Is it truly impossible to use custom Action Hub integrations with native Tile Alerts?

Looker Q&A Looker
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Hi everyone,

I’m hitting a massive roadblock with Looker’s alerting engine and want to confirm if this is a hard platform limitation or if I am missing a hidden configuration.

I built and deployed a custom Action Hub integration server (Node.js/TypeScript) implementing Looker’s Action API.

  • My action endpoints (/actions, /actions/execute, /actions/form) register perfectly under Admin > Platform > Actions.
  • The action advertises support for query and dashboard types, along with standard formats (json, csv, wysiwyg_png, etc.).
  • It works perfectly inside the “Schedule Delivery” dialog. Users can see my custom form fields, fill them out, and fire payloads manually or via standard schedules.

The problem is when users click the native Alerts (Bell Icon) on a dashboard tile, the “Where to send it” dropdown completely filters out my custom action. It only displays native Email and the official Slack integration.

I know the underlying Looker Core API create_alert technically allows an ACTION_HUB destination type with an action_hub_integration_id payload, but the frontend UI seems completely locked down.

My Questions for the Community & Product Teams:

  1. Is the Alerts UI hardcoded to reject third-party/custom Actions? Is there any undocumented parameter in the Action definition (like a specific tag or flag) that tells the Looker frontend modal, “Hey, this action is allowed to be an Alert destination”?
  2. If it is completely blocked on the frontend, are there plans to open up the Alerts modal to the Action Hub ecosystem? Relying on the “Schedule as an Alert” workaround (forcing users to create a standalone Look, set filtering parameters to return 0 rows, and checking “only send if results exist”) is a terrible user experience for non-technical stakeholders who just want to use tile alerts.

Would love to know if anyone has found a clever way to bypass this restriction natively, or if there is an official DCL/Feature Request thread I can upvote.

Thanks!

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