Skip to main content

Buyer guide

Moving Dashboards From Looker or Tableau to Hex

How to audit, rebuild, and retire Looker or Tableau dashboards in Hex, what the migration agent does, and what the data team still checks.

Reading time
2 min read
Sources
6 cited
In this piece
2 products

Use Hex's Looker or Tableau migration skill to rebuild selected dashboards as apps on SQL cells. Compare the results with the source before retiring a dashboard. The data team decides what moves and signs off on each metric.

When you need this

  • A Looker or Tableau renewal is coming up and most analysis already happens in Hex.
  • Dashboards in the old tool disagree with the systems of record, and nobody trusts them.
  • Business users want to ask follow-up questions of a dashboard as well as read it.

Evaluation criteria

  1. Audit first

    Which dashboards does anyone still open?

    Look forUsage metadata from the old tool to separate active dashboards from stale ones. LangChain migrated and consolidated 60% of its dashboards and retired the rest.

  2. Tooling

    What does the migration need?

    Look forThe Looker or Tableau migration skill and the Hex CLI, on Team or Enterprise, run from a coding agent such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex. Looker needs API access because most production dashboards are built in the UI. Tableau needs a Personal Access Token or exported workbooks.

  3. Rebuild

    What does the agent produce?

    Look forA Hex project of shared SQL cells and a generative app, with tiles that share an explore or join grouped into one query. The default path runs the Hex Agent and consumes credits.

  4. Check the numbers

    How do you know the new dashboard is right?

    Look forHex cell output compared against Looker's own result rows, or against the Tableau original, before sign-off. Tableau extracts are snapshots, so a live warehouse query can differ for a legitimate reason.

  5. Keep the semantics

    Where do the old tool's metric definitions go?

    Look forA Hex guide per explore by default, or a governed semantic model created by an Admin or Manager, so Threads can answer follow-up questions from the same definitions.

Questions to ask vendors

  1. Which dashboards feed board or finance reporting, and who signs off on them?
  2. Which metric definitions exist only inside the old tool?
  3. How many credits will the rebuild consume, and from whose grant?
  4. When does the old tool's contract end, and what is the cutover date?

Red flags

  • Migrating every dashboard without checking usage first.
  • Signing off on a rebuilt dashboard without comparing its numbers to the source.
  • Leaving metric logic in app-level SQL when it belongs in a guide or semantic model.
  • Committing the filled-in credentials file to a repository.

Products in this piece

Sources

Official documentation
5
Public source
1
  1. Hex docs: Migrate Looker dashboardsOfficial documentationlearn.hex.tech
  2. Hex docs: Migrate Tableau dashboardsOfficial documentationlearn.hex.tech
  3. Hex docs: Introduction to semantic modelingOfficial documentationlearn.hex.tech
  4. Hex docs: CreditsOfficial documentationlearn.hex.tech
  5. Hex customer story: LangChain (Jun 25, 2026)Official documentationhex.tech
  6. LangChain: How we built LangChain's agent-first data stack (Jul 27, 2026)Public sourcelangchain.com

Keep reading

  1. ComparisonLooker vs Hex: Semantic-Layer BI or AI Analysis Workspace?Pick Looker when departments argue over metric definitions, and Hex when analysts need notebooks and published apps.
  2. Buyer guideHex AI Rollout PlaybookHow to curate context, open Threads to business users, and gate each data domain on evals before Hex's agents reach the whole company.
  3. Buyer guideHex Seats, Credits & Spend ChecklistWhich roles need paid seats, how monthly credit grants and the workspace pool work, and where to cap agent spend and compute.
Read the research