---
title: "Dock for data analytics: dashboard review workflow with attributed business owner"
excerpt: "Run dashboard reviews in Dock by having the agent read usage and freshness from Looker, Hex, and Mode, draft a review packet, and route each dashboard to a named business owner who approves before anything is archived."
author: mei
category: Use Cases
date: "2026-05-30"
---

Dashboard reviews stall because nobody remembers which dashboards are still load-bearing. The fix is a [Dock](/blog/dock-for-data-analytics) workspace where the agent reads usage from Looker, Hex, and Mode, drafts a review packet per dashboard, and routes each one to a named business owner. The owner approves, defers, or rejects. Every action gets attributed and timestamped.

Looker + Hex + Mode stay the system of record for the raw data. Dock is the system of record for what the AGENT INTERPRETS. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the platform record, agent identity, decision, reviewer, and timestamp. The agent re-fetches platform data via fresh API reads when it needs current state.

## The review surface

One Dock table, one row per dashboard. The agent populates it weekly.

| Dashboard | Platform | Last viewed | Views (30d) | Owner | Agent recommendation | Decision | Reviewer | Decided at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipeline Velocity | looker://dash/4821 | 2026-05-28 | 142 | priya@ | Keep, refresh definitions | Approved | priya@ | 2026-05-29 14:02 |
| North Star Weekly | hex://proj/ns-weekly | 2026-04-11 | 3 | jordan@ | Archive, superseded by Exec Snapshot | Deferred | jordan@ | 2026-05-29 16:30 |
| Q1 Launch Recap | mode://report/9930 | 2025-11-02 | 0 | (unowned) | Archive | Approved | maya@ | 2026-05-30 09:18 |

The Platform column holds the deep link the agent followed. Decision and Reviewer are the only fields the agent cannot write. Those belong to the business owner.

## The workflow

Every Monday the agent pulls the active dashboard list from each platform. For each one, it fetches view counts via the Looker Content Usage Explore, Hex project run history, and Mode report views. It cross-references the warehouse to confirm the underlying queries still resolve. It writes a one-paragraph recommendation: keep, refresh, archive, or merge.

Then it routes the row to the listed owner. Unowned dashboards go to a triage queue handled by the analytics lead. Owners read the packet in Dock and decide. The agent never archives anything on its own. Archival is a human decision logged against a human identity, which matters for [audit and compliance](/blog/agent-audit-and-compliance) work later.

## Why this matters

Most BI cleanup projects fail because the institutional memory of who cares about which dashboard is scattered across Slack and quarterly OKR docs. The agent cannot guess ownership. But once a human assigns it, the agent maintains the cadence forever. This is the same pattern that makes [agent identity](/blog/agent-identity) work outside analytics: the agent proposes, a named principal disposes, and the disposition is the durable record.

Review meetings get shorter. The packet is already written. The owner already weighed in async. The meeting is for edge cases.

The architecture mirrors what [engineering runs for service ownership](/blog/cloud-2-0-for-engineering) and what [marketing runs for campaign review](/blog/dock-for-marketing): one row, one owner, one timestamped decision. Every archived dashboard becomes [auditable evidence](/blog/agent-audit-and-compliance).

Open a Dock workspace, point the agent at Looker, Hex, and Mode, and run one cycle this week.

## FAQ

**Does the agent delete dashboards in Looker, Hex, or Mode?**
No. The agent only proposes. Archival happens through the platform's own UI or API after a business owner approves the recommendation in Dock.

**How does the agent know who owns a dashboard?**
The owner column is human-populated the first time a dashboard enters the review queue. After that, the agent reuses the assignment. Unowned dashboards go to the analytics lead's triage queue.

**What if usage data from the BI tool is wrong or stale?**
The agent re-fetches view counts every cycle rather than caching them. Looker exposes content usage through its [System Activity Explores](https://cloud.google.com/looker/docs/usage-reports-with-system-activity-explores), and Hex and Mode expose equivalent run history.

**Is this just a governance tool?**
It is a workflow tool that produces a governance artifact as a side effect. Gartner's 2025 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI Platforms calls out governance and content access control as core selection criteria (see the [CX Today rundown](https://www.cxtoday.com/customer-analytics-intelligence/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-analytics-and-business-intelligence-abi-platforms-2025-the-rundown/)). Dock satisfies that by making every agent recommendation traceable to a human approver.