Pulse
Pulse is two web parts in one install, on a single licence:
- Glow Cloud Quick Poll - one question on a page, answered in place. Best on a homepage.
- Glow Cloud Pulse - a multi-question survey with an intro, one question per step and a completion screen, plus a results dashboard you can place on another page.
Both store their data in SharePoint lists on your own site, and both are answered without leaving the page.
Permissions
None. Pulse needs no Microsoft Graph permissions and there is nothing to approve in API access. It runs as the signed-in user over SharePoint's own API, and nothing leaves your tenant.
Where responses live, and who can read them
This matters more for a survey than for anything else in the kit, so it is worth stating plainly. Responses are not anonymous, and Pulse never says they are. SharePoint records the author of every list item, so any product that stores responses in SharePoint and promises anonymity is promising something the platform will not honour.
What Pulse does instead:
- Ordinary users can read and edit only their own response - the responses list uses item-level read and write security.
- List administrators can read every response, exactly as they could with any SharePoint list. Nothing hides that from you.
- Everyone else sees a published snapshot of the totals on the definition item - never anyone's raw answers.
- The web part shows a short line saying so under the questions, so respondents know before they answer. You can hide it in the property pane, but the honest default is to leave it on.
Set up
- Install the package (see the Install guide) - no API permissions step for Pulse.
- Edit a page → add Glow Cloud Quick Poll or Glow Cloud Pulse.
- In the property pane, choose what this page shows: the survey (people answer here) or the results dashboard.
- Write your questions in the editor on the page, then use Start this pulse. Pulse creates the two lists it needs the first time and grants people permission to respond.
The two lists
| List | Holds |
|---|---|
| PulseDefinitions | One item per poll or pulse - the questions, the schedule, and the published totals snapshot. Everyone can read it; page editors write it. |
| PulseResponses | One item per submission. Item-level read and write security, so a person sees only their own answers and can change them while the pulse is open. |
Question types
| Type | Use it for | How results show |
|---|---|---|
| Choice | Pick one from a list | Counts and shares with bars |
| Scale 1-5 | Agreement, with labelled ends | Distribution plus the average |
| NPS 0-10 | Would you recommend us | A real NPS score split into promoters, passives and detractors |
| Star rating | Quick satisfaction | Distribution plus the average out of five |
| Ranking | Put options in order of importance | Aggregated order |
| Free text | Anything you did not think to ask | A word cloud of themes, plus the answers |
Every results panel also has a table view toggle, so the same numbers are available to a screen reader and to anyone who would rather read figures than a chart.
Scheduling and participation
Set Opens on and Closes on to run a pulse for a fixed window - before it opens and after it closes the part shows results rather than questions. Setting Invited audience size turns the response count into a participation percentage, and the dashboard tracks participation across successive pulses so you can see engagement rising or falling over time.
Title banner
Both parts carry the same title banner, and it can be styled to match your brand so the question looks like something your organisation asked. The settings sit in the property pane just under the title, heading level and logo - in the Poll group on Glow Cloud Quick Poll, and the Pulse survey group on Glow Cloud Pulse. Only the controls that do something for the style you picked are shown.
- Title banner style - solid colour, soft tint, gradient fade, two colours, or a background image; or one of the minimal looks: no fill (ghost), accent bar, underline, or overline label.
- Banner shape - rounded or square. Hidden for the styles that have no banner behind the title.
- Banner colour - a colour of your own instead of the site accent. Use the site theme colour puts it back, so there is always a way out.
- Second colour - the other end of the gradient, offered only when you pick two colours.
- Banner background image - pick or upload a picture, with a readability overlay behind the title so it stays legible over a busy photo.
- Overline text - the small label that sits above the title on the overline style, for a standing heading such as "This month's pulse".
- Title text colour - automatic, light or dark. Automatic computes the contrast against the real banner colour (WCAG ratios), so a banner in a brand colour keeps a legible title; set it by hand over a gradient, a ghost banner or an image where the automatic choice is not the one you want.
A poll or pulse already on a page does not move. The defaults reproduce the banner exactly as it was before these settings existed, so the new looks apply only once an author chooses one.
Recipes
- A homepage temperature check - Quick Poll with one light question, changed weekly. It costs a visitor two seconds and it is the cheapest way to make an intranet feel alive.
- Ask on one page, publish on another - add Pulse in survey mode to the page people answer on, then add a second instance in results mode to a leadership or all-hands page. Same pulse, two audiences, no exporting.
- An honest engagement survey - open with an NPS question ("would you recommend us as a place to work"), add two scale questions, and close with one free text. Leave the storage note visible: people answer more honestly when they know exactly who can see what, rather than being told it is anonymous and not quite believing it.