{"id":13029,"date":"2021-05-23T18:17:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-23T18:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e-dialog.group\/blog\/looker-studio-dashboards-make-interactive-with-filters\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T12:39:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T12:39:55","slug":"looker-studio-dashboards-make-interactive-with-filters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e-dialog.group\/en\/blog\/looker-studio-dashboards-make-interactive-with-filters\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Studio Dashboards Made Interactive With Filters (ex Looker Studio)"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: Google has renamed Looker Studio back to Data Studio as of April 2026. Similarly, Looker Studio Pro will now be called Data Studio Pro. Don’t be confused by the naming conventions in the text! The information in this article remains valid.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this blog article we show how the functionality and interactivity of Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) dashboards can be optimized using filters.<\/p>\n

Filters make Looker Studio dashboards interactive<\/h2>\n

Who doesn’t know that dashboards are created with great effort and are forgotten after a short time because they are not actively used. This can be counteracted by designing the dashboards to be as interactive and self-explanatory as possible. The level of interactivity can be significantly increased with the help of filter functions and controls.<\/p>\n

What filter options are available in Looker Studio?<\/h2>\n

We’re not talking about data filters that are added directly in the respective widget or at the report or page level in edit mode to filter a specific subset of the data. This is more about filters than controls that can be used in reading mode by users who use the dashboard for reports but do not actively edit or create them.<\/p>\n

These filter functions can be found under the menu item “Add control” or in English “Add a control”.\"Looker<\/p>\n

Period control<\/h3>\n

The period control is probably the best known and most frequently used filter in dashboards. This makes it easy to select the period from which the data is displayed in the dashboard.<\/p>\n

What the tax option unfortunately cannot do is add a comparison period. This function can only be set per widget in edit mode.<\/p>\n

Dropdown filter<\/h3>\n

As the name suggests, this is a drop-down list where one or more values ​​of a dimension can be selected. In addition, a metric can be stored to show the ranking and the value of the individual entries.<\/p>\n

Similar to the dropdown filter is theFixed size list<\/strong>. The only difference is that the list does not open as a dropdown, but is displayed in a fixed size as a block.<\/p>\n

Input field and advanced filter<\/h3>\n

You can search for expressions within a dimension using the Input or Advanced Filter. This is useful, for example, for dimensions that contain longer entries such as campaign names or page paths. With the input filter, the operators such as “contains”, “equals”, “regex”, “starts with” and “in” are permanently stored by the creators; with the advanced filter, people with reading rights can select them themselves in the filter.<\/p>\n

Checkbox, slider and preset filter<\/h3>\n

These controls are not classic filters. In order to use this, it is best to create a parameter in advance. This shows how this works and which use cases can be easily represented with itBlog article.<\/a><\/p>\n

Data Control<\/h3>\n

With the “Data Control” element you can easily integrate a field into the dashboard with which the data source can be exchanged. The data source must be of the same type, so for example the data from a different Google Analytics 4 property can be displayed here. This is particularly practical if there are several GA4 properties in the company. The widgets then display the data of the other property with just one click.<\/p>\n

This field can be used for data sources from the following tools:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Google Analytics<\/li>\n
  • YouTube Analytics<\/li>\n
  • Google Ads<\/li>\n
  • Campaign Manager 360<\/li>\n
  • Search Console<\/li>\n
  • Google Ad Manager 360<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Dimension Control<\/h3>\n

    The Dimension Control is one of the newer and also a very practical feature. Several dimensions can be stored in the filter element here. Users then have the opportunity to easily swap the primary dimension in the widgets using this feature.<\/p>\n