Use agentic workflows to monitor changes in your data

Agentic workflows let you prompt a data agent to generate a dynamic alert by using the conversational analytics chat interface. Instead of manually building complex alerts, you can use natural language in a conversation with an Explore or a data agent to set up threshold-based monitoring of the measures in the conversation's data source.

When you prompt conversational analytics to create a triggered agentic workflow, you can specify the conditions of the workflow, which are checked at a frequency that you specify. When these conditions are met, the workflow triggers a notification to the recipients that you specify and by using the method that you specify. When setting up your workflow, you can also specify whether you want the workflow notification to include results from Gemini powered key driver analysis, which provides insight about why the change that triggered your workflow occurred.

What data can you monitor?

You can use conversational analytics to generate a workflow that monitors any measures in the conversation's data source. For Explore data agents, you can monitor any measures in any of the Explores that are being used by that data agent. For dashboard agents, you can monitor any measures in any of the query-based tiles on the dashboard. For a conversational analytics conversation with a standalone Explore, you can monitor any measures in that Explore.

Create a triggered workflow

You can create a triggered workflow with an Explore data agent, dashboard agents, or within a conversational analytics conversation with a standalone Explore.

Before you begin

Before you can use conversational analytics to generate a triggered agentic workflow, you must fulfill the following requirements.

Required permissions

To prompt conversational analytics to generate a workflow, a Looker admin must grant you a role that contains the create_alert permission for the underlying model of the conversational analytics data source.

You must also be granted any of the permissions that are required to interact with conversational analytics. For more information about conversational analytics permissions, see the Set up conversational analytics in Looker documentation page.

Required authentication

Before you can send workflow notifications to Slack, a Looker admin must enable and configure the Slack action in the Looker Action Hub for your Slack workspace. To enable installation of the Looker app, your Slack workspace owner may need to adjust the app installation settings for your Slack workspace.

After Slack is enabled, you must authenticate into Slack, either from your Looker user profile's Account page or from within the conversational analytics conversation. If your Looker admin has connected multiple Slack workspaces to your Looker instance, you'll see a list of workspaces with options to sign in to each one individually.

Prompt conversational analytics to generate the workflow

To prompt conversational analytics to generate a triggered workflow, follow these steps:

Ask a question to establish your data's key metrics.
Prompt conversational analytics to generate a workflow that looks for changes to one of your data source's measures. Use keywords like "alert," "monitor," and "notify." For example:
- "Create an alert workflow"
- "Create a workflow to monitor measure X"
- "Create a workflow to notify me"

Conversational analytics will clarify the remaining components of the workflow until you have established all workflow settings, which include the following:

Condition: The measure to be monitored.
Operator: The change that the selected measure must undergo to trigger the workflow notification.
threshold: The magnitude of the change that would trigger the workflow notification.
Method: The destination of the workflow notification. Options include email, Slack, and the Looker mobile app (to use the mobile app, a Looker admin must enable the Firebase action in the Looker Action Hub).
- For email destinations, list the email addresses of users whom you want to receive the workflow notification in the Recipients field. For Slack, if you have not already authenticated into Slack, a Sign in with Slack button appears under the Method menu. Select your Slack workspace from the Workspace menu; send the workflow notification to a Slack channel by selecting Channels or as a direct message to a Slack user by selecting Users. Alternatively, choose Manual Channel ID to add the channel or user ID of the intended recipient; for Channels or Users recipients, select the name of the channel or user who will receive the workflow notification in the Share In menu.
Frequency: You can set the frequency at which Looker checks your data for changes (and sends a notification if the workflow conditions are met). The default frequency is Weekly on Mondays at 09:00. The available frequency options are as follows:
- Monthly on a specified Day of the month (the default is the 1st of the month) at a specified Time (the default is 05:00).
- Weekly on a specified Day of the week (the default is Sun for Sunday) at a specified Time (the default is 05:00).
- Daily at a specified Time (the default is 05:00).
- Hourly at a specified interval (the default is to check the data every hour) with specified Start and End times (the default is 05:00 and 18:00). With hourly intervals you can have Looker check the data at these intervals:
  - Hour
  - 2 hours
  - 3 hours
  - 4 hours
  - 6 hours
  - 8 hours
  - 12 hours
- Minutes at a specified interval (the default is to check the data every 15 minutes) with specified Start and End times (the default is 05:00 and 17:00). With minute-based intervals, you can have Looker check the data at these intervals:
  - 15 minutes
  - 30 minutes
Start and End times are inclusive. For example, if you set Check every to 12 hours with a Start time of 05:00 and an End time of 17:00, Looker will check the data at 05:00 and 17:00.

Note: Looker sends alerts according to the time zone that is indicated in the Application Time Zone setting on the Admin Settings page, or, if enabled, the alert creator's User Specific Time Zone.
Gemini powered key driver analysis: If this setting is enabled, the workflow notification provides insight about why the change that triggered your workflow occurred. This option is disabled by default.

Agentic workflow notifications

Agentic workflow notifications include the following information:

A PNG image of the workflow visualization.
A message with the name of the workflow and the conditions that triggered the workflow.
A link to investigate the workflow — click this link to open a new conversation with the agent that generated the workflow.
A link to unsubscribe from the workflow notification.
If enabled, the insights provided by Gemini powered key driver analysis.

Note: For single value visualizations, the notification will include the single value as text, rather than a PNG of the visualization.

For notifications to Slack channels, the notification is visible to everyone in the channel.

Limitations of triggered workflows

The following limitations apply when you use conversational analytics to generate a triggered agentic workflow:

Conversational analytics is not able to generate workflows to monitor the more complex custom metrics that are produced with the use of Advanced Analytics.
Conversational analytics is not able to generate workflows to monitor data dimensions or table calculations.
Conversational analytics dashboard agents can't generate workflows for embed users.

View your triggered workflows

When a Looker admin grants you the see_alerts permission, you can view the workflows that you own on the Manage Workflows user page and all workflows for the Looker instance on the Manage Workflows admin page.