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Looker Studio with Crystal Ball Automated Annotations on GA4

Integrating Crystal Ball annotations into your Looker reports significantly elevates your data analysis capabilities. Unlike the traditional Universal Analytics annotations, which were limited to manual inputs, Crystal Ball offers a more dynamic and robust solution. Our automated annotations provide a comprehensive view of your data, capturing a wide range of activities and insights that were previously difficult to track.

By incorporating Crystal Ball into your Looker reports, you unlock several advantages:
 

  • Automated Annotations: Automatically capture key events and milestones, reducing the need for manual data entry and ensuring no critical information is missed.

  • Richer Data Insights: With Crystal Ball's advanced annotations, your Looker reports become more informative, providing deeper insights into your data.

  • Enhanced Report Customization: Leverage the detailed annotations from Crystal Ball to create more nuanced and tailored reports in Looker, allowing for better decision-making.

  • Seamless Integration: The integration process is designed to be user-friendly, ensuring you can easily enhance your Looker reports with Crystal Ball's powerful data annotation capabilities

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Access Google Looker Studio: Start by logging into your Google Looker Studio account.

2. Create a new report: Click on the ״+״ for Blank Report

Automated annotations
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3. This screen will show up and ask you to add data source to your report. First, select Google Analytics

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4. You will now need to select your GA4 account and GA4 property and click the "Add" button.

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5. A screen similar to the screenshot below should appear:

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6. Now, Lets add Crystal Ball data source. To do that, click on "Add data"

7. When you get this screen, search for "GAannotations" (Crystal Ball previous name), and click on the "GAannotations" connector
You can also find the Crystal Ball connector in this link:
https://lookerstudio.google.com/data?search=gaannotations
Steps 7-14 are also covered in this video tutorial:
https://youtu.be/yQmVqVF9OM4?si=8oIMDR0kX4FzfSX2

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8. You will need to click on the "AUTHORIZE" button

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9. Now, you will need to login with your Looker/Google account and click "Allow" to connect Crystal Ball.

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10. The following screen with appear and the next step is add your Crystal Ball API key. 

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11. To create the API Key, open a new tab on your browser and log in to Crystal Ball account.
Navigate to the API Keys (Left navigation menu --> Settings --> API keys)
https://app.crystalballinsight.com/api-key

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12. Give your API key a name and click "Generate" - an API key will be generated. Now, click on the "copy" button to copy it to your clipboard.
Head back to your Looker tab to paste your API key.

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13. After pasting the API key, click "SUBMIT" and then click on the "ADD" button (it might show on the screen to click on the "Connect" button)

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14. To make this process easier - you can now delete the data source and the table on the report.

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15. Click on "Resource" -> "Manage Blends"

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16. Click on "+ ADD A BLEND"

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17. A Screen similar to the below should appear:

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18. Click on the "Join another table" and select "GAannotations" from the list

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19. You should now arrange the different fields as shown in the image below and then click on the "Configure join" button.

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20. Select the "Left outer" option and make sure the "Join conditions" are as shown in the image below, then click the "Save" button.

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21. Setup the dimensions as shown in the example below (you can add more dimension as needed), when done, click the "SAVE" button and the the "CLOSE" button (top right)

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22. Now, it's time to add the chart. Select "Add a chart" and chose the combo line chart 

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23. You might see something like that in the Data source section - if you don't see the blended data - remove the data source and then click on "Add data source" again and select the blended data source

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24. We will now start to set up the chart and then table with the annotations data. Let's start with the chart - Under "Dimension" you should have the date field. Under metric, put the "Session" metric (or something else if you selected differently), add the "Title" in the metric.

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25. Click the edit to change the "sum" in Sessions to "avg" and the Title to "CT" (count). Sort field should be "Date" and order should be "Ascending"

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26. Now, lets setup the "Style" of the chart and some additional fields.
For "Series #1" (the GA4 data) select "Line", make sure in "Axis" you selected "Left".
In "Series #2" (the Crystal Ball Annotations), select "Bars" .and in the "Axis" select "Right". Lastly, scroll down to "Right Y-Axis" and change the "Axis max" to 1.
Scroll down and check the "Cross-filtering" to on.
 

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27. Next step is to add the table with the annotations data. Click on "Add a chart" and select the table option.

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28. Now you will need to do some adjustments to table (make sure in data sources you have the blended data - if not then remove the data source and add the blended data as shown below.
 

29. Scroll down, and check the "Cross-filtering"
Now, click on the add filter --> then set it up as shown in the image below.
 

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30. Lastly, click on the "view" and start using your report. clicking on one of the bars will show you the annotations for that date.
 

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Great job! You have completed the tutorial on how to integrate Crystal Ball as a data source in Google Looker Studio. Now you can easily access and analyze your data from Crystal Ball within Looker Studio. Keep exploring and utilizing the power of data to make informed decisions for your business.

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