Strengthening its presence in the corporate analytics market, Google released the Beta version of Google Data Studio in Brazil this week. This free dashboard-building software is part of its analytics suite. The tool brings together all the content needed to create reports, measure, and share data in a practical, customizable, and visually appealing way. Data from tools like Analytics, AdWords, YouTube Analytics, Drive spreadsheets, and many others provided by Google can be accessed from the same location.

Data Studio allows you to create dashboards that integrate data from multiple sources with collaborative sharing, as Docs allows multiple people to edit the document simultaneously.

The free version of the program for small businesses was already announced in May, and the main difference between them is the limitation of five reports per account, but both offer unlimited data sources and reports for viewing, editing, and sharing.

Since the program has just been launched and is still in beta, glitches may occur during the adaptation and redesign process, which doesn't make it any less useful for digital advertising and marketing professionals, especially those responsible for metrics across multiple accounts.

Data Studio has only been tested in the Chrome browser, so it is recommended not to use it in other browsers until its final version, which has not yet been announced, is released.

The product is a direct competitor to Power BI from Microsoft, the Windows manufacturer, whose latest version hit the market last year.

How to use

To use the product, you must have a Gmail account and use Google Drive to store the reports and information you want to use to generate your metrics.

For those who already work with Analytics, it should be very easy to master the new program, as its interface has similar features.

Data Studio is very flexible in its presentation and visualization formats. In addition to traditional bar and pie charts, it also offers some special features, such as charts that track the progress of a business objective and heat maps based on tabular data.

It also features styling tools for customization, a date picker, and dynamic filters.