Config Pulse Block

The various pages the solution is to consist of, and each page’s role.
The library survey, which all surveys that will be created will be based on. (Pulse Library Survey).
The contact database, which holds data about all the employees who can respond to surveys. (Creating a Contact Database).
The active languages in the program.
Maximum and minimum limits on number of survey recipients.
Dimensions the library questions are grouped under.
The type of Custom Questions the users can choose from (if any) (Adding Custom Questions).
ReportingGrids, which allows grouping questions with the same scale, alternatively recoded into the same scale for reporting purposes.
Survey Templates with configured set of preselected questions and potentially a subset of library questions to choose from.

Config Pulse

Name

Is required

Description

workflowPage

Yes

This configures which page that hold the wizard for creating a new survey, with the agileWorkflow widget. Essentially, the page that opens when clicking "New Survey".

overviewPage

Yes

This configures the page that is shown if opening a survey that is live, with the surveyOverview widget.

reportPage

Yes

This configures the page that is shown if opening a survey that is closed, with the report of the survey.

wpaPage

This is a special page that will be available when opening a survey that is closed, and includes a dimension called "wpa" (for workplace assessment). Can be used when surveys include a block of questions that should not be reported together with the other dimensions in the surveyScore widget.

surveyListPage

Yes

This is the page that is shown when opening Pulse, and which you will be taken back to when stepping out of the workflow, or clicking the back arrow from one of the other pages.

reportAccessPage

This is a page that will be available when opening a live or closed survey, where the user can share access to the results of the survey with other end users.

librarySurvey

Yes

This is the surveyid of a regular survey created in Survey Designer or Professional Authoring, that holds all the questions that should be available for selection in a folder named "Questions". Any additional content, before or after the "Questions" folder will be included in all surveys.

contactDatabase

Yes

This is the id of the contact database that will hold employee data for all employees that can be invited to participate in surveys.

languages

Yes

The languages that the Pulse solution should be available in.

minNumberOfRecipients

The minimum number of recipients that has to be selected before being allowed to commit a survey.

maxNumberOfRecipients

The maximum number of recipients that can be selected. If a user goes above this limit, he or she will not be allowed to commit the survey.

surveyDurationInDays

The default close date will be set to current date + the number of surveyDurationInDays specified.

sendInSelectedLanguageOnly

On surveys in multiple languages, the email invites will just be sent in the language the user selects.

delayDaysBeforeFirstReminder

Default number of days before the first reminder is sent.

delayDaysBeforeSubsequentReminders

Default number of days between each subsequent reminder.

totalReminders

Total number of reminders sent.

Dimensions

Each question from the library have to be associated with a "dimension" ("theme", "topic", "index"). These dimensions are used to group the available library questions for selection in the customize step when creating the survey, and are also used to group questions when reporting. In addition users can get dimension scores presented, which is calculated as an average of the scores of the questions in the dimension. A question can only belong to one dimension.

Name

Is required

Description

label

Yes

A descriptive label for the dimension, that will be shown to the user.

questions

Yes

The list of question ids of the questions that belong to the dimension. Valid questions are questions from the "Questions" folder in the library survey.

icon

An associated icon that will be shown in the user interface to represent the dimension. Material Design icons are accepted by name or as a url to an icon which can be hosted on the file library or elsewhere.

Freeze Periods

In some cases, Pulse Program administrators may want to prevent survey send-outs during specific timeframes, such as holidays or critical business periods. To support this, allows administrators to define freeze periods in the CDL.

These freeze periods ensure that survey start or end dates cannot intersect with the specified timeframes. If a survey's schedule conflicts with a freeze period, it will not be allowed to be committed for deployment.

Note: Freeze periods do not affect live surveys that were already committed before the freeze period was enabled in the CDL. If you try to commit a survey that overlaps with a freeze period, the system will block this action, prompting you to adjust the schedule outside of the frozen timeframe.

Example Freeze Period CDL Configuration:

surveyFreezePeriods {
period 
from: 2024-06-02
to: 2024-06-06
}
period {
from: 2024-06-24
to: 2024-06-29
}
}

In the example above, the surveys will not be allowed to start or end between June 2–6 and June 24–29, 2024. Any surveys that were scheduled to begin or end during these periods must be adjusted before committing.

Setting Up Freeze Periods:

Open your Pulse configuration file.
Add the surveyFreezePeriods object between recipients and dimensions, also specifying the date ranges where no surveys should be started or ended.
Save your changes.

Custom Questions

See Adding Custom Questions.

Reporting Grids

To load single questions with the same scale into a data structure optimized for fast querying, and group questions with same scale for comparison in reporting, the single questions from the library can be grouped into one or more reporting grids.

Name

Is required

Description

targetAnswerList

Yes

The answerlist that the reportingGrid will be using. This refers to a reusable list/scale in the library survey.

questions

Yes

A list of the question ids of the questions that the reporting grid should contain.

customQuestionsAnswerLists

Yes

Any custom questions bassed on the specified answer lists will also be part of the reporting grid.

Recoding

You can recode questions with different scales into the same scale in the reporting grid. For example you can recode questions with 5, 7 and 11-point scales into a 3-point scale using favorable/neutral/nonfavorable. This is optional. You may have multiple different recodings in the same reporting grid.

Name

Is required

Description

questions

Yes

A list of the question ids of the questions that the recoded apply to.

customQuestionsAnswerLists

Any custom question based on the specified lists will also be recoded.

ignore

A list of categories to ignore (not recode).

Mapping

The recoding consist of multiple mapping between one or more categories (by code) in the original question, into one category in the reporting grid.

Name

Is required

Description

Yes

One category in the target answer list.

from

Yes

A list of one or more categories in the original question’s answer list.

Templates

When users create surveys, they can choose between one or more predefined templates. These templates may have some preselected questions, which may also be locked and so cannot be removed, and the templates may be configured to restrict the questions that are available for selection such that the user is limited to a subset of the questions in the library.

The template may also be set up with a subset of the languages available in the libarary.

Finally, the template definition also specifies which email objects from the library survey should be used for invitation and reminder emails.

Name

Is required

Description

label

Yes

The name of the template.

notes

Yes

A description of the template.

questions

A list of the question ids of the library questions that are preselected in the template.

lockedQuestions

A list of the question ids of the libarary questions that are locked, meaning the user cannot remove them.

availableQuestions

If set, it will reduce the set of library questions the user can choose from for this tmeplate to the questions listed. If not set, all questions from the library will be available.

languages

The set of languages that the survey will be available in when this template is selected. Other languages in the survey library will not be incldued. If nothing is set, all languages in the survey library will be used.

emailInvite

Yes

The email object that will be used for invitation emails.

emailReminder

The email object that will be used for reminder emails. If not specified, the invitation object will be used also for reminders.

Example

config pulse {
  //Properties
  workflowPage: "workflow"
  overviewPage: "overview"
  reportPage: "report"
  surveyInputPage: "surveyinput"
  reportAccessPage: "reportaccess"
  wpaPage: "wpa"
  surveyListPage: "surveylist"
  librarySurvey: p1867006688
  contactDatabase: p1867007493
  languages: en
  customQuestions {
    questionPrototype {
      question: q197
      label: Open
    }
    questionPrototype {
      question: q196
      label: "NPS scale Horisontal"
   }
    questionPrototype {
      question: q199
      label: "Star Rating 5 step"
    }
    questionPrototype {
      question: i195
      label: "Info"
    }
  }
  //Recipient Information
  minNumberOfRecipients: 1
  maxNumberOfRecipients: 2000
    //Dimensions
    dimension #MyTeam {
      label: "Team"
      questions: VOE6,VOE7,VOE14,VOE18
     icon: rowing
    }
    dimension #MyJob {
      label: "Job"
      questions: VOE1,VOE3,VOE8,VOE9
    icon: person
        }
    dimension #MyCompany {
      label: "Company"
      questions: VOE2,VOE5,VOE10,VOE11,VOE12,VOE17
    icon: "business"
        }
    dimension #MyExperience {
      label: "Experience"
      questions: VOE4,VOE13,VOE15,VOE16
      icon: "card_giftcard"
    }
    dimension #Exit {
      label: "Exit Index"
      questions: VOE19,VOE20,VOE21
    icon: "hearing"
    }
    dimension #empNPS {
      label: "Employee NPS"
      questions: eNPS, NPSDisplay
      icon: "favorite_border"
    }
    dimension #openQuestions {
      label: "Open Text Response"
      questions: NPSWhy,OpenOther,OpenLead,openExit
    icon: "record_voice_over"
    }
    dimension #multiQuestions {
      label: "Reasons for Leaving"
      questions: MultiExitWhy
    icon: "iso"
    }
//reportingGrids
reportingGrid #fivepoint {
    targetAnswerList: "saSDandVGVP"
    questions: VOE1, VOE2, VOE3, VOE4, VOE5, VOE6, VOE7, VOE8, VOE9, VOE10, VOE11, VOE12, VOE13, VOE14, VOE15, VOE16, VOE17, VOE18, VOE19, VOE20, VOE21
    customQuestionsAnswerLists: "Strongly Disagree/2/3/4/Strongly Agree"
    recoding {
    questions: VOE1, VOE2, VOE3, VOE4, VOE5, VOE6, VOE7, VOE8, VOE9, VOE10, VOE11, VOE12, VOE13, VOE14, VOE15, VOE16, VOE17, VOE18, VOE19, VOE20, VOE21
    customQuestionsAnswerLists: "Strongly Disagree/2/3/4/Strongly Agree"
      mapping {
        to: 1
        from: 1,2
      }
      mapping {
        to: 2
        from: 3
      }
      mapping {
        to: 3
        from: 4,5
      }
  //ignore: 6
    }
  }
  reportingGrid #NPS {
    targetAnswerList: "netPScore"
    questions: NPSDisplay
    recoding #NPS {
      questions: NPSDisplay
      mapping {
        to: 1
        from: 9,10
      }
      mapping {
        to: 2
        from: 7,8
      }
      mapping {
        to: 3
        from: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6
      }
    }
  }
  //Templates
  template pulse #blank {
    label: "Blank template"
    notes: "Start from scratch and add e.g. custom questions"
    questions: VOE1
    languages: en
    emailInvite: Invitation2
    emailReminder: Reminder2
  }
  template pulse #team {
    label: "Team Follow-Up Pulse"
    notes: "This survey is to pulse your team on results of our annual survey."
    locked: true
    questions: VOE1,VOE2,VOE5,VOE11,VOE12,VOE15,VOE16,VOE18
    lockedQuestions: VOE1,VOE2,VOE5,VOE11,VOE12,VOE15,VOE16,VOE18
    languages: en
    emailInvite: Invitation2
    emailReminder: Reminder2
  }
  template pulse #customTeam {
    label: "Custom Team Evaluation"
    notes: "Use this survey to create a custom pulse for your team."
    questions: VOE1,VOE2,VOE5,VOE11,VOE12,VOE15,VOE16,VOE18
    lockedQuestions: VOE1,VOE2,VOE5,VOE11,VOE12,VOE15
    languages: en
    emailInvite: Invitation2
    emailReminder: Reminder2
  }
  template pulse #tracker {
    label: "Quarterly Tracker"
    notes: "Use this survey to manage your quarterly pulse survey."
    questions: VOE3,VOE8,VOE9,VOE12,VOE15,VOE16,VOE17
    lockedQuestions: VOE3,VOE8,VOE9,VOE12,VOE15,VOE16,VOE17
    languages: en
    emailInvite: Invitation2
    emailReminder: Reminder2
  }
  template pulse #experience {
    label: "Experience and NPS"
    notes: "Use this survey to measure employee experience and their liklihood to recommend you as a place to work."
    questions: VOE4,VOE13,VOE15,VOE16,eNPS,NPSWhy
    lockedQuestions: VOE4,VOE13,VOE15,VOE16,eNPS,NPSWhy
    languages: en
    emailInvite: Invitation2
    emailReminder: Reminder2
  }
  template pulse #exit {
    label: "Exit Survey"
    notes: "Use this survey to send exit survey to specific employees."
    questions: VOE11,VOE19,VOE20,VOE21,MultiExitWhy,openExit
    lockedQuestions: VOE11,VOE19,VOE20,VOE21,MultiExitWhy,openExit
    languages: en
    emailInvite: Invitation2
    emailReminder: Reminder2
  }
} //Config Pulse Close

Forsta Pulse Support

Articles in this section

In this article

Config Pulse

Dimensions

Freeze Periods

Example Freeze Period CDL Configuration:

Setting Up Freeze Periods:

Custom Questions

Reporting Grids

Recoding

Mapping

Templates

Example