What You Can Use Pulses For
Pulses are flexible. Some common uses include:- Team health checks — How is morale? Are people feeling motivated or burnt out?
- Post-meeting or event feedback — How did the all-hands land? What did people take away from the off-site?
- Blockers — What’s slowing your team down right now?
- Ongoing check-ins — Recurring weekly or monthly pulses to track trends over time.
How to Send a Pulse
- Go to Pulses in the Windmill dashboard.
- Click Create Pulse and describe your goal.
- Choose a template or customize your questions.
- Select your audience: specific people, groups, or an entire team.
- Choose whether responses will be named or anonymous.
- Send now, schedule for later, or set up a recurring cadence.
Viewing Responses
For real-time visibility, turn on live response streaming: as people respond, their answers post to a Slack channel thread with a running tally. When your Pulse closes, responses automatically flow into a report that surfaces themes and patterns across your team. This report can be sent automatically to recipients via Slack, exported, or viewed directly in the platform. This context feeds into 1:1s, recaps, and performance reviews, so insights don’t just sit in a report…they show up when you actually need them.
For Managers: Best Practices
- Start simple. A 2–3 question pulse on blockers or motivation is more likely to get responses than a lengthy questionnaire. Shorter is better.
- Be consistent. Recurring pulses (weekly or monthly) are more valuable than one-off surveys because they let you track trends over time. Set one up with a recurring schedule and let Windy handle the rest.
- Close the loop. When you get results, share a summary with your team. Employees are more likely to respond to future pulses if they believe their input is heard and acted on.
- Use anonymous mode thoughtfully. Anonymous pulses can surface honest feedback that people wouldn’t share otherwise — especially on sensitive topics like team dynamics or manager feedback. For more straightforward topics, named responses are fine.
- Check results in the dashboard. Pulse responses feed into recaps and 1:1 context, so you’ll see them resurface in Windmill naturally — but reviewing the dedicated Pulse results page gives you the full picture.
For ICs: What to Expect
- Windy will message you in Slack when a Pulse is sent to you. Just reply in the thread.
- It takes 2–5 minutes. Pulses are intentionally short. If it feels long, let your manager or admin know — that’s useful feedback.
- Anonymous means anonymous. If a Pulse is marked anonymous, your individual responses won’t be attributed to you. Windy will tell you before you begin whether responses are named or anonymous.
- Your responses matter. Pulse results feed directly into your manager’s view of how the team is doing. Thoughtful responses help your team improve.