Hi Team, I’m looking for a way to identify reports in Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) that:
Use BigQuery as a data source, and
Are set to refresh automatically every 12 or 24 hours directly from the Looker Studio UI
Ideally, I’d like to generate a list of all such reports so we can audit whether they are actively in use. If not, we plan to remove them.
Thanks in advance!
Best regards,
Ankit Sharma
I don’t think there’s a way to get at this from inside Looker Studio, but could you get at this from inside BQ instead?
The INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS view in BQ should include the looker_studio_report_id and looker_studio_datasource_id labels, which will tell you what reports are being used by Looker Studio.
It would take a little SQL magic to find which of those reports are sending queries to BQ every 12 hours or 24 hours, but I think it’d be possible.
Hey Sam, Thanks for pointing me in this direction. The INFORMATION_SCHEMA.JOBS view sounds like a good approach. Could you please share an example query or a bit more detail on how you’d suggest filtering by the looker_studio_report_id and looker_studio_datasource_id to identify the reports triggering queries at a 12- or 24-hour frequency?
I just want to make sure I set this up correctly without missing any key conditions.
Sadly, there is no direct “report list” option in Looker Studio itself that you can use to track which Looker Studio reports are pulling from BigQuery and then refreshing on schedule. Most teams can’t do it using simple methods, so they use a mix of ways:
BigQuery audit logs – Every planned refresh from Looker Studio will make a BIENGINEQUERY or JOB_QUERY record. You can filter logs by account (Looker Studio service account) and time window to see which reports keep hitting your dataset each day.
Looker Studio Manage panel – For each report you can pick Data source → Scheduled refresh to check if 12h / 24h is turned on. How easy to grow is it if you have 50+ reports – maybe this works only for small lists.
Data integration layer – Some teams move the refresh task off their plate by syncing data into BigQuery first (with Fivetran, Airbyte, or Windsor.ai) and then linking Looker Studio only to the stable tables. That way the refresh schedule is handled earlier and much easier to check.
In the long run, step (3) makes checking and cleanup easier because you don’t have to search all over a Looker report, you can just check your ELT sync schedules. For example, Windsor.ai allows direct syncs into BigQuery across many marketing + sales sources and lets you set refreshes as low as hourly.
If your main reason is to check report use (i.e. the dashboard is still being opened) then mixing BigQuery logs with the Looker Studio usage metrics API should give you the most complete view.