Skip to main content
Refreshes, dashboard deliveries and alerts are available on Premium and Enterprise plans.
Users need at least the Explorer role and Edit or Manage permission on the workbook to set them up. Anyone who can view a dashboard with schedules can open the sidebar to see them and subscribe to their emails.
A published dashboard can run on a schedule. Each schedule is named by what it does: The kind follows from the schedule’s settings, and every label, toast, and menu item for it uses that name: a schedule with a condition is an alert; one without a condition whose notification posts to at least one Slack channel, or has Email ticked with at least one person, group, or embed user to email, is a dashboard delivery; any other is a refresh. Where the kind isn’t known yet, the product says schedule, as in Create schedule. The agent in Analytics Chat can manage a dashboard’s schedules for you. A schedule runs whether anyone has the dashboard open or not. To keep a dashboard that is open, for example on a wall display, showing current data, use live mode instead.

Opening the sidebar

From the Dashboard Builder, click the calendar icon in the toolbar to open the sidebar. Its tooltip and the sidebar’s title read Refreshes, deliveries and alerts. From this sidebar, you can create new schedules, change existing ones, or remove schedules you no longer need. The same calendar icon is also available on a published dashboard, so you can reach the sidebar without opening the builder. What you can do there depends on your permission on the workbook:
  • Edit or Manage — the full sidebar, titled Refreshes, deliveries and alerts: create, edit, send, check, and delete schedules.
  • View only — a read-only list of the configured schedules, titled Deliveries and alerts, where you can subscribe or unsubscribe yourself from each schedule’s emails. If the dashboard has no schedules, the calendar icon is hidden.
A sidebar with no schedules reads “No refreshes, deliveries or alerts yet”, followed, for an editor, by “Refresh this dashboard, send it on a schedule, or get alerted when a number changes.” and the Create schedule button. To see the schedules of every dashboard in the deployment in one place, use the Refreshes, deliveries and alerts tab of the Scheduled page.
The dashboard must be published before schedules can be created.

Creating a schedule

Click Create schedule in the sidebar footer. A dialog opens with the following configuration options. Its title names the kind of schedule you are about to save and changes as you fill in the form: Create refresh while it notifies nobody, Create dashboard delivery once it notifies someone, and Create alert once its How is Alert on condition. To create an alert on one chart, choose Create alert from that chart’s menu instead: the same dialog opens with that chart picked (see From a chart’s menu).

Schedule

Pick how often the schedule runs with the Schedule select: Time is specified in 12-hour format with an AM/PM selector. For Hourly schedules, only the minute field is shown.

Timezone

Pick the timezone the schedule runs in. The list holds every IANA timezone, each with its UTC offset, and you can search it by name or by offset, for example “New_York” or “GMT-5”. Defaults to your browser’s timezone. Wherever the schedule is shown, its timezone is named after it, for example “Daily at 9:00 AM America/New_York”.

Control values

By default, a schedule captures the dashboard the way it opens, with every control on its published default. To send a particular slice instead, click Add control values below the schedule settings. A Control values card opens with one row for each of the dashboard’s filters, time granularity switchers, and field switchers, followed by a row for each added control. A row is titled with the control’s title, or with its type (Filter, Time granularity, Dimension or Measure) when the control has none. Controls inside a stack, grid, or tabs container get rows too. Every row starts on Use default. Each row has a dropdown with three choices:
A control on Use default is resolved when the schedule runs, not when you save it. If an editor later publishes the dashboard with a different default, the next run uses the new default. Pick Set to to keep a value fixed.
These values are what the schedule’s notification shows. The attached dashboard, in whichever format the notification attaches it, the AI summary, and the dashboard link in the email or Slack message all use them, and the attachment’s queries re-check the cache for that slice before it is captured. An alert checks its chart with them too, and changing them starts the alert over. Set to and Clear win over what the default option of a parent control would set for the control.
Control values take effect only through a notification. A refresh, which notifies nobody, refreshes the dashboard as it opens by default, and the values you set appear only in the schedule’s summary line.
A few rules decide which rows appear:
  • A parent control has no row. Its children have their own rows.
  • A filter whose visibility is Disabled has no row, because a disabled filter ignores a value passed to it in a link.
  • Two controls of the same type on the same member share one row.
  • A viewer’s cross-filters have no row: they live only in that viewer’s page URL, and a schedule doesn’t carry them. Opened from a published dashboard you cross-filtered, the Control values section says so: “Cross-filters set on this page are not part of dashboard deliveries.”
  • If no control can have a row — the published version of a dashboard has none, no control is added on the page you opened the dialog from, and the schedule holds no added control — Add control values is disabled, with the reason “The published dashboard version has no filter, time granularity or field switcher controls.” under it. This is the same when you open the dialog from the dashboard’s sidebar and from the Refreshes, deliveries and alerts tab. Controls that are only in the unpublished draft do not count.
While a row is on Set to with no value picked, Save and Save as copy are disabled, and the row asks you to pick a value or set the control to Use default.
Cancel keeps the schedule’s saved control values. Removing the Control values card with its ✕ and then saving discards every row’s choice, and the schedule captures every control on its published default.
A new schedule opens with only the Add control values button. Editing or duplicating a schedule that sets at least one control to Set to or Clear opens with the card shown and the rows on their saved choices; one that sets none opens with only the button. If the dashboard’s controls can’t load, the button is disabled with “Couldn’t load the dashboard’s controls.” under it. Click Retry to load them again. A schedule can also hold a value for a member that no control on the dashboard uses, for example after that control was deleted. Such a value has no row and has no effect on the attachment. Saving the schedule keeps it, even after you remove the card, and the schedule’s summary line names it by its member.

Added controls

A control a viewer adds to the dashboard’s Dynamic controls widget lives in the page URL, not in the dashboard. To schedule one, add it on the published dashboard, then open the sidebar from that page: the Control values card lists a row for each control added there, after the rows of the controls placed on the dashboard. A filter added without a title is titled with its field. An added control’s dropdown offers only Use default and Set to. An added control has no default, so Use default leaves it out of the schedule, and Set to makes the schedule add the control with the value you pick. The schedule keeps the control’s settings with its value, so every run adds it again, without the page that added it: the attachment, the AI summary, the dashboard link in the message, and an alert’s check all use that value. Editing or duplicating the schedule shows its added controls on their saved choices, from any page; if the page you open the dialog from has a control of the same type added on the same field, the form shows one row for both, the schedule’s. The dialog of the Refreshes, deliveries and alerts tab opens from no dashboard page, so it lists only the placed controls. To stop a schedule adding a control, set its row to Use default and save.
A schedule adds a control only while the dashboard’s published version allows it. Once an editor publishes a version whose Dynamic controls widget no longer allows that type on that field, or that has no Dynamic controls widget, the next run goes without the control and its value. The schedule’s summary line leaves it out, and in the dialog its row’s dropdown is disabled, with “Dynamic controls on this dashboard no longer allow this field. The refresh runs without it, and saving removes it.” under it. If the new version instead places a control of that type on the field, the placed control’s row carries the schedule’s value, and saving removes the added control.

How: every time or on a condition

The Alert condition card holds the How choice:
  • Every time — every run sends the notification. This is the default.
  • Alert on condition — each run checks a value on one chart and sends only when it meets the condition you set: crossing a threshold, changing by a percentage, or falling outside its normal range. The card shows the Chart, Measure, and Condition fields. See Alerts for details.
Switching back to Every time keeps what you typed until you save, so you can switch again and find it; saving on Every time stores no condition.

Notification

Click Add notification to send the dashboard to people, to Slack channels, or both. A Notification card opens; its ✕ removes it. Without a notification, the schedule is a refresh.
To send the same dashboard with a different format or set of recipients, duplicate an existing schedule instead of configuring the notification from scratch — the copy carries over the source schedule’s notification settings.

Send by: Email and Slack

Choose where the notification goes with the two Send by checkboxes. Tick either or both:
  • Email — emails the recipients you choose: individual workspace users, user groups, or a mix of both.
  • Slack — posts to every Slack channel you pick in the Slack channels picker, one post per channel (see Slack channels).
With both ticked, one run emails the people and posts to every channel, and all of them get the same screenshot.
Unticking Email keeps the picked people and groups but emails none of them: the Users and User groups pickers stay visible with their picks, disabled, and hovering one says “Turn on Email to email these people”. Ticking Email again enables them with the same picks. While Email is off, the schedule has nothing to subscribe to.
With Slack ticked and no channel picked, Save is disabled. With neither box ticked, the card says “Nobody is notified until a channel is on.”, and the Slack channels picker stays visible, disabled, with “Turn on Slack to choose a channel” on hover. You can still save such a schedule, as a refresh, unless its How is Alert on condition: an alert needs someone to notify.

Recipients

Under the Recipients heading there are two separate controls:
  • Users — a searchable picker for individual workspace users.
  • User groups — a dropdown holding an expandable checklist of user groups and their members. It appears only when your workspace has at least one user group.
A group is expanded to its current members each time the notification is sent, so adding or removing members takes effect on the next run without editing the schedule. The number beside a group’s name counts the members it can currently email, so a group can show fewer than its full membership — anyone without an email address is left out of both the count and the list. A recipient who is selected individually and also belongs to a selected group is emailed only once.
Excluding individual group members
Tick a group to notify everyone in it, then expand it and untick anyone who should be skipped. Those people are stored as exceptions to that group on this schedule — the group stays selected and keeps picking up new members, but the excluded members are left out of every run. One search box filters both levels at once, so typing a person’s name narrows the list to the groups that would notify them, with that person shown under each. Exceptions are saved with the rest of the form, not applied as you click. A few details worth knowing:
  • Unticking a group’s last remaining member unticks the whole group.
  • Exceptions belong to one schedule and one group. Excluding someone from a group here does not affect the group anywhere else, or any other schedule.
  • An exception is not a block on the person. If they are also selected under Users, or have subscribed themselves, they still get the email — a direct recipient row and group membership are independent, and either one alone delivers.

Slack channels

The Slack channels picker lists your Slack workspace’s channels, each named with #, and takes any number of them. Its trigger names the picked channels, separated by commas, and ends in ”…” when they don’t fit. Before you can pick a channel, connect your Slack workspace. This is a one-time setup:
  1. Tick Slack in the notification card.
  2. Click Connect to Slack to start the OAuth flow.
  3. Authorize Cube to post to your Slack workspace.
Once connected, you can pick any channel your Slack workspace has access to.

Dashboard attachment

Choose the dashboard file attached to the notification with two options, for the email and every Slack post alike:
  • Attach dashboard as: PNG (the default for a new schedule) or PDF.
  • Layout: Snapshot (the default) captures every tab in turn, with the rows each table shows and the control widgets. Print version attaches the dashboard’s print version: every tab and every table row, laid out for A4 pages, with the control values listed at the top instead of the control widgets. Print version is PDF only: while PNG is picked, the option reads Print version (PDF only) and can’t be picked, and Snapshot is selected.
These are the Format and Layout of the Download settings dialog you use for ad-hoc downloads from the dashboard header.

AI summary

Turn on Include AI summary to add a short “what changed” note to the body of the email or Slack message, above the screenshot. It is off by default. The note is written by the configured AI agent and is deliberately short — an opening line naming the most important change, then two to four bullets, each with a real number and its movement. It is meant to be read in a few seconds to decide whether to open the dashboard at all:
What it compares against. Where possible the note describes what changed since the previous notification for that recipient, rather than what changed inside the data — so a daily notification does not repeat the same sentence every morning. On the first send, or when there is no earlier note to compare with, it falls back to comparing recent periods (week over week, month over month) and says so rather than inventing a comparison.
Each email recipient’s note is generated under their own data access, so it only describes rows that recipient is allowed to see. That also means it costs one agent run per recipient per send, which is why the option is off by default. Slack channels share one note, generated under the data access of the schedule’s owner.
If the summary can’t be generated — the agent is unavailable, or the run takes too long — the notification is still delivered, without the note. On an alert, the summary is generated only on the runs where the alert fires.
This is not the same as the AI summary widget, which lives on the dashboard, takes a prompt you write, and is cached for everyone who views it. The notification summary uses a fixed brief, is generated per recipient, and is never shown on the dashboard.
Click Save to create or update the schedule.

What a notification sends

A dashboard delivery sends its notification after every run; an alert sends it only when the alert fires.
  • Email — each recipient receives a message with a link to the dashboard and the attached file.
  • Slack — each picked channel gets one post with the link and the same file.
If a post to one Slack channel fails, the other channels and the emails are still sent, and the schedule’s owner gets an Inbox notification naming the channel that got nothing, for example “Sales dashboard: #finance did not get the delivery”, or “…did not get the alert” for an alert.

Managing schedules

The sidebar lists all existing schedules. A card’s first line holds the status indicator, the schedule, and the enable/disable toggle; the lines below it come in the order listed here:
  • Status indicator — current state: not run yet, last run succeeded, last run failed, or currently running with phase details.
  • Schedule — when the schedule runs, followed by its timezone: “Hourly at :05 UTC”, “Daily at 9:00 AM UTC”, “Weekly on Monday at 9:00 AM America/New_York”, or “Monthly on day 1 at 9:00 AM UTC”. A custom cron expression that matches none of these is described in full, for example “At 09:00 AM, Monday through Friday UTC” for 0 9 * * 1-5, and shows as written only when it can’t be described. A schedule too long for the card is cut with ”…”, and hovering it shows the whole schedule.
  • Enable/disable toggle — turn schedules on or off without deleting them.
  • Condition — on an alert, an Alert badge beside the schedule and a summary of its rule, for example “Condition: Count is above 1,000 · Orders count”.
  • Next run — how long until the next scheduled execution, counted from your clock and given in its largest unit, for example “Next run: in 25 minutes”, “Next run: in 7 hours”, or “Next run: in 16 days”. Hours and days are rounded to the nearest, so a run 5 hours and 49 minutes away reads “in 6 hours”; minutes count down whole, and a run less than a minute away reads “in less than a minute”. A run whose time has passed reads “due now”, or, after a minute, how long ago it was due, for example “due 3 hours ago”. The line counts down as time passes, and hovering it shows the line with the date and time of the run under it, in your timezone and naming it, for example “Oct 17, 2026, 11:00 AM GMT+1”. It reads “Disabled” if the schedule is off. Until an enabled schedule’s status has been read, while it loads or while reading it fails, a placeholder stands in for this line and for Last check, and the card asks again every few seconds until the status answers.
  • Control values — when the schedule sets control values, a muted line names each control and what the schedule does with it, for example “Control values: Status is completed · Region cleared · Date grain: Month · Break down by: Status”. Each control is named by its title, or by its type when it has none, and an added filter without a title by its field. A line too long for the card or the column is cut with ”…”, and hovering it shows the whole line. Viewers with view-only permission see it too, so they know which slice they subscribe to. While the dashboard’s controls and the deployment’s data model load, a placeholder stands in for the line. If the data model can’t load, for example on a stopped deployment or one still starting after a few seconds, a member the line names (the one a field switcher is set to, or a value no control uses) appears by its name in the data model instead of its title.
  • Notification channels — when a notification is configured, every channel it uses: “Email” when Email is ticked, then each Slack channel by name, for example “Email · #sales · #finance”. People who can only view the schedule see “Slack” in place of the channel names, for example “Email · Slack”.
  • Last check — on an alert, the outcome of its last check, for example “Last check: 3 minutes ago, Count increased by 2.7%, notified”. See Following an alert in the sidebar.

Actions

A card’s buttons depend on the schedule’s kind. Each button names its action on hover: The Edit, Duplicate, and Delete buttons, the dialog’s title, the delete confirmation, and the toasts name the schedule’s kind: Edit alert, Duplicate refresh, Delete dashboard delivery, “Delete alert?”, “Alert created”, “Refresh started”, or “Dashboard delivery updated”.

Viewing all schedules

The sidebar shows the schedules of one dashboard. To see every refresh, dashboard delivery, and alert in the deployment, open Scheduled in the deployment sidebar and select the Refreshes, deliveries and alerts tab. The tab has its own URL, so you can bookmark it or reload it and land on the same tab. The page’s other tabs list Scheduled Tasks and report deliveries; if you can use only one of them, the page shows it without tabs. The tab is available to users with the Explorer, Developer, or Admin role. Users with the Viewer role don’t see it; they reach a dashboard’s schedules from the calendar icon on the published dashboard. The list includes a schedule only if you can open its workbook, including workbooks you don’t own. A schedule on a workbook you have no access to is not listed, even when that workbook sits in a folder you can see. Admins see every schedule in the deployment. Each row shows:
  • Enable/disable toggle — the untitled first column; turns the schedule on or off.
  • Dashboard — the dashboard’s title. On a row you can edit, hovering anywhere on the row shows an Edit button at the end of this cell; click it to open the dashboard in the Dashboard Builder, or open it in a new tab as you would a link. The title itself is plain text, not a link. A title too long for the column is cut with ”…”, and hovering it shows the whole title.
  • Schedule — when the schedule runs, with its timezone, as on the sidebar card, for example “Daily at 9:00 AM UTC”.
  • Condition — the summary of the alert’s rule, for example “Count is above 1,000 · Orders count”, or ”—” when the schedule has none.
  • Next run — how long until the next scheduled execution, as on the sidebar card, for example “in 7 hours” or “in 16 days”, or “Disabled” if the schedule is off. Hovering it shows the line with the date and time of the run under it.
  • Control values — the same line as in the sidebar, naming each control value the schedule sets, or ”—” when it sets none.
  • Notifications — the same channels as on the sidebar card, for example “Email · #sales · #finance”, or ”—” when the schedule notifies nobody. Rows you can only view show “Slack” in place of the channel names.
  • Last check — the outcome of the alert’s last check, for example “3 minutes ago, Count increased by 2.7%, notified”, or ”—” when the schedule is not an alert. A line too long for the column is cut with ”…”, and hovering it shows the whole line with the whole check under it, as in the sidebar.
  • Subscribe — the subscribe toggle for schedules you can only view. The column appears only when the list includes at least one such schedule.
Use the search box above the list to find a schedule by its dashboard title or its schedule text, such as “Weekly” or “UTC”. Click the Dashboard or Schedule column header to sort the list; click it again to reverse the order. Schedule sorts by frequency (Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, then custom cron expressions), then by day, then by the time of day as written in each schedule’s own timezone, and last by timezone. What a row offers depends on your permission on its workbook:
  • Edit or Manage, whether set on the workbook or inherited from its folder — the enable/disable toggle, plus two buttons shown while the pointer is over the row: the Edit button in the Dashboard column, and a ⋯ menu at the end of the row. The menu starts with the schedule’s actions — Send now, Check condition on an alert, or Run now on a refresh — followed by its Edit, Duplicate, and Delete items named by its kind, for example Edit alert. The ⋯ button stays shown while its menu is open. Delete asks for confirmation first. Admins get these controls on every row.
  • View only — no toggle, no ⋯ menu, and no Edit button. If the schedule emails its recipients, the Subscribe column holds a toggle to subscribe or unsubscribe yourself. A schedule that emails nobody, for example one that only posts to Slack, has no toggle.
The menu’s Edit and Duplicate items open the same dialog as the sidebar, pre-filled from the schedule and tied to its dashboard. Save as copy is available only in the sidebar’s edit dialog. If an enabled schedule could not be registered to run automatically, its Next run column shows “Couldn’t schedule” instead of a time. On a row you can edit, click Retry next to it to register the schedule again.

Creating a schedule from the list

Click Create schedule above the list. The dialog described in Creating a schedule opens with an extra first field, Dashboard, which lists the published dashboards you can edit. Select one, set the schedule, and click Save; the new schedule appears in the list under that dashboard’s title. The Add control values button and the How choice are shown from the start but stay disabled, with the reason under each, until you select a dashboard, and Add control values also until its controls load. A dashboard with no control that can have a control values row keeps Add control values disabled.

Duplicating a schedule

To create a new schedule based on an existing one — for example, to send the same dashboard in another format or to a different set of recipients without re-entering the Schedule, timezone, control values, and notification settings — you can duplicate it. There are two ways:
  • From the sidebar — click the duplicate (copy) icon on a schedule card. The form dialog opens pre-filled with its Schedule, timezone, control values, condition, and notification configuration. Adjust anything you need, then click Save to create the new schedule. On the Refreshes, deliveries and alerts tab, choose Duplicate from the row’s ⋯ menu instead.
  • From the sidebar’s edit dialog — while editing a schedule, click Save as copy in the dialog footer. This creates a new schedule from the current form values, including any unsaved changes, instead of updating the original.
Duplicates are independent schedules: the original is left unchanged, and the copy keeps the source schedule’s enabled or disabled state. A copy doesn’t carry the source’s embed-user recipients, so on an alert that emails only embed users, Save as copy is disabled, and hovering it says “An alert needs a notification: add recipients or a Slack channel.”

Subscribing to notifications

If a schedule emails its recipients, anyone who can view the dashboard can subscribe to it themselves — an editor does not have to add them as a recipient. Open the sidebar from the published dashboard and use the toggle on a schedule to subscribe or unsubscribe. The same toggle appears in the Subscribe column of the Refreshes, deliveries and alerts tab. The toggle covers every way that schedule could reach you, in one click. If you were added individually, unsubscribing removes you from its recipients. If you are reached through a user group — or several — it also records you as an exception to each of those groups on this schedule, so the group keeps notifying everyone else but stops emailing you. Subscribing reverses both: it clears those exceptions and adds you back as a recipient in your own right. The change takes effect on the next run.
Unsubscribing affects only this schedule. It does not remove you from the user group, and it does not change any other schedule that group receives.
The toggle appears only for schedules that email people — those with a notification and Email ticked, whether or not they also post to Slack. A schedule with Email unticked, or with no notification, has nothing to subscribe to. Unticking Email doesn’t discard anything: the schedule keeps its recipients, subscriptions, and group exceptions, and emails them again as before once Email is ticked again. Every notification email also includes a one-click Unsubscribe link in its footer, so a recipient can stop receiving a schedule’s emails without signing in to Cube. It behaves exactly like the toggle, covering both a direct recipient row and any user group delivering to you. This works for any recipient, including those added directly by an editor and embed users who have no Cube account of their own.

Managing schedules from chat

You can also ask the agent in Analytics Chat to list a dashboard’s refreshes, dashboard deliveries, and alerts, or to create, change, pause, resume, or delete one — for example, “send the Sales dashboard to me by email and to #sales every Monday at 9” or “what alerts are on the Sales dashboard?” The agent works on the dashboard’s published version.
  • The agent emails the notification to Cube users: you, unless you name others. It can also post to Slack channels you name, for example “#sales”, once your Slack workspace is connected, and turn Email off for a schedule that should only post to Slack. User groups are set in the sidebar’s dialog.
  • An alert is set by asking for a condition, and removed by asking for the schedule to send every time.
  • Some agents can also Send now or Check condition when you ask for it now, for example “check the condition of my Orders alert now”, and tell you what came of it. Where the agent can’t, use the buttons in the sidebar.
  • The agent can set a schedule’s control values for filters, time granularities, and field switchers, for example “refresh the Sales dashboard every day, filtered to completed orders”. A field with a control of that type on the dashboard is set on that control. A field with none is added through the dashboard’s Dynamic controls widget, where the widget allows that type on that field; otherwise the schedule is not saved, and the agent tells you which field was refused. Changing a schedule’s control values replaces all of them.
  • Creating, changing, or deleting a schedule takes the same permissions as the sidebar: at least the Explorer role and Edit or Manage permission on the workbook; without them, the agent says the change was refused. Anyone who can view the dashboard can ask what is scheduled on it. Only a schedule’s owner is told the values its alert’s last check read, and only those who can edit a schedule are told who it is sent to; anyone else is told the recipients are hidden.
  • The chat on a published dashboard and embedded chat can’t manage schedules.

Run phases

When a schedule runs, it progresses through these phases:
  1. Initializing
  2. Fetching credentials
  3. Refreshing dashboard
  4. Generating screenshot (if the schedule has a notification)
  5. Generating AI summary (if the notification has AI summary turned on)
  6. Sending notifications (if the schedule has a notification)
The sidebar shows real-time status updates during execution. An alert checks its condition during the Refreshing dashboard phase. When the alert does not fire, steps 4 to 6 are skipped. Send now on an alert skips the check and runs every step.