Automate Google Slides from Looker

Automating Google Slides from Looker^† visualizations is one of the most efficient ways for data analysts and business intelligence experts to send data from Looker to Google Slides for seamless report presentations like Monthly Business Reviews (MBRs), Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), financial reporting, and more. In this article we'll describe how to automate Google Slide reporting with visuals from Looker.

† This article focuses on business intelligence visualization and analytics platform Looker, not Looker Data Studio (formerly, Google Data Studio).

How Enterprise Businesses Use Looker

Looker is a business intelligence (BI) software and big data analytics platform that helps users access, analyze, and visualize data.

Enterprise businesses use Looker to:

1. Create Customized Reports: Tailor reports to specific needs, enabling data-driven decisions.
2. Develop Dashboards: Visualize key performance indicators (KPIs) for real-time insights.
3. Data Exploration: Users can explore data in a self-service manner to uncover trends.
4. Integrate Data: Looker can integrate with multiple data sources, providing a holistic view of business operations.
5. Automate Workflows: Automate data analysis and reporting processes, saving time and ensuring consistency.
6. Enhance Data Governance: Control access to data and reports, ensuring data security and compliance.
7. Collaborate: Share insights across teams and departments to foster data-driven culture.

Looker helps businesses transform data into actionable insights, optimizing operations, enhancing decision-making, and driving growth.

If Looker is so great, why continue to use Google Slide presentations?

Looker offers advanced data analytics capabilities, empowering users to analyze and visualize data directly within their environment. Despite these strengths, organizations continue to use Google Slides for presentations for several reasons:

1. Accessibility and Familiarity: Google Slides is widely accessible and familiar to a broad audience, making it a go-to choice for presentations. Its user-friendly interface ensures that even those with minimal technical skills can create or edit presentations.
2. Collaboration Features: Google Slides excels in real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work on a presentation simultaneously. This is particularly useful for teams spread across different locations.
3. Integration with Other Google Workspace Tools: Many organizations use Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), which includes Google Slides, Docs, Sheets, and more. The seamless integration between these tools facilitates efficient workflows, from data analysis to presentation creation.
4. Presentation-specific Functionality: Google Slides is designed specifically for creating presentations, offering a wide range of templates, themes, and design tools that are optimized for visual storytelling. This makes it easier to convey complex data insights in an engaging and understandable way.
5. Broader Audience Reach: Presentations often need to be shared with stakeholders who may not have access to Looker or the necessary permissions to view raw data. Google Slides allows for easy sharing and exporting of presentations in formats that are widely accessible.
6. Offline Access: Google Slides can be accessed and edited offline, a crucial feature for situations where internet access is unreliable or unavailable.

While Looker provides powerful data exploration and visualization capabilities, Google Slides remains indispensable for creating accessible, visually appealing presentations that can be easily shared and understood by a broad audience. The combination of Looker for data analysis and Google Slides for presentation allows organizations to leverage the strengths of both platforms.

How to Automate Google Slides with Looker - The fast and easy approach

Automating Google Slides with Looker and Rollstack involves leveraging the capabilities of both platforms to streamline the process of integrating dynamic data visualizations into your presentations. Rollstack is the leading "last mile of reporting" platform that ensures your data makes it from dashboards to the hands of your enterprise data consumers at scale. This the best way to automate Google Slides from Looker, because it doesn't require any technical knowledge or custom data-pipeline engineering to achieve.

Here are step-by-step instructions to achieve this:

Step 1: Prepare Your Looker Data

1. Define Your Data Model: In Looker, ensure your data model accurately represents the data you intend to showcase. This involves creating LookML models and explores.
2. Create a Look or Dashboard: Use Looker to create a Look (a saved query) or a dashboard that contains the visualizations you want to present in Google Slides.

Step 2: Set Up Rollstack

1. Sign Up for Rollstack: If you haven't already, create a free Rollstack account.
2. Connect Looker to Rollstack:
   In your Rollstack account, go to the Integrations section.
   Choose to add a new integration and select Looker from the list.
   Provide the necessary API credentials from your Looker instance. This usually includes your Looker instance URL, client ID, and client secret.

Step 3: Integrate Looker Visualizations into Google Slides

1. Create a New Presentation in Rollstack:
   Navigate to the "Presentations" section and create a new presentation.
   Select Google Slides as the target platform.‍
2. Embed Looker Visualizations:
   Use the "Add Content" option in your Rollstack presentation to embed Looker data.
   You can choose between embedding entire dashboards or specific Looks. Select the Looker visualizations you prepared earlier.
   Customize the embedding options as needed, such as setting refresh intervals for the data.

Step 4: Automate and Schedule Slide Updates

1. Set Refresh Schedules: In Rollstack, configure how frequently you want the embedded Looker data to update. This ensures that your Google Slides presentation always displays the most current data.
2. Finalize and Share Your Presentation: Once you've set up everything, finalize your Google Slides presentation within Rollstack.
   You can choose to share your presentation directly from Rollstack or export it to your Google Drive for further customization or sharing.

Step 5: Monitor and Adjust

• Monitor Performance: Use Rollstack's dashboard to monitor the performance of your automated presentations, including data refresh status and any errors.
• Adjust as Necessary: Based on feedback or changes in your data reporting needs, you can return to Rollstack at any time to adjust the embedded visualizations or refresh schedules.

How to Automate Google Slides from Looker - The hard approach

Rollstack is the only available way for non-technical user to automate the Google Slides Looker connection. Short of using Rollstack for Google Slides automation, you will need to leverage other tools and approaches that can programmatically pull data from Looker and insert it into Google Slides. While there isn't a direct, built-in feature in Looker or Google Slides for this specific automation workflow, you can achieve automation through scripting and APIs. Here’s a generalized approach: 

1. Use Looker API to Access Data

• Looker API: Start by utilizing the Looker API to fetch the desired data or visualizations from your Looker instance. You'll need to use Looker's API to execute queries or access saved reports.

2. Google Slides API for Manipulation

• Google Slides API: Use the Google Slides API to create or update slides. You can programmatically insert text, tables, and images (including visualizations fetched from Looker).

3. Automation Script

• Write an Automation Script: Develop a script in a language that supports HTTP requests (e.g., Python, JavaScript) to bridge the process. This script would:
• Make API calls to Looker to retrieve the necessary data or visualization URLs.
• Format the data as required for your presentation.
• Use the Google Slides API to create new slides or update existing ones with the data fetched from Looker.

4. Scheduled Execution

• Schedule Your Script: Use a scheduler (like cron jobs for Linux/MacOS or Task Scheduler for Windows) to run your script at desired intervals. Alternatively, cloud functions (e.g., AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions) can trigger the script based on time or an event.

5. Use Google Apps Script (Alternative Approach)

• Google Apps Script: For tighter integration with Google Workspace, you can use Google Apps Script to automate Google Slides. Though it might not directly support Looker API calls, you can use Apps Script to fetch data from a middleman source that interfaces with Looker.

Example Flow:

1. Fetch Data: Your script calls Looker's API to run a query or get a saved visualization.
2. Process Data: Optionally process or format the data as needed for presentation.
3. Update Slides: Script uses Google Slides API to insert the data or visualizations into specific slides.

Considerations:

• Authentication: Ensure your script handles authentication securely for both Looker and Google APIs.
• API Limits: Be mindful of API rate limits for both Looker and Google Slides to avoid service disruptions.
• Maintenance: Ongoing maintenance and troubleshooting will be needed.

This approach requires development effort and understanding of both Looker's and Google's APIs, once built, it will require hosting, troubleshooting, and ongoing maintenance. Most likely as MBRs, QBRs, and Looker dashboards evolve, additional data engineering involvement will be needed to make changes.

Automating Google Slides from Looker Conclusions

Automating Google Slides from Looker is one of the most important ways to drive enterprise business decision making. Automated Google Slides reduce costly errors, support report snapshots, history, and Google Slide presentations remain one of the best ways to get your data analysis into the hands of more stakeholders. For non-technical users, lower costs, and automating Google Slides at scale, Rollstack is the best option.

Try Rollstack for free, or schedule a Rollstack Google Slides Automation tour.