Pulse surveys help you quickly gather targeted insights from your team. They’re lightweight, fast to create, and delivered directly in Slack by Windy. Anyone in your company — team members, admins, or HR admins — can create a Pulse, with visibility controls that determine who each person can send to.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.gowindmill.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
What Pulses are
A Pulse is a short survey that helps you understand how your team is doing right now.You can use Pulses to ask about anything, but we have a few presets in there to help jog your memory:
- Blockers
- AI usage
- Workplace needs
- All-hands feedback
- Off-site feedback
- Improvement opportunities
Common use cases
- Team health checks — Gauge morale, motivation, or how the team is doing this week.
- Post-launch or project feedback — After a launch or cross-team project, send a short Pulse to the people involved to capture what went well, what could improve, and how collaborators worked together. Pick the specific participants and choose named or anonymous responses based on the kind of feedback you want.
- Post-event feedback — Collect reactions to all-hands, off-sites, or other meetings while they’re still fresh.
- Blockers and improvement opportunities — Surface what’s slowing the team down or where processes could be better.
- Recurring check-ins — Run the same Pulse on a weekly or monthly cadence to track trends over time.
Can I ask numerical questions?
Yes — you can ask people to answer with a number, like a 1-5 rating. To get the best results, be explicit in your Pulse prompt and discussion guide about the kind of answer you want. For example: “Please answer with a single number from 1 to 5. If someone replies with anything else, gently ask them for a number.” Clear instructions like this help Windy steer the conversation back to a number when someone replies with words instead. Keep in mind this isn’t a hard rule — Windy doesn’t strictly enforce numeric answers, and if someone really doesn’t want to give a number, Windy will eventually accept what they say so the conversation doesn’t stall. We’re working on better support for numerical Pulse questions.Who can send Pulses
Everyone in Windmill can create a Pulse:- Team members
- Admins
- HR admins
Creating a Pulse
Choose your Pulse Prompt
Describe why you’re running the Pulse.Alternatively, you can choose from Ideas like All Hands feedback, Offsite feedback, Office needs, or Improvement opportunities.
Create your Discussion Guide
Windy generates a discussion guide. Add your own or remove discussion guide topics.
Select Participants
Select everyone, specific people, teams, or groups. You can also specify ICs or managers within a specified team or group.
Sending or scheduling a Pulse
Once your Pulse is ready, choose how you want Windy to deliver it. Click Test Pulse to test your pulse first, and click Launch Pulse to set your send schedule.Test Pulse
Send the Pulse only to yourself in Slack.This lets you preview the full flow before delivering it to others.
Tests do not notify or involve the audience you selected.
Send now
Windy immediately sends the survey to your selected audience in Slack.Schedule for later
Schedule the Pulse to send:- On a one-time date and time
- On a recurring basis (weekly, monthly, etc.)
- Based on a specific calendar event
- On a schedule based on employee hire date anniversaries
Reviewing Pulse responses
There are four ways to review Pulse responses: in the Windmill Dashboard with filtering, by exporting a CSV, by asking Windy, or through the MCP server from an AI assistant. For named Pulses, all four methods support filtering by group, department, start date, or job title. For anonymous Pulses, individual responses aren’t attributed to a respondent, so they can’t be filtered or exported by employee metadata.If you need per-department breakdowns of an anonymous Pulse, use the Duplicate button on the Pulse to create one anonymous Pulse per department, each scoped to a different audience.
“Department” works as a filter because departments are typically modeled as groups (synced from your HRIS, Google Workspace, or Slack). If your departments aren’t set up as groups, Windy won’t be able to slice the data that way. Learn more in Groups.
In the platform (with filtering)
After a Pulse is sent, responses come back in real time on the Pulse results page in the Windmill Dashboard. For named Pulses, you can filter responses on that page by group, department, start date, or job title. Pulse context also feeds into 1:1 prep, recaps, performance review packets, and team insights — so insights resurface where you need them, not just in the report. You can also enable live response streaming to post each response into a Slack channel as it comes in.CSV export
Export Pulse responses to CSV from the Pulse results page. The export reflects whatever filter is active on the page, so you can scope it to a specific group, department, start date, or job title for named Pulses. Anonymous Pulses can be exported too, but the CSV won’t include employee metadata, so it can’t be sliced by department or other attributes. Use the Duplicate-per-department workaround above if you need anonymous breakdowns.Windy
Ask Windy in Slack or in the Windmill platform to filter or summarize Pulse responses. Windy can analyze named Pulses by any filter dimension:- “Summarize responses to the Q1 engagement pulse, broken down by group”
- “Show me what the Engineering group said in the latest blockers pulse”
- “Compare how the Sales and Engineering groups responded to the workload pulse”
MCP
If you’ve connected the Windmill MCP server to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or another MCP-aware AI tool, you can ask the assistant to read Pulse responses (and the post-pulse report) and synthesize recommendations. Example prompt:“Using the results of our latest onsite Pulse, what are the top 3 things we should improve and what are 2–3 concrete ideas we could implement?”A few important details:
- MCP only exposes data you can already see in the Windmill Dashboard. If you can’t see the Pulse in Windmill, your AI tool can’t access it via MCP either.
- Data returned by Windmill does pass through your AI tool’s model to generate the answer. The MCP server itself does not send data to any AI model — but the AI tool you connect does process whatever data it receives.
Response Anonymity
Response Anonymity controls whether responses are attributed to the respondent. You set this when creating a Pulse, and can edit it later from the Pulse’s settings.| Setting | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Named | The author’s name is shown with each response. Responses can be filtered, segmented, and exported by employee metadata. |
| Anonymous | Responses are not attributed to a respondent. Windy tells participants before they begin whether the Pulse is named or anonymous. |
Live response streaming in Slack is only available for named Pulses. Anonymous Pulses cannot stream responses because respondent identity is protected.
Response Sharing
Response Sharing controls who can see Pulse results. It’s independent of Response Anonymity — for example, you can have an anonymous Pulse that is still visible to all participants, or a named Pulse that is private to owners. Open Edit Response Sharing on a Pulse to pick one of three modes:| Response Sharing mode | Who sees responses | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Private to Owners | Only Pulse owners | Company-wide pulses where HR wants to keep responses private |
| Visible to Managers | Each manager sees only their own reports’ responses | Company-wide pulses where managers should see their team’s responses |
| Visible to All Participants | Every participant sees all responses | Team retros, standups, and similar shared check-ins |
Piloting a Pulse
Yes — Pulses support pilot rollouts. You can configure a Pulse so that only your pilot users receive it and are notified, while the broader organization is not involved at all. To run a Pulse with a pilot group only:- In the Select Participants step, choose the specific pilot users (or a pilot group).
- Click Test Pulse to send the survey only to yourself and preview the admin and respondent experience end-to-end.
- When you’re ready, click Launch Pulse — only the pilot users you selected receive it in Slack. No notifications go to the broader org.
FAQ
I sent a Pulse as named by mistake — can I change it to anonymous after launch?
I sent a Pulse as named by mistake — can I change it to anonymous after launch?
No. Pulse anonymity is set before launch and can’t be changed once the Pulse has been sent. If you intended to run an anonymous Pulse:
- Close or cancel the existing Pulse so responses stop coming in.
- Create a new Pulse with the same questions and audience, and set anonymity to Anonymized in the Set Pulse Anonymity step.
- Let your audience know to ignore the first Pulse and respond to the new one instead.
Can I analyze anonymous Pulse responses by group?
Can I analyze anonymous Pulse responses by group?
No. Respondent identity is stripped from anonymous responses, so they can’t be sliced by team, department, or any other group. Use a named Pulse if you need to break results down by group.
What's the difference between named and anonymous Pulses?
What's the difference between named and anonymous Pulses?
In a named Pulse, responses are attributed to the individual respondent and can be analyzed by group. In an anonymous Pulse, individual responses are not attributed to respondents and can’t be sliced by group. Pick anonymous for sensitive topics where honest feedback matters more than attribution.
Explore Pulses
- Schedule Types — Set a send schedule for your Pulse surveys
- Reminders and Nudges - Set a reminder schedule for your Pulse surveys
- Notifications - Set notifications for Pulse survey response updates