Video | Tableau | Data visualisation | Tool strategy

My first hour with Google Data Studio

I'd never opened Google Data Studio before, so I hit record and tried to rebuild a Tableau dashboard from scratch to see how it feels as a Tableau user.

  • Data Studio is entirely browser-based and free to start, with native connectors to Google data sources like YouTube analytics plus a large library of partner and open-source connectors built right into the product.
  • It does not connect to Excel files directly through the web uploader, so you need to convert to CSV (or route via Google Sheets) before uploading.
  • Boolean logic must be written with a CASE WHEN statement rather than a simple greater-than expression, and the community documentation was essential for working that out.
  • Themes and layout hints are genuine strengths over Tableau, letting you restyle a whole dashboard in a click while still respecting manual colour choices, and snapping objects into alignment.
  • Number formatting (currencies, percentages, compact thousands/millions) lives in the field definition rather than directly on the chart, which is less intuitive coming from Tableau.

This was a fun little experience and the start of something I’ll be doing each weekend, trying new tools and experiences for the first time whilst recording. ----Join my Discord Server. https://discord.gg/shBuxXr it’s a little sparse at the moment but hang in there.