Community Visualizations Developer Preview

Community Visualizations allow you to build and use your own visualizations in Looker Studio. The Developer Preview / Beta introduces the core functionality, resources, and tools required for you to build and share visualizations in Looker Studio.

Developer preview

The Developer preview launch includes the following:

• The Community Visualization feature is enabled for all users. Anyone can build and use visualizations. See Getting started with community visualizations.
• The Looker Studio Community Component Library is available. The helper library makes it easier to develop community visualizations.
• Community Visualizations can be published in the showcase. Find out how to share your visualization.
• A Data Source control is available to turn Community Visualizations on/off. By default, Community Visualizations are turned on for a data source but consent is required when adding a visualization to a report. Learn how to Enable community visualizations in your data source.

Partner Visualizations

Partner visualizations go through a review process, and are featured as part of the in-product gallery in Looker Studio. The Partner Visualization program provides:

• In-product visibility
• Opportunities for promotion through communication + social channels

To participate and publish your visualization:

1. Build a visualization
2. Submit your visualization to the gallery.

What's next

The Developer Preview sets the foundation from which you can build and use Community Visualizations. However, there is an extensive roadmap that will improve the experience for developers.

Some of the features and improvements under consideration:

• Development

  • Improving the developer workflow.
  • Supporting more advanced data and style configuration options.
  • Better control over deployments and pushing new changes.

• Distribution

  • More options to publish your visualization/components for other Looker Studio users to discover and use in their reports.

• New capabilities

  • Performance improvements.
  • Additional controls for users and developers to manage visualizations and to decide which visualization(s) can access external resources.

Stay up-to-date and provide feedback

To stay up-to-date on changes such as fixes, improvements, and new features follow the changelog.

We would like to hear from you! What's working well for you, what isn't, and what features or improvements would you like to see? To provide feedback to the team see Sending feedback.

FAQ

Do I have to make my community visualization code public?
Your code needs to be publicly readable/accessible. That doesn't mean you need to promote or share it publicly, but you should assume that any viewer of a report that uses your community visualization can view your visualization code. The same is true if you share the component ID with anyone. They will be able to load and add your community visualization to their reports. There may be options in the future to allow for private or authenticated community visualizations.

Where do I report an issue or request a feature?
If you've discovered an issue, first review the list of Limitations / Known issues to determine if this is a known issue. You can submit feature requests and issues by following the instructions for Sending feedback.

Why can't my visualization make requests for external resources?
There is a Content Security Policy that restricts requests for external resources. This is in place to mitigate the risk of a community visualization sending data to an external server.

Why can Community Visualizations be disabled by the data source?
Even though a Content Security Policy restricts requests to external resources, some users prefer to know that their data will never be rendered by a third-party built community visualization. The data source setting gives users the option and assurance their data will never be rendered by a Community Visualization.

I created and trust my own visualization, why can't my code make requests for external resources?
For now the Content Security Policy is enforced for all community visualizations. However, there may be options in the future to relax this for special circumstances.

Can I monetize my visualizations?
Yes. However, in order for your community visualization to work there is currently a requirement that all resources are public. There are also no authentication services in place to prevent anyone from using your visualization. Monetization options are not a priority during developer preview, but in the future there may be better options available to support this use case.

Can I make my Community Visualization source code public?
Yes, it's up to you. If you are interested in open sourcing your visualization see Sharing. There is no requirement for you to publish your source code.