Pulse

Pulse is Watchtower's real-time status management system for personnel, resources, locations, and assets. It provides an at-a-glance operational dashboard while preserving a history of every status change.

Supervisors and Admins use Pulse to configure and maintain statuses. Other team members can update statuses through connected Forms and can view Pulse reports that have been pinned to HomeBase.

Video Tutorials

1. Introduction to Pulse
2. Creating and managing saved Pulse reports
3. Creating a Yes/No status
4. Creating a Text status
5. Creating a Number status
6. Creating a Date status

Status Types

A Pulse status can store:

• Yes/No values
• Text or restricted-option values, including multi-select options
• Numbers and durations
• Dates
• Connections to users, resources, locations, or assets

Connected statuses let an agency represent operational relationships, not only a text or numeric value. The available entity type is controlled by the status configuration.

Create and Organize Statuses

When creating or editing a status, configure its title, value type, eligible personnel or entities, display rules, alerts, and time-compliance behavior.

Pulse management tools also let authorized users:

• Organize statuses into categories and reusable Status Sets
• Drag statuses into the desired display order
• Rename categories and statuses inline
• Copy an existing status template as a starting point
• Apply the same time-compliance rules to multiple statuses
• Edit or remove Status Sets that are no longer needed

Form automations are not copied when a status template is copied.

Update a Status

Update Manually

Select a value on the Pulse dashboard and enter the new information. Watchtower records the value, time, submitting user, notes, files, and notifications associated with the change.

Update from a Form

Eligible questions in the Form Builder display the Pulse connection control. Select it to connect the question to an existing status or create a status.

When the Form is submitted, Watchtower updates the corresponding Pulse value automatically. Draft saves do not run Pulse automations.

Use Manage Connections when a Form question and its connected Pulse status have restricted options. You can compare mismatched options and choose which values to add or overwrite. Form-side changes are published when the Form is saved.

Sensitive Form questions cannot connect to Pulse.

Alerts and Notifications

A status can raise an alert when a value or expiration condition matches its rules. Depending on the value type, rules can evaluate specific answers, selected multi-select values, number thresholds, or whether any/all configured conditions match.

Alerts can notify:

• The status owner
• Supervisors whose coverage includes the affected user, position, resource, location, or group
• Specific internal or external contacts

Delivery can use email, text message, or both, according to the alert and recipient configuration. Custom labels and notification messages can make an alert's purpose clear. Duplicate recipients are automatically de-duplicated.

Time Compliance and Expiration

Time-compliance rules identify values that are approaching or past expiration. A rule can change the alert level, reset the value, or use Reset and Clear to replace an expired dashboard and report value with a dash instead of continuing to show outdated information.

Focus Mode and History

Use Focus Mode to reduce the dashboard to statuses that currently require attention. It is available in list and grid views.

Select a status value to open its history. History includes manual changes and Form-driven changes, and a Form-generated entry links back to the response that updated it. In reports and history views, Next and Previous controls can move between the selected personnel or entities without returning to the calendar.

Pulse Reports

Saved Pulse reports can be:

• Favorited for quicker personal access
• Grouped and filtered, with that context preserved in exported PDFs
• Pinned to HomeBase as a read-only report for team members
• Downloaded or delivered by email
• Scheduled daily at a chosen agency-local hour
• Scheduled hourly or every few hours within configured active hours

Report scheduling follows the agency's local time.

Updated on: 21/09/2026