Is there a way to trigger a dataset refresh on a datastudio Report?

Question

I have a datastudio report that is shared in view mode to some users and the same report embbeded on my company Homepage.

However, because of that they cannot refresh the dataset and some of the information is updated regularly and the standard auto refresh of datastudio most of times does not work properly (some users see the data refreshed others not).

Is there a way to trigger the refresh by adding a button on the report or by creating a webpage that calls datastudio API (if it even exists) and triggers the refresh ?

Or any other way? I've seen the autorefresh chrome extension, however that requires us to have a machine always on dedicated to the refresh. Also I have found something similar to the button idea however seems to work only with bigquery (How to Refresh the embedded Google Data Studio report on demand?)

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

Currently not possible.

Data freshness is configured on a connector level. https://support.google.com/looker-studio/answer/7020039?hl=en&sjid=13535694510770461680-EU#zippy=%2Cin-this-article%2Cdata-refresh-rates-by-connector

Although it is possible to set up auto refresh in Looker Studio Pro. Unluckily it also requires the report to be open which leads me to think they won't provide a way to do it by API short term. https://support.google.com/looker-studio/answer/14112719?hl=en&sjid=13535694510770461680-EU#zippy=%2Cin-this-article

You can configure a report to automatically refresh its data while it is open. This feature is useful for reports that may be displayed on a monitor for extended periods of time.

Answer 2

There is a custom visualization that provided a refresh button.

https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/da9b1d78-02ff-48d5-8cb5-3086a3853319/page/CbSWC

All it need is a column with an empty string "". By pressing the button, it sets a filter to keep entries with that empty string and some random other string. Because this is a new filter, no cached data can be used and Looker Studio does a query for this filter obtaining the current state of the data.