Our friend, Alan, over at the Google Data Studio team today confirmed an official fix via the Issue Tracker on when they are going to fix a bug with chart specific calculated fields with blended data sources.
I’ve been waiting since November last year for this fix, so I’m actually extremely happy this is being fixed now. I have to point out that the Google Data Studio team only released the ‘Chart Specific Calculated Field’ ability in Google Data Studio on the 3rd of November, 2018 and I shortly submitted the bug in this blog post to the Issue Tracker.
I have also been promoting the bug fix request in the Issue Tracker which has gathered support from 107 people, and has wrecked my inbox with the now 73 comments that are in the Issue Tracker ticket itself.
I’ve even gone as far as writing up an entire blog post called ‘Using Division in Chart Specific Calculated Fields Bug‘ which included a temporary workaround by Alan @ Google – along with details of the ‘bug’ itself in Google Data Studio.
What I’ve written above is basically to show how close to my heart this issue is – as I also have written up a blog post on blending PPC & SEO data together using Google Search Console and AdWords which requires this fix before I can release this blog post. I digress!
The Problem
Without having to repeat myself, the issue with this is the fact that you can’t reliably calculate or use even basic mathematics currently in Google Data Studio due to data aggregation issues when you blend two data sources together with lots of dimensions added.
The comment from Alan at Google yesterday states two points on a fix that has already happened (point 1) and on a fix that is soon going to be be implemented (point 2):
Re-aggregation Fix
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/119319856#comment72
Date range dimension aggregation
- This is now fixed. As of this week, date range dimensions no longer force you to reaggregate your data on the date dimension.
- New behavior is that date range dimensions are pushed down as a “date filter” on the inner data sources, respecting the dates set on the report/page/component (or blend, if you have a date override for that inner data source).
- For backward compatibility, existing blends with date range dimensions were updated to have date appear again as an “extra” dimension in the dimensions list.
- Moving forward, you will need to add date range dimensions to either your extra dimension list or as a join key if you want them to show up in the blended data source’s schema.
SUM(metric1) / SUM(metric2)
- Everything is just about finished on our end. We expect it to land early next week (Monday or Tuesday)
It is point 2) that is the key point as this allows you to re-aggregate the metrics through the calculation or filter that you apply in your Google Data Studio report.
Alan has pointed out that the fix will land early next week.
It’s exciting! I even pointed out to Lee Hurst on Twitter that I’d go down and have a shot when this fix actually comes through to celebrate.
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