💡 Note: To make dashboard set up faster & easier, we've introduced a Looker Studio app that no longer requires you to use Fugo's dashboard recorder.
We recommend that you use this app instead.
However, if you prefer to use the dashboard recorder to capture your dashboard, continue with the instructions below.
Table of contents
Fugo & your Looker Studio dashboards
Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, is a powerful tool for transforming complex datasets into clear, user-friendly reports and dashboards. With its extensive visualization options, it helps teams focus on goals and progress rather than getting bogged down in data management.
By leveraging Fugo TV Dashboards alongside Fugo’s screen management capabilities, you can seamlessly display Looker Studio dashboards across your workplace.
And with Fugo’s secure integration, there’s no need to store credentials on external devices or generate public URLs that could expose sensitive business data. Instead, Fugo securely logs into Looker Studio, captures an encrypted screenshot of your dashboard, and delivers it to your screens at the refresh interval you set - keeping your team informed without compromising security.
Best practices for using Looker Studio with Fugo
We’ll get to the walkthrough in just a second - but first, let’s go over a couple of best practices that we recommend following whenever you’re connecting any third-party dashboard service with your Fugo CMS account:
1. Create a service account:
To ensure the utmost security for your sensitive data, we recommend setting up a 'least privileged' service account in your Looker Studio account. This typically means using an account with read-only permissions for the dashboards you want to display.
Using a service account not only enhances security but also prevents potential interruptions in your account like unexpected logouts or excessive security notifications. Additionally, full-access user accounts often come with associated phone numbers, which gets in the way of Fugo's authorization process.
You can read more about how to set up a service account with Google here.
2. Have your dashboard URL(s) handy
Because Fugo is going to record & repeat the steps you take to access your dashboard, we want to eliminate any unnecessary steps in the process that will slow Fugo down when accessing your dashboard, such as starting from the homepage of your platform and navigating to your chosen dashboard.
You'll need the URL of your specific dashboard that you want to display on screen ready when you start the process of capturing it with Fugo. Copy that URL and have it ready to paste into Fugo's dashboards step recorder.
Connect your screens to a Fugo account
If you want to be able to publish your dashboard to a screen, you'll need to have one connected to Fugo CMS.
1. Log into your Fugo Account. If you don’t have an account yet, you can start your 14-day free trial here.
2. If you haven’t connected your screen(s) yet, you can find the instructions for your preferred device in our hardware collection.
Dashboard setup instructions
Get a Secret Key from your Google account
To configure your Looker Studio dashboard in Fugo, you’ll need a Secret Key from your Google account.
This Secret Key is an alphanumeric code that allows Fugo to securely access your dashboard as a trusted user without requiring direct login credentials.
How to get your secret key
You can retrieve your secret key directly from your Google Account settings.
Follow our instructions to generate and input it during your dashboard setup.
🔑 Save your secret key for later
Once you have your secret key, you'll be prompted to enter it later as shown in step 14 of the next section so that Fugo can securely authenticate with your Looker Studio account.
Configure your Looker Studio dashboard in Fugo
With your secret key saved, you're ready to connect your dashboard in Fugo.
💡 Note: To make dashboard set up faster & easier, we've introduced a Looker Studio app that no longer requires you to use Fugo's dashboard recorder.
We recommend that you use this app instead.
However, if you prefer to use the dashboard recorder to capture your dashboard, continue with the instructions below.
1. Log into your Fugo Account. If you don’t have an account yet, you can start your 14-day free trial here.
2. Click Dashboards in the top navigation bar to go to your Dashboard library. If you have not created any dashboards yet, this page will be empty.
Click Create Dashboard to get started.
3. This will launch the New Dashboard window.
4. Under Start with a link, you’ll need to enter the URL of your dashboard in the URL field and click Open Dashboard.
5. If you're creating a TV Dashboard for the first time, you'll be prompted to configure your Chrome browser to allow our recorder extension to run in incognito mode.
If you’ve done this before you can skip to step 12.
6. First, you'll need to install the Fugo Dashboard Recorder Chrome Extension.
7. This will open the Chrome Web Store in a separate tab. Click Add to Chrome to install the extension.
8. Go back to your tab with Fugo CMS. You will see a little blue checkmark on this step once you complete it.
9. Now you'll need to enable the extension to run in Incognito mode. Click Enable Allow In Incognito.
💡 Note that skipping this step will likely cause the TV Dashboards feature to break, so we don't recommend opting to skip it.
If you do have to skip it, make sure to logout from your dashboard before starting the recording process.
10. This will open the Extensions manager. Toggle on the Allow in Incognito option.
11. Back in your tab with Fugo CMS, you'll see both blue checkmarks now completed. Click Continue.
12. A pop-up window with our recorder will appear and prompt you to log into Looker Studio. Enter your login credentials as you normally would.
13. Once you’re signed into Looker Studio, your dashboard will load.
It's at this point that you'll instruct Fugo how to take the screenshot of your data. You have two options:
Option 1: Capture Dashboard
Clicking Capture Dashboard will take a full screenshot of everything in your dashboard.
Option 2: Element Eraser
Use the Eraser tool to get rid of certain elements on your dashboard that you don't want crowding your screenshot.
Make sure to click Finish Erasing when you're done erasing elements.
14. You'll be prompted to enter your secret key before the recorder can stop recording and try to fetch your dashboard with the notes it’s taken.
15. You’ll see a “loading” screen while Fugo runs through your steps (logged in the right-hand panel) and captures a preview of your dashboard. It can take some time depending on how many steps were involved - so don’t sweat it if it takes a minute or two!
16. Viola! Your dashboard should appear in the preview area.
💡 Note: If you see a “loading” screen inside the preview area instead, we recommend you navigate over to the Advanced Settings tab and use increase the number in the “PAUSE” box before coming back to the Home tab and selecting Retry on the right-hand side.
This tells the Fugo recorder to wait before taking a screenshot, giving your dashboard plenty of time to load in!
17. If you're happy with how it looks, you can publish it directly by choosing a screen, screen group, channel, or playlist to publish to.
Check out our collection on Playlists to learn more about how publishing works.
If you're not happy with how the dashboard rendered, read on to discover how you can customize the look of your dashboard with Fugo's design tools.
If you need help troubleshooting, see our Advanced Settings guide which should help you resolve some common issues.
Customizing your dashboard display in the Design Studio
Not all dashboards are necessarily screen ready or "screen friendly" as we say at Fugo. Some may be quite long, have several small elements that aren't visible from a distance, or overwhelm the viewer with too much data at once.
You can use the cropping tool in Fugo's Design Studio to crop dashboards into more digestible pieces or otherwise satisfy your requirement for displaying it nicely on screen.
This video breaks down your options in detail 👇
In short, you'll need to:
Add your dashboard to your Design Studio canvas.
Use the crop tool to crop the elements (that is - charts, graphs, bars etc) you want displayed on screen.
Use the graphic design elements in the Studio (media, app widgets, text tickers, QR codes, etc) to embellish your slides and set the look & feel of your layouts.
A few ideas of customizations you may want to make are:
Add your company logo to your dashboard slides.
Incorporate other apps & integrations into the display, such as the World Clock app or CNN app to grab attention with live updating headlines.
Add QR codes to your display to create calls to action for your colleagues pertaining to your dashboards or workflows.
Add text boxes with important messages, reminders, or requests pertaining to your dashboards or data initiatives.
💡 Get more ideas & full instructions in our guide to customizing your dashboard display!
Need more help?
Did this guide answer all of your questions? If not, or if you have any feedback for us, feel free to drop our support team an email at support@fugo.ai - we're always happy to help out.
You can also book in a dashboard support call with our engineering team here if you need some help getting this feature set up.
Happy publishing!