An introduction to Pulse alerts

Pulse is a powerful tool designed to notify the right people at the right time about school data trends, allowing school staff to intervene sooner rather than later and maximise impact on outcomes.

 

 

📣 What is Pulse?

Pulse allows schools to create customisable email alerts based on academic and pastoral data thresholds. Alerts can be configured at a fine-grain level to specify who should receive them, how often they should be received, the target cohort(s) or individuals on which they are based, and the data thresholds at which the alert should be triggered. 

The intention behind Pulse is to save time and headspace by automatically receiving a timely 'tap on the shoulder' for the sorts of trends that school leaders and teachers often track manually. 

👥 Configuring permissions for Pulse

To create and manage Pulse alerts, staff must be assigned the appropriate permissions in the 'Users and permissions' area of Intellischool Settings. 

When either creating a new permission set or modifying an existing permission set, you'll see that you have the choice of granting either 'View' or 'Manage' access to Pulse. You may wish to have only a select group of users able to manage (i.e. create and modify) Pulse alerts, and then a separate group of users who are able to view but not edit Pulse alerts. 

You'll find further instructions on how to modify user permissions in our quick video below.

✉️ Creating Pulse alerts

Once you've been granted the appropriate permissions, you'll see 'Pulse' as an option inside Intellischool Settings. Clicking on 'Pulse' will open the area that allows you to create a new Pulse alert from scratch and edit/review existing Pulse alerts.

Clicking on the 'Create a Pulse' button will open the Pulse creation window, which will step you through each of the choices available to configure your alert, including:

• Alert type and cohort
• Trigger
• Recipients
• Alert frequency

For a more detailed walkthrough of setting up a Pulse alert for the first time, take a look at the below video featuring our Head of Product, Rowan.

🛠️ Modifying existing Pulse alerts

When inside the 'Pulse' area of Intellischool Settings, you'll see a button with three dots on the right-hand side of every pre-existing alert. Clicking this button will allow you to edit, clone or delete these existing alerts, as well as view the history for the chosen alert. 

You'll also notice there's a column for 'Enabled', with checkboxes for each Pulse alert. Using this checkbox will allow you to temporarily disable an alert, rather than needing to delete it altogether. Using the 'Show disabled' toggle in the top right-hand corner will make disabled Pulse alerts visible again, and will allow you to re-check the 'Enabled' box when you're ready to re-enable the alert.

The 'History' area will give Pulse administrators further details about individual alerts that have been triggered, including date and time (both for when the overall alert was first created, and for when this particular alert was sent), recipient, delivery and engagement status, as well as the ability to view the alert email itself. The search bar can also be used to quickly locate alerts throughout the Pulse history for your school. 

📚 Pulse best practice resources

Take a look at the below resources for more information and guidance on setting up effective Pulse alerts. If you're interested in further training on Pulse alerts, reach out to our Engagement team anytime via help@intellischool.co.

📝 Intellischool Blog Post - Top 10 Pulse Alerts