What you can use pulses for
Pulses are flexible. Some common uses include:- Engagement surveys: Measure engagement with rating, scale, and eNPS questions, and track the results over time.
- Team health checks: How is morale? Are people motivated or burnt out?
- Project feedback: Collect feedback from the people involved after a launch or a cross-team project, while the work is still fresh.
- Meeting or event feedback: How did the all-hands land? What did people take away from the offsite?
- Blockers: What is slowing your team down right now?
- Ongoing check-ins: Weekly or monthly pulses to track trends over time.
How to send a pulse
- Go to Pulse surveys in the Windmill Dashboard.
- Select New pulse and describe what you want to learn. You can also pick an idea or select Create from scratch.
- Review the questions that Windy suggests. Edit them, change their types, or add your own.
- Select participants: specific people, your team, groups, or everyone.
- Choose whether responses are Named or Anonymous.
- Send yourself a test, then launch the pulse. You can send it now or schedule it.
Viewing responses
Responses appear on the pulse’s page in the Windmill Dashboard as people submit them. The Insights tab shows response rates and results for each question. The Responses tab lists each response. You can filter and compare results by job title, group, and reporting line. For anonymous pulses, Windmill hides any result that has fewer than three responses, so no one can work out who said what. See Anonymity and privacy. For named pulses, you can also turn on live response streaming to post answers to a Slack channel as people respond. When a run ends, Windmill can send a report to the people you choose. See Named and anonymous pulses and Response sharing for who can see the results.For managers: best practices
- Start simple. A pulse with two or three questions gets more responses than a long survey.
- Be consistent. Recurring pulses, weekly or monthly, let you track trends over time. Set a recurring schedule and let Windy handle the rest.
- Close the loop. Share a summary of the results with your team. People respond to future pulses more often when they see that their input leads to action.
- Use anonymous mode thoughtfully. Anonymous pulses can surface honest feedback on sensitive topics, like team dynamics or manager feedback. You cannot change a pulse from named to anonymous after you create it, so choose before you create it.
- Check results in the dashboard. The Insights tab gives you the full picture, and you can ask Windy for takeaways.
For ICs: what to expect
- You can answer in Slack or in the platform. When a pulse is sent to you, Windy messages you in Slack. Reply to Windy there, or open the survey from Pulse surveys in Windmill and fill it in.
- Your answers save as you go. Windmill keeps your answers as a private draft until you submit them. You can edit your response after you submit it, or withdraw it.
- It takes a few minutes. Pulses are intentionally short. If one feels long, tell your manager or admin. That is useful feedback.
- Anonymous means anonymous. If a pulse is anonymous, your answers are not linked to your name. The survey tells you before you start whether responses are named or anonymous, and who can see them.
- Your responses matter. Pulse results show your manager and your company how the team is doing. Thoughtful responses help your team improve.