How to share Google Data Studio Reports and Data Sources

A lot of people are confused about sharing and managing access with Google Data Studio. I think that most of the confusion comes from the fact that you can share and manage access at Reports level or Data sources level. Understanding this distinction is crucial. It will help you bring much more granularity in the way you share and manage access to your reports and data sources. Let’s take a look at it in more detail.

Reports and Data Sources are distinct elements

Reports are different from Data Sources. You can share a report with someone without giving him access to the data sources. You can also share a data source with someone without giving him access to the report.

Visual elements like charts, images, or text area are attached to the Reports. More technical elements like calculated fields, data type, or field names, are connected to the Data source. If you copy a report containing calculated fields without copying the data source, you will lose them. It’s because calculated fields are attached to the Data source, not the report.

Now that you get a better idea of the differences between Reports and Data sources, let’s see how you can share and manage access for each one of them.

Sharing Reports and Data Sources

Let’s see how we can share Report and Data Source.

Sharing Reports

There are three ways you can share Reports.

Google Data Studio Reports selection screen

Two options here. From the File drop-down menu or directly from the Share button.

sharing Google Data Studio reports

Sharing Data Sources

There are two ways you can share Data sources

sharing_dataSource_navigation

What you need to know about sharing Reports access

The official Google Data Studio help center did a great job summarising the implication of sharing reports and Data Source.

Sharing Reports

Sharing Data source

Source: https://support.google.com/datastudio/answer/7459147?hl=en

Final thoughts

Understanding how to share and manage access at Reports and Data Sources level is important for at least two reasons:

Read more about how to transfer data studio ownership here and how to manage Data sources credentials here.