CONCATenated Calculated Fields: A"\n"other idea

CONCAT is a fabulous function in Looker Studio, since it allows you to combine information efficiently in a calculated field. A simple example: if you have lastname and firstname fields in your data, you can combine them to create a Full Name calculated field as shown here (example output would be Smith, John.)

However, I recently learned that "\n" (newline escape character) can also be incorporated into a CONCAT field to include a line break in the resulting calculated field. This can be SUPER useful if you're trying to cut down on the width of a table so it fits better on your dashboard.

Originally, this table had one column for each field, so the table needed to be relatively wide.

After some creative CONCAT, including "\n", the table takes up much less horizontal real estate. Note that the table needs to have text wrap turned on in order for this to work.

 

The drop-down filters elsewhere in this report can still be used to filter records based on the individual fields (like Department), although one caveat is that the table can't no longer be sorted by Department with this approach (not a big deal in this case).

In this example, the (chart-level) calculated fields looked like this:

This approach also works well for the Tooltip on a bubble map, allowing you to bring lots of information into your Tooltip without the rollover label becoming too lengthy and running off the side of the report. (Side note: I have not been successful using this approach on a scatter plot, however.)

If you have additional ideas on how to use this type of line break in Looker Studio, let me know!

Fun with Filters!

One of the most valuable features of Data Studio for looking at education data is the ability to include filters which allow users to "slice and dice" the information on the screen to answer their own questions. However, there are several features within Data Studio that reference the term "filter" and so I thought I would write up some clarification plus a sample report, since it can get a little confusing.

 Filter Controls are elements that can be added to any Data Studio report, using the Filter Control button in the toolbar. The default Filter Control is a multi-select pop-up type, but it can be configured in the Style pane with a number of options. Filter Controls can be single-select or multi-select, can include a Search box, can be a pop-up or clickable type, and can include filter operators such as EQUALS or CONTAINS. Of course, color, font, and size are all customizeable as well.
Data Studio Help: Filter Controls

Chart Interaction Filters allow report authors to turn charts into interactive filters. For example, if your report contained a pie chart, this could be made into an interactive filter allowing the user to click a section of the pie chart to filter the information in the report.
Data Studio Help: Chart Interaction Filters
Treemap as filter menu from Mehdi Oudjida

Filters are a way to restrict the data appearing within a report or report element on the "back end." Filters themselves are not interactive (although you'll often hear people refer to a Filter Control as a Filter, hence the confusion.) For example, if you wanted to include a Scorecard element which showed a count of only the students who scored in a particular category, you could put a Filter on the Scorecard to include only those students, and the count would reflect it.
Data Studio Help: About Filters

Filter by Email is a relatively new feature of Data Studio that uses the user's Google account to display a custom data set based on an Email field in the data source.
Data Studio Help: Filter by email address

I created this sample report (also linked to the image above) to show examples of all the elements discussed here (except Filter by Email), so you can see how these different filters work. Obviously, you wouldn't use them all in one report for the same dimension, so this report is really just for fun.

Let me know.. how do YOU like to filter?