Simple Row-Level Display Control

We've seen a number of Data Studio report examples that display information that might be collected via a Google Form. But what if you don't want the Form information to display in your Data Studio report immediately? What if it needs to be "approved" first, or what if you want to be able to show/hide different entries from your data source at different times?

Some examples of reports that could benefit from this functionality might be:

• a staff directory report (might want to show only current staff but keep other names in the data source)
• a digital tools learning organizer (where staff are submitting ideas via Form but the instructional technology lead is "approving" them for inclusion in a shared list)
• a remote learning project sharing report (where students are submitting images via Form but the teacher needs to mark them "approved" in order to include them in a public listing)

Fortunately, there's an easy solution for this - built-in report filters! As I outlined in my Fun with Filters blog entry, built-in filters (not filter controls) are a way to restrict the data appearing within a report or report element on the "back end."

I'll use the Staff Directory report as an example. To control which entries from my Sheet data source are displayed in my report, I needed to do two things.

Step 1: I added a column called "Include?" to my Google Sheet data source, and I marked the rows I want to include with "y". In this case, I didn't include a "y" next to Al Banks, Director of Support, although his data is still included in my source Sheet.

Step 2: I added a filter to the report to specify that only rows where "Include?" is equal to "y" should be included in my report. I did this from File > Report Settings > Add a Filter, which will put the filter on the entire report (alternatively, the filter could instead be added to individual report elements like tables and filter controls.)



You'll notice that now the report does not include Al Banks, Director of Support, even though his information is included in the data source, since this filter has been applied. If I wanted to include him in the list, I would simply add a "y" in the "Include?" column in the data source, and Voila! He'll be back in the report.

This is a very simple, but very useful, way to control the data that is displayed in a report at the row level on the back end. BTW, I use this simple approach for the entries that are included in the K-12 Data Studio Report Collection, which allows me to approve form-submitted entries before they are included.

Simple School or District Staff Directory Tool

Here's an idea for a simple Google Data Studio tool that your school or district may find useful! Not all staff members have access to the Staff module of your SIS (such as Aspen), so answering questions like, "Who are all the reading specialists in the district?" or "Who are the members of the math department?" or "What is Mrs. Smith's room number?" might not be all that easy to answer without asking a secretary or an administrator. Here's an example of a district/school directory using Google Data Studio. Users can search/filter by school, name, department, or job title, or sort by clicking the column headers.

Want your own version of this directory? This is a great project for anyone new to Google Data Studio.

First, create a data source by pulling the following fields from the Staff listing in your SIS and placing them in a Google Sheet (you don't need to share it). Make sure the column headers match this list exactly (feel free to make a copy of my sample data source to use as a template):

• First
• Last
• Email
• Ext
• Room
• Position
• Department
• School

Next, access the example above and click the Use Template button in the upper right corner of the screen. Follow these instructions to connect your Google Sheet to the report.

Finally, you need to decide who you would like to access your new report. Use the "Share" button to share as view-only with specific individuals, with everyone in your GSuite domain, or with anyone with the link. If this is a district or school directory, I would suggest sharing it with the domain, so that only members of your school or district will have access to the directory when they are logged into their school accounts.

As the editor of the report, you can then modify the color scheme to match your district's colors, add a logo or text, or make other modifications as desired. You can also embed the report into a web page for easy access.

You will need to manually update the Google Sheet on the "back end" periodically to make sure the report is up to date. I hope to be able to share in the near future a solution for automatically updating a Google Sheet from your SIS, so stay tuned!

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Upcoming Google Data Studio workshops:

• 2/11/2020 @ Southeastern Massachusetts Educational Collaborative (Dartmouth, MA)
• 3/31/2020 @ The Education Cooperative (Walpole, MA) not yet open for registration

Upcoming Conference presentations:

• 2/28/2020 @ METAA CTO Clinic (Milford, MA)
• 3/27/2020 @ Medfield Design Your Learning Day (Medfield, MA) 

Lately, I have been tweeting more and blogging less, so please follow me on Twitter @tiltondata to stay in touch! As a reminder, you can find my complete Google Data Studio report catalog at http://bit.ly/tiltondata.