Views

Data Studio v2 introduces a concept of Views – a powerful way to manipulate your data without affecting the original source. Think of a View as a set of operations applied to a single table of data.

In other words, it's a Dataset with actions applied to it - an interactive representation of your data. For example, you may want to create a View of your customer data with the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) obfuscated, allowing you to share customer information with other teams.

External label specifications

External labels for Views have to:

• contain only alphanumeric characters or underscores,
• be less than 255 characters long and
• not start with a number or an underscore.

To create a View:

1. Go to Datasets.
2. Select the data source you want to create a View on and click Options.
3. Select Create View.
4. Enter the name for this View.
5. (Optional) Enter a summary (this will appear under the View name).
6. (Optional) Enter a description for the View. The description is particularly helpful if you plan to share it with other users.
7. (Optional) You can enter an External label for the View in order to identify it from systems external to Data Studio. If you don't enter a value, it will be auto-populated.
8. (Optional) Set the View to be Static or Interactive. Like an interactive Dataset, an interactive View allows users to drill into any underlying data such as passing or failing rows from a Validate Workflow step, or rows from profiled or grouped data created by the Profile and Group View actions/Workflow steps respectively.

   An interactive View can only be drilled into when explored if its source is interactive, whether that be an interactive Dataset or a parent interactive View.

9. Click Apply to save changes.

Using the View editor you can now explore, edit and publish this View.

Explore a View

Explore mode allows you to take actions on your data (such as filtering and sorting) without building a new Workflow. Each applied action will be listed in the Actions panel on the right. Clicking on this panel allows you to go back and see the data before the next action was applied.

You can then click Save as View to create a brand new View as a permanent way of storing this set of actions.

Available actions:

• Filter - apply a basic filter, or select advanced to build a Function
• Columns - exclude/include selected columns from View
• Infer - infer data types for a column, such as treating blank values as nulls or a column of numeric values as date information
• Relationships - analyze relationships between columns in your data. Find out more.
• Chart - visualize the data (similar to the Chart step)

The remaining actions - Sample, Sort, Group, Transform and Profile are the same as their equivalent Workflow steps.

Views on Views

You may want to create different interactive Views of your data. For example, if you own customer data, you may want to share contact details with the marketing department but not billing. Alternatively, you may also not even have access to the Datasource the View was created from.

To create a View on an existing View:

1. Go to Views.
2. Click Options > Create View for the appropriate View.
3. Enter the name for this View.
4. (Optional) Enter a description for the View.
5. (Optional) Set the View to be Static or Interactive.
6. Click Apply to save changes.

Using the View editor you can now explore, edit and publish this View.

To publish a View, go to Views and click on the name of the required View. Click Publish in the top-right corner. To make it easier to track changes between versions, please enter a comment describing the changes in this version.

To edit a View, go to Views and click Options > Edit details for the View you want to edit. You'll be able to add descriptions and tags for each column.

Share Views

By default, Views will only be available to users who can access the same Space the View has been created in. You can also share Views with either specific or all Spaces.

To share a View:

1. Go to Views.
2. Click Options > Sharing options.
3. Select the required option and click Apply. If you select Shared with some Spaces, a list of Spaces available to you will be shown, allowing you to specify the Space(s) to share this View with.

If other users have shared a View within a Space you have access to, you can include that View in your current Space by going to Views and clicking Include from another Space.

A View does not contain or store data, but provides a way for data to be manipulated and shared with users or a groups of users in different Spaces.

Think of a View as a layer that is placed on top of data before it is opened and explored. Views provide a way to:

• manipulate data without affecting the original source.
• create different representations of data for different purposes.
• (selectively) share data across Spaces.
• for example, obfuscate sensitive values, hide entire columns or filter specific rows before sharing.
• control who can drill down into underlying rows of aggregated data.

Common uses

• Reference files - if you have files relevant to multiple Spaces then importing them into one Space, creating Views on top and sharing will mean the reference Datasets only need to be managed in one place and any updates are applied everywhere.
• View as a Source - layering a View on top of a Dataset and using the View as the Source of multiple Workflows will allow the Dataset to be replaced more easily in future.

Create a View

Go to the Views page and click Create new View, select the Source either an existing Dataset or another View.
It can be useful to layer Views on top of Views. For example, obfuscate contact data across an entire Dataset and save that as a View, then use that View as a source for multiple Views one filtering rows for the Eastern region Space and another View for Western region Space etc.

Quick create

Right-click an existing Dataset or View from their list screen and select Create new View or alternatively select multiple Datasets and bulk create a View for each of them.

Manipulate data

Views contain a list of actions that have been applied to the data. See explore data for more information.

Interactive drill down

A View can have the Interactivity value Static or Interactive, with the default being Static. Interactive Views allow users to drill down into the underlying rows that make up the aggregated data that has been shared.
There is a warning shown when sharing an interactive View that the user is sharing access to the underlying data.

Share a View

Once Published, a View can be shared with some or all Spaces. In the Space where the View is included (shared to), the list of actions applied to the View is hidden, so the users of that Space cannot see the state of the data before it was filtered, grouped, obfuscated, etc.

Sharing Sensitive Data

If the Dataset has Data tags flagged as 'Sensitive' then all of the Columns tagged as containing sensitive data are highlighted before data is shared across Spaces.

Adding a Shared View into a Space

Once a View has been Shared, go to Views and click Include from another Space to see a list of all shared Views. To revert this, go to the Views list screen and select Actions > Remove from Space

Views vs Charts

A Chart is just a View that ends in a Chart action, so shows a graphical representation of the data.