Google Ads | Available | Not available |
| Connect to AppSheet | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Amazon Redshift | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Apigee Integration | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Campaign Manager 360 | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Google CloudSpanner | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Cloud SQL for MySQL | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Display & Video 360 | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Google Ad Manager 360 | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Google Cloud Storage | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Microsoft SQL Server | Available | Not available |
| Connect to MySQL | Available | Not available |
| Connect to New Search Ads 360 | Available | Not available |
| Connect to PostgreSQL | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Search Console | Available | Not available |
| Connect to YouTube Analytics | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Tables by Area 120 | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Extract Data | Available | Not available |
| Connect to File Upload to upload a CSV file | Available | Not available |
| Connect to Community Connectors | Available | Not available |
| Create a reusable data source | Not available | Not available |
| Create an embedded data source | Available | Available |
| Add multiple data sources to a single report | Available | Available |
| Blend up to five data sources | Available | Available |
| Use community visualizations | Not available | Not available |
| Upload a CSV file | Available | Not available |
| Extract data | Available | Not available |
Perform actions within a report These actions are typically performed in Looker Studio. |
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| Share a report | Not available | Not available |
| Delete a report | Available | Available |
| View the version history of a report | Available | Available |
| Get a link to a report | Not available | Not available |
| Embed a report | Not available | Not available |
| Embed external content in a report | Not available | Not available |
| Add a data control to a report | Not available | Not available |
| Download a report as a PDF file | Not available | Not available |
| Export data from a report chart to a CSV file, a Microsoft Excel file, or Google Sheets | Not available | Not available |
| Create and manage an alert on a single chart | Not available | Not available |
| Create and manage a scheduled delivery of a report as a PDF, a CSV, or a PNG file | Not available | Not available |
| Use Gemini in Looker features | Not available | Not available |
| Implement and manage report URL parameters | Not available | Not available |
| Create a thumbnail image of a report | Not available | Not available |
Perform actions on a report These actions are typically performed in Looker and use Looker's content management capabilities. |
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| Save a report to your personal folder, to another user's personal folder, or to the Shared folder | Available | Available |
| View and open favorite reports from the Looker instance Home page, Favorites page, or Recently Viewed page | Available | Available |
| Add or remove a report from the list of favorites | Available | Available |
| Add or remove a report to or from a board | Not available | Not available |
| Search for a report by report name | Not available | Not available |
| View a deleted report in the Trash | Not available | Not available |
| Restore a deleted report from the Trash | Not available | Not available |
Perform actions on a folder that contains a report These actions are typically performed in Looker and use Looker's content management capabilities. |
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| Copy, move, or delete a report from a folder | Available | Available |
| Add or remove users and groups from a shared folder that contains a report | Available | Available |
Perform admin tasks These actions are typically performed in or from Looker Studio. |
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| Manage tasks through the Enterprise admin panel | Not available | Not available |
| Manage the connectors that are allowed on a report | Not available | Not available |
| Manage permissions to create, view, schedule, and download reports | Not available | Not available |
Perform admin tasks These actions are typically performed in Looker. |
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| View active alerts on all reports | Not available | Not available |
| View alert history for all reports | Not available | Not available |
| Monitor user actions in reports alongside actions in Looker with System Activit | Not available | Not available |
| View report activity in a Looker instance's System Activity | Not available | Not available |
| View reports in Looker on mobile | Not available | Not available |
| Manage and search for a report using Looker APIs | Not available | Not available |
Looker Studio Pro features that behave differently in Studio in Looker
The following table describes how features that are available in both Studio in Looker and standalone Looker Studio Pro behave differently from one another, specifically during Preview.
| Looker Studio Pro behavior | Studio in Looker behavior |
|---|---|
| Connectors and data sources | |
| You can use all available connectors to create data sources. | The Looker connector is supported. |
| Data sources can be embedded or reusable. | Only embedded data sources are supported. |
| You can view and manage reusable data sources in the Data sources tab on the Looker Studio home page and in the Resource > Manage added data sources panel in the report editor. | No option to manage reusable data sources is available. |
These data source credentials are supported:
|
Only Viewer's credentials are supported. |
| Report creation | |
| The Create button lets you create reports, data sources, explorations, and team workspaces. | The Create button lets you create Looker Studio Pro reports only. The remaining options apply to Looker assets, such as dashboards or database connections. |
| New reports are automatically saved and can be viewed or shared immediately. | You must click Save and share to make your new report permanent. You need to save the report only once; afterwards, the report is saved automatically. Once you've saved the report, Reset, View, and More options become available. |
| There is no automatic logout option. | You can configure Looker instances to log you out after a period of inactivity. If you are logged out automatically before you save a new report, you may lose your changes. We recommend that you save your report shortly after you create it. |
| Sharing and content management | |
| You can share individual reports with specific users and Google Groups. You can also manage access by moving reports into team workspaces and folders. | Sharing and content management is handled by storing reports in Looker folders, in the same way as for other Looker content types. There is no direct sharing of reports to individual email aliases or groups. |
| Content lives in either your Owned by me or Sandbox locations, or in a team workspace. | Content lives in Looker folders. There is no connection between Studio in Looker and Looker Studio. You cannot access a report that was created in Studio in Looker when using Looker Studio, and you cannot access other Looker Studio Pro reports in Looker when using Studio in Looker. |
| The Location field in the reports list shows where your content lives. | The Location field doesn't appear in the reports list. |
| Removing a report places it into the Looker Studio Trash. You can delete the report permanently by viewing the report in the Trash, clicking Options, and then selecting Delete forever. | Removing a report places it into the Trash folder of the Looker instance. You cannot restore or view the deleted report. |