One downside to both of these approaches is that the data source needs to list one user per row of data. So, if I want two people to have access to a particular set of data, I have to double the number of rows of data....three people, triple...and so on. Not ideal if I want to make a subset of my data accessible to multiple people.
One useful feature of Data Studio is found in under File > Report Settings, where there is an option to "Enable viewer filters in report link" in order to create custom bookmark links. Essentially what checking this box does is modify the report's URL so that it reflects any filter controls that are selected. When the modified URL is sent to a viewer, the viewer sees the report with the selected filters in place.
It's a great way to share a specific report view with a targeted group of people. I've enabled custom bookmark links in my Massachusetts Cities and Towns report as an example. This report allows us to choose any town in Massachusetts to see information including its location on Google Maps and town seal.
The "main" URL of this report is as follows:
However, if we choose Plymouth from the list of towns, the URL changes:
That's an awful lot of gobbledygook, but you can see Plymouth now appears in the URL. If I sent that link to a colleague in Plymouth, it would take them directly to the Plymouth-selected page.
Now, imagine that you had a report which contained data for a number of schools in your district, and you wanted to create a link specific to each school to send to that school's principal. You could enable custom bookmark links which would then allow you to create a link specific to each school.
However, if you didn't want one school to have the ability to access another school's data, it gets a little more complicated. There would have to be a filter control on the original report allowing you (the report author) to choose the school in order to create the custom report link. You could make that filter control inaccessible by either moving it off the report canvas OR you could put a rectangle over the top so that it couldn't be clicked and changed. (You would do those things after you had generated all the school-specific URLs.)
But not being able to access the filter control still doesn't totally solve the issue. A savvy user might notice that the URL contains the name of the school (the way Plymouth appears in the URL above) and could still change it within the URL to get different data. (You can try it above by copying and pasting the Plymouth URL and substituting "Plymouth" with another Massachusetts town name.)
There's a way around this, if you set up the report to pass "secret codes" instead of filter values, and set up a default value to avoid URL tampering, both of which are explained further in this article. I set up a "proof of concept" report here if you'd like to take a look. Although I am not explaining the nuances of this advanced approach in this blog post, I hope these resources are helpful to anyone who wants to explore this concept further. I'm happy to share more info, just ask!
Resources:
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