Latest Updates on Google Data Analytics (June 2021)
Tags: Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Google Tag Manager, Release Notes, Bigquery

Latest Updates on Google Data Analytics (June 2021)

The highlights of the updates on BigQuery, Data Studio, Google Analytics (GA) & Google Tag Manager (GTM). By Alexander Junke datadice Follow Jul 2 · 5 min read

Photo by Bharat Patil on Unsplash

In this blog post, I want to summarize the new releases from the Google tools, that we use daily in datadice. Therefore I want to give an overview of the new features of BigQuery, Data Studio, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Furthermore, I will focus on the releases that I consider to be the most important ones and I will also name some other changes that were made.

If you want to take a closer look, here you can find the Release Notes from BigQuery, Data Studio, Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager

BigQuery

BigQuery got a lot of nice-looking new features.

Table snapshots

There is the possibility to create snapshots of tables now. Table snapshots have the data of a particular time of a particular table.

Define the moment of the wanted data within the last 7 days.

Possible to get the data of an already deleted table when it was deleted in the last 7 days

You can not change the data of the snapshot

Possible to create a new table from the snapshot

That is an example of creating a snapshot:

We create the snapshot trips_backup in the dataset public_bikeshare_test from the table bikeshare_trips in the same dataset. With the statement “FOR SYSTEM_TIME…” you can select the moment you want the data from.

Parameterized data types

Another new feature is parameterized data types. It’s possible to add parameters for strings or numerics types. As an example, you can define the maximum length of characters inside a string. More information about this topic you can find here.

New casting features

Additionally, there are some new casting features. Casting into different number formats is supported and with the cast, you can extract different date parts from a date field in various formats.

Example to extract the month name of a date (Result: JUNE):

Here you find more information about this topic.

New DCL statements

The last important topic for BigQuery is access control with DCL statements. With the GRANT and REVOKE statement you can add, edit or delete project rights for a person. Furthermore, you are able to see the current rights by calling a view. How to use these statements, you can find here and here.

Data Studio

Data Studio enjoys more little improvements this month.

Calculated fields in blended data sources

One pain point during the process of blending two or more data sources was to create calculated fields. This is finally possible. During the creation of blending data, you are able to create calculated fields now. During the creation of the blended data source, it is not possible, to use inside a custom field a field from one of the other tables, which are part of the blend.

Creating a custom field in a blended data source

Map charts improvements

The other important new features are related to the maps charts. The default auto-zoom of Google Maps charts was improved. Additionally, there were some changes to the available geo fields for the geo charts.

Available geo fields for a geo chart

Country subdivision (2nd level) can take some subdivision from different countries (e.g. US counties, French departments, …)

The old field Region has the name Country subdivision (1st level) now

The fields Country, Continent, … accept the name or a correlated code

Google Analytics

There are just some little changes for GA.

Menu renaming

The menu ”Analysis” is now called “Explorations” and the technique “Exploration” has the new name “Free From”. There are no technical changes on this side.

The exploration menu

Offline-event data

There is the possibility to add offline-event data to a GA property. If the data is saved in a CSV with a defined format, then you can add it to Google Analytics. In this documentation, you find more information and a template for a CSV to import the event data.

Google Tag Manager

The GTM got one little improvement.

Initial container version

There was an issue with the new GTM Preview Mode, that it just works with a published container version.

When you create a new container now, you can start with debugging right at the beginning, because an initial container version is created automatically.

Further Links

This post is part of the Google Data Analytics series from datadice and explains to you every month the newest features in BigQuery, Data Studio, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

If you want to learn more about how to use Google Data Studio and take it to the next level in combination with BigQuery, check our Udemy course here