👇 Requirements for this integration
An active BigQuery plan
A dedicated Google Cloud Project. It must be:
Linked to an active billing account (how to)
Set in the EU region
Full access to BigQuery and its projects
As an additional requirement, if you're still paying through Gumroad you'll be asked to migrate to Stripe in order to subscribe to the BigQuery plan.
Activating your Google BigQuery Integration ⚡️
Create a Google Cloud Project dedicated to BigQuery project (strongly recommended);
Login on your Easy App Reports account and go to "Destinations"
Click on the "Connect" under the Google BigQuery card;
Now you'll link your Google BigQuery and Easy App Reports accounts. Click on the blue "Connect to BigQuery" button to start the integration;
Allow the following permissions:
View and manage your data in Google BigQuery and see the email address of your Google Account - on the next step, you'll be able to choose which project we should add data into;
View your Cloud Platform projects.
Back on your account, select the Project you created. This is where you'll receive daily data inserts from now on.
That's it! The first data sync will take up to 10 minutes as we'll send all the data you have available to your BigQuery Project.
Optional: Go to your BigQuery Project to check your data. You can use the Preview function to take a sneak peek of your tables.
BigQuery Project Requirements
In short, your Google project must be:
Linked to an active billing account (here's how)
Why: BigQuery is a paid Google product. Their paid tier is more than enough to receive your App Store and Google Play data, still, it's a requirement on their end.
Set in the EU region
The EU holds the gold standard on data privacy laws, therefore our services are configured to deliver the data to projects on that region. In order to transfer the data to your project, it must be placed in the EU as well.
Both requirements must be fulfilled in order to activate this integration.
If you're having trouble with it, drop us a line and we'll do our best to assist.
Using your BigQuery data on Looker Studio 📈
Google offers a native connector between BigQuery and Looker Studio so you can easily pull your data to build your analysis, reports, and dashboards.
You can do that by creating a Data Source using the BigQuery connector on Looker Studio like seen bellow:
This works exactly like any other connector. Add your data sources to start building!
The Data Flow
Here's a simplified illustration on how the data flows from the stores to BigQuery and then to Looker Studio:
Questions we're getting a lot
What's all the fuzz about this integration?
Mainly due to to groundbreaking improvements: speed and ownership. Speed because you're now able to use Looker Studio's native integration with BigQuery, which is 84x faster - or more - than using the regular connector you've been using so far. That's a ton of speed and we believe this will change the way how you interact with your data. Ownership because now you'll have a full copy of your App Store and/or Google Play data in your own BigQuery project. This means you can now take this data and do whatever you want with it, including bring it to your data lake and using more advanced data visualization tool such as Tableau to build your dashboards.
Why creating a dedicated project?
Firstly because that's a good practice we should all make an effort to maintain.
Secondly, because the project you pick is the project where we'll insert and update data. Thing is, we also need to delete data within that project from time to time.
For example, the Analytics report data that comes from the Chrome Extension will be deleted and reinserted whenever there's new data to be added. Also
Another example would be that, from time to time, we'll need to upgrade your schema in order to add, clean, or remove columns.
Because of that, if you by any chance have another dataset called "easy_app_reports" our system might delete the data that's in there. Only if it has that specific name. We know that's a highly unlikely scenario, but still, we believe the right way to go is to have a dedicated project.
How much does this integration cost on Easy App Reports?
You can see explore all features and see its pricing on this page.
How much can I expect this integration to add in Google Cloud / BigQuery costs?
Google charges these services on a “pay-as-you-go” basis. Meaning it all depends on how many queries you make and how much data you store. They offer 10GiB of Active Storage and the first 1 TiB of query data processed per month for free. In all our tests we weren't able to get anywhere close those limits. Still, we recommend you to monitor your consumption closely.
How to link a billing account to my Google Cloud Project?
Go to your Google Developer Console.
From the projects list, select a project or create a new one.
Open the console left side menu and select Billing
Click Enable billing. (If billing is already enabled then this option isn't available.)
If you don't have a billing account, create one.
Select your location, fill out the form, and click Submit and enable billing.
More info at this link.
If we enable BigQuery, what happens to the existing charts?
Nothing. Your current charts will continue to be fed by your data sources created with your connectors. BigQuery is a separate destination so it doesn't interfere with your existing setup.
Do we need to build a new set of reports after BigQuery is enabled?
To make things easier for your, we recommend you duplicate your current dashboards and then simply swap their data sources from their old connectors to BigQuery. I'll release a quick tutorial soon on how to do that, it should take just a couple minutes.
Will I need to connect my App Store and Google Play credentials all over again?
No. We designed this integration in a way in which you wouldn't have to do that.
Will Google BigQuery charge me for this as well? If yes, how much should I expect to pay?
Neither we or our customers had to pay Google anything extra for using BigQuery after 8 weeks of intensive testing and building multiple dashboards with it. Google BigQuery charges their customers on a “pay-as-you-go” basis. Meaning it all depends on how many queries you make and how much data you store. They offer 10GiB of Active Storage and the first 1 TiB of query data processed per month for free. In all our tests we weren't able to get anywhere close those limits. Still, we recommend you to monitor your consumption closely.
Do you have a drawing of the data flow from the stores to Looker Studio, passing through BigQuery?
Any other question?
Reach out on the chat, we'll be happy to help!