Monday, July 27, 2020

Filter By Email: Try it for yourself!

By now you probably know how much I love the Filter by Email feature of Data Studio, which was released in February 2020. This feature allows us to create Data Studio reports which ONLY display specific data based on the logged-in user. I realized, however, that I hadn't really posted any concrete "how-to" documents illustrating how it works - mostly because any example would need to be customized to include a user's email address in order for that user to see how it works.

So, I've put together an example data set and example report, with instructions on how to copy these and modify them so you can try this feature out for yourself! For this example, we will use some student reading log data (submitted via Google Form), and use it to create a reading log that only displays data for the logged in user.


Instructions:

1. Make your own copy of the example data set (and name it so that you know that this copy is yours!) This data set contains student reading log data for all students in a single class.

2. Check out the sample report and note that it currently displays all of the books read by the entire class (82 books). 
3. Make a copy of the report by clicking the Copy button in the upper right corner. 

4. The "Copy this report" dialog box will appear. This is where you'll connect your copy of the data to make your own copy of the report. To do this, under "New Data Source." select the drop-down menu and select "Create New Data Source."

5. Select the Google Sheets option, then select your copy of the example data set (see screen shot below), and click Connect in the upper right corner of your screen.


6. On the next screen, you will see a list of all the fields from your Sheet that are available for your report. Select "Filter by Email," check off "Filter data by viewer email," and click the button that says "Select Email Field." 

7. Choose Email as the field you would like to use and click Done and then Close in the upper right corner.

NOTE: If, when you click "Select Email Field," in Step 6, you are not able to choose Email as the desired field, then uncheck "Filter data by Viewer Email" and click Done and then Close in the upper right corner. Then, from the Resource menu, choose "Manage Added Data Sources," and Edit the data source to return to the screen for Step 6 and try again.

8. When asked whether you'd like to grant consent to access your email address, choose Allow. This step is what permits the report to use your logged-in email address to display specific data.

9. Click the View button in the upper right corner of the report, and note that the report contains "No Data." This is because you are logged into your own Google account, but the sample data set does not contain your email address anywhere in the Email field. Let's change that!

10. Open your copy of the data source Sheet. Locate all rows that contain Lana Mulherin's reading log information (they are colored yellow so you can find them easily.) Replace Lana's email address with your own in all 8 places. If you want to test this with an additional Google account, replace Sergio Morton's (blue) email address with a different email address.

11. Go back to the Data Studio report (which should still be in View mode) and click the refresh data button (round arrow) in the upper right corner of the screen. The report should now display the data for only the rows where your email address appears (Lana's list).

12. If you like, share the report with your second Google account (as view only) and see how the list that appears is different (Sergio's list.) 

13. Note that the report viewer does not need to be granted access to the spreadsheet, only the report. If the report viewer's email address is not contained in the Sheet, the report viewer will see no data. However, I would still recommend sharing the report with specific Google accounts (and/or just a domain) rather than "anyone with the link can view." Also, before you ask, the feature does not support using multiple email addresses in a cell.

I am sure you can think of lots of ways this can be used in K-12 education, particularly with Sheets that results from a Google Form where the user's email address is captured automatically. This example uses student email addresses, but you could also use teacher emails in order to only share data with a single teacher! Please let me know what you come up with.

Resources:

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