IMPORTANT:

Make sure to complete this hands-on lab on a desktop/laptop only.

There are only 5 attempts permitted per lab.

As a reminder – it is common to not get every question correct on your first try, and even to need to redo a task; this is part of the learning process.

Once a lab is started, the timer cannot be paused. After 1 hour and 30 minutes, the lab will end and you’ll need to start again.

For more information review the Lab technical tips reading.

Activity overview

Cloud data analysts use reports to share insights and help users make the most of their data. Data Studio is a cloud-based business intelligence tool that turns data into informative and fully customizable reports.

To get started with Data Studio, you need to connect to a data source. This can be a database, spreadsheet, cloud storage bucket, or API. Once you have connected to a data source, you can select the dimensions and measures that you want to use in your report. In Data Studio, measures are called metrics.

Dimensions are qualitative attributes of data, such as campaign name, product category, or customer location. Measures are quantitative values that you can use to measure data, such as total visitors, sales revenue, or customer satisfaction.

Reports present information and insights derived from your data. You can add charts, graphs, maps, and tables to your reports to visualize data and share insights.

In this lab activity, you'll use Data Studio to build charts and a scorecard using dimensions and measures. You’ll then combine these elements into a marketing campaign performance report that will help identify ways the marketing campaign can improve their efforts.

Scenario

Martina, the head of marketing, wants to improve the company’s marketing efforts and make them more cost effective.

To support these efforts, Martina has asked you, a member of the data team, to develop a marketing campaign performance report using historical data. The report should focus on past performance in key areas where Martina believes marketing can be more effective.

Martina has identified four key areas where they believe past performance can help the marketing team identify trends and areas for improvement.

First, Martina has asked you to identify the five most popular browsers used by visitors to the website. This information can be used to help the marketing team understand more about how visitors reach the site and better target their advertising to the browsers used most.

Second, Martina has asked you to identify the total number of unique visitors. This data can be used to track the overall growth of the website's audience and to help the team decide how to best allocate resources and improve your website's performance.

Next, Martina has asked you to identify transactions completed during the annual Jazzy July campaign. This data can be used to assess campaign effectiveness and identify areas for growth.

Finally, Martina has asked you to identify visitor locations across the globe. This data can be used to identify the company's key markets and develop targeted marketing campaigns to improve the company’s reach in the global marketplace.

For this report, you will be working with web traffic data from Google Analytics (GA4) for 2017. The GA4 data already exists in BigQuery.

Here’s how you'll do this: First, you’ll set up a temporary Data Studio environment. Second, you’ll connect to the Google Analytics (GA4) data set. Third, you’ll use a bar chart to visualize the top five browsers used by visitors to the website. Fourth, you’ll create a scorecard to display the total number of visitors to the website in 2017. Then, you’ll identify the location of visitors by country. Finally, you’ll prepare the report to share with others.

Setup

Before you click Start Lab

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources will be made available to you.

This practical lab lets you do the activities yourself in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials that you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

• Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended).

Note: Use an Incognito or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents any conflicts between your personal account and the Student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.

• Time to complete the lab---remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab.

Note: If you already have your own personal Google Cloud account or project, do not use it for this lab to avoid extra charges to your account.

How to start your lab and sign in to the Google Cloud console

1. Click the Start Lab button. On the left is the Lab Details panel with the following:

   • Time remaining
   • The Open Google Cloud console button
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab
   Note: If you need to pay for the lab, a pop-up opens for you to select your payment method.

2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window) if you are running the Chrome browser. The Sign in page opens in a new browser tab.

   Tip: You can arrange the tabs in separate, side-by-side windows to easily switch between them.

   Note: If the Choose an account dialog displays, click Use Another Account.

3. If necessary, copy the Google Cloud username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog. Click Next.

{{{user_0.username | "Google Cloud username"}}}

You can also find the Google Cloud username in the Lab Details panel.

4. Copy the Google Cloud password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog. Click Next.

{{{user_0.password | "Google Cloud password"}}}

You can also find the Google Cloud password in the Lab Details panel.

Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

5. Click through the subsequent pages:
   • Accept the terms and conditions
   • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account)
   • Do not sign up for free trials

After a few moments, the Console opens in this tab.

Note: You can view the menu with a list of Google Cloud Products and Services by clicking the Navigation menu at the top-left.

Task 1. Set up your temporary Data Studio Account

In this task, you will access Data Studio in an incognito session, select the report creation option, and complete the basic account onboarding requirements by configuring your country and company details.

1. In the same incognito window that you've opened to run this lab, click on a new tab and open Data Studio.

Note: If you see the message to Authorize Data Studio access to your Google Account, click on Continue, and then select your student ID from the list to sign in.

2. Select Create new report. The To get started, let's complete your account setup dialog opens.

3. In the Enter your basic info section:

• Expand the Country dropdown list and select your country.
• In the Company field, type Test-company.
• In the Terms of service section, select the checkbox to agree with the terms.
• Click Continue.

4. When prompted to select which updates you want to receive, select No for each answer.
5. Click Continue. If the Continue button is not visible, zoom out to view the bottom of the screen.

Task 2. Connect a data source to Data Studio

In this task, you will select the BigQuery connector to link your project's GA4 sessions table to the report, and prepare your workspace by removing default table layouts.

1. In Add data to report, click Connect to data.

2. In the Google Connectors section, select BigQuery, and click Authorize. A table displays on the Add data to report tab.

Note: A Sign-in with Google dialog may display. This is because Data Studio uses Google Cloud for authentication and authorization. You’ll need to select your student account when signing in.

3. In the first column of the displayed table, select Recent Projects. The Project column displays.
4. In the Project column, select the project id which displays as . The project id is a string of numbers and letters and is unique to your lab.
5. In the Dataset column, select ga_360_sessions.
6. In the Table column, select ga_sessions.
7. Click Add. It may take a moment to add the data source. This is normal.
8. In the pop-up dialog, click Add to report. The Untitled Report opens.
9. On the report page, click Freeform layout.
10. Review the property panels. Property panels are used to configure the components in your report. The current panels displayed are Chart and Data. If the Chart panel is not visible, click on the existing table to display it.
11. Delete the table from the canvas by clicking on the table and pressing the DELETE key. The associated chart property panel will also be deleted.

Note: On Windows and Chrome OS devices, use the BACKSPACE key to delete.

Click Check my progress to verify that you have completed this task correctly.

Connect to a dataset from Data Studio

Task 3. Visualize the top five browsers used by website visitors

Martina has asked you to identify the top five browsers used by visitors to access the website.

In this task, you will add a bar chart component, configure it to display exactly five browser categories, and define a custom calculated field to represent distinct web traffic.

1. To make sure no objects are selected, click on the background of the Untitled Report canvas.
2. In the Untitled Report toolbar, expand the Add a chart dropdown menu.
3. Under Bar, hover over the icons to view the names of the chart and select the Bar chart option.
4. Click on an empty section of the report to drop the bar chart onto the canvas.
5. On the Data panel, in the ga_sessions section, find the device.browser field in the list.

Note: In Data Studio, a field is a column of data. There are two types of columns: dimensions and metrics. Dimensions categorize things you want to measure. Metrics are numbers that measure things in dimensions. Metrics are also known as measures.

6. Drag it to the Dimension section on the Chart panel. This will replace the default trafficSource.referralPath with the device.browser dimension. The bar chart displays the device.browser information.

7. In the Bar chart properties panel, in the Display section, click the Bars dropdown menu to set the number of bars to 5.

8. In the Data panel, click Add a field, and then click Add calculated field.

The All Fields dialog opens.

9. For Field Name, type Total Visitors.
10. In the Formula section, type COUNT_DISTINCT(fullVisitorId).
11. Scroll down and click Save.
12. Click Done.
13. On the Data panel, scroll down to Total Visitors. This is the new field you've created.
14. In the Bar chart properties panel, click the Setup tab.
15. From the Data panel, click and drag the Total Visitors field to replace the Record Count field in the Metric section of the Chart panel. The bar chart updates to display the total number of visitors by web browser.

Note: In Data Studio, a record is a row of data. The field Record Count counts the number of rows in a data set.

Task 4. Create a scorecard to display the total number of unique visitors

Martina has also asked you to identify the total number of unique visitors to the website. In this task, you will place a scorecard component onto your report canvas and map it to your calculated visitor metric to summarize total unique traffic at a glance.

1. In the Untitled Report toolbar, expand Add a chart.
2. In the Scorecard section, select Scorecard.

Hint: Click on a blank section of the canvas to add the Scorecard element to the report.

3. If the Total Visitors metric is not in the metric section of the Chart panel, scroll to and drag the Total visitors field to replace the existing metric.

The total number of visitors across all browsers should display.

Task 5. Visualize the transactions during Jazzy July campaign

Martina wants to know the total number of transactions during the Jazzy July campaign. In this task, you will build a time series chart, configure it to display a custom date range for the Jazzy July campaign, and add a calculated field to track distinct transaction IDs.

1. In the Untitled Report toolbar, expand the Add a chart dropdown menu, and select the Time series chart option.
2. Click on an empty section of the report to drop the line chart on the canvas.
3. From the Data panel, drag date to the Dimension section of the Chart panel (if it's not already there). The line chart displays dates from July 1 to July 31 in 2017 on the x-axis.
4. In the Data panel, click on Add a field, and then click Add calculated field.
5. For Field Name, type Number of Transactions.
6. In the Formula section, enter COUNT_DISTINCT(hits.item.transactionId).
7. Scroll down and click Save.
8. Click Done.
9. From the Data panel, drag Number of Transactions to the Metric section of the Chart panel. Do not replace the metric that's already there.
10. On the Chart panel, scroll to the Default date range filter section, select Custom, and choose the data range from 1 July 2017 to 14 July 2017. The line chart displays the updated date range on the x-axis. Then click Apply.

Task 6. Identify the location of visitors by country

In this task, you will construct a data table categorizing page views by country, insert an advanced filter element, and configure it to query traffic from specific countries.

1. In the Untitled Report toolbar, expand the Add a chart dropdown menu, and select the Table option.
2. Click on an empty section of the report to drop the table onto the canvas.
3. From the Data panel, drag geoNetwork.country to the Dimension section of the Chart panel. The table displays the geoNetwork.country information.

Note: If other dimensions are displayed in the Dimensions section, delete those using the x alongside each additional dimension listed.

4. From the Data panel, drag totals.pageviews to the Metric section of the Chart panel. If other metrics are displayed in the Metric section, delete those using the x alongside each additional dimension listed.

Notice that the default aggregation for totals.pageviews is sum. The table displays the sum of page views by country.

5. In the toolbar, select Insert > Advanced filter.

6. Click on an empty section of the report to drop the advanced filter element onto the canvas.

7. From the Data panel, drag geonetwork.country to the Control Field section of the Chart panel.

8. On the Control panel, in the Control field section, ensure that the Search type is shown as Equals.

9. In the Default value field, type Singapore, and then press ENTER.

10. On the Control panel, in the Control field section, expand the Search type dropdown and select Starts with. Notice the change in the geoNetwork.country advanced filter element.
11. In the advanced filter element, in the Enter a value field, type Br, and press ENTER.

Note: The Enter a value field is case-sensitive.

12. Select Brazil

The total number of page views to the website in Brazil should be displayed in the geoNetwork.country element.

Task 7. Prepare the report to share with others

In this task, you will name the report, add a text title to organize the canvas layout, and enter View mode to preview the finalized dashboard layout.

1. Click on the report name, currently Untitled Report.
2. Enter a new descriptive name that will help users understand the report's data.
3. In the toolbar, locate the Text icon. Use the text icon to add the descriptive name to the top of the canvas. Feel free to experiment with lines and shapes to further customize your report.
4. Click the View button to exit the edit mode, and review how your users will view the report.

Note: Sharing a Report is not enabled within the Google Skills environment. To share a report with others when working with Data Studio outside a lab environment, click on the Share button, and specify the email address(es) you want to share the report with.

Conclusion

Great work!

You created a dashboard using Data Studio to help Martina better understand the web traffic data from Google Analytics (GA4) so that they can improve the company’s marketing efforts and make them more cost effective.

First, you practiced connecting a data source to a visualization tool.

Then, you created a visualization that displayed all visitors by browser in a bar chart.

Next, you created a line graph that displayed the total number of transactions made over a specific timeframe.

Finally, you created a table to display all the countries where the website is active and the number of visitors for each country.

With this dashboard, Martina will have an interactive way to understand their data and make data-driven decisions.

Congratulations! You're well on your way to learning how to use Data Studio to visualize and derive insights from your data.

End your lab

Before you end the lab, make sure you’re satisfied that you’ve completed all the tasks. When you're ready, click End Lab and then click Submit.

Ending the lab will remove your access to the lab environment, and you won’t be able to access the work you've completed in it again.

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