Who can see and do what in Pulse
Super admins can do everything in Pulse. HR admins run surveys and settings but can't change the engagement score goal. Reporting managers see their own team's Overview and can't change anything.
Pulse is in the dashboard menu for every admin at a company that has Pulse. What you can do there depends on your admin role. The one exception: if your only admin permission is creating announcements, you won’t see Pulse at all.
| Page | Super admin | HR admin | Reporting manager |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overview | Whole company | Whole company | Your own team |
| Analytics, Heatmap, Comments | Whole company | Whole company | Not available |
| Surveys, Templates, Questions | View and change | View and change | View only |
| Emails | View and change | View and change | Not shown |
| Settings | View and change | Everything except the goal | View only |
Super admins always see results for the whole company, even if they also have the reporting manager role. Only super admins can change the Engagement score goal in Pulse → Settings. Everyone else sees it with the note “Only super admins can change goals.”
If you’re a reporting manager
- Overview shows scores and participation for the people who report to you.
- Analytics and Heatmap say “Analytics is not available for your role”. Comments says “Comments are not available for your role”. See “Analytics is not available for your role”.
- Surveys says “You can view surveys, but you do not have permission to manage them.” There’s no Create survey button. Templates and Questions show a similar note.
- In Settings, you can see survey languages and comment tags but not change them.
If you’re also an HR admin, you can change survey languages, add comment tags and use Emails. Everything else in the list above stays the same.
Survey types and Reports aren’t limited for reporting managers at the moment. Reports cover the whole company, not just your team.
Pulse permissions on your admin role
For everyone except super admins, Pulse also checks the permissions on your admin role for these jobs:
- managing surveys, which covers creating, pausing and sending surveys, and changing questions, templates and survey languages;
- reading comments;
- downloading survey reports.
The screens don’t check these permissions in advance. If your role is missing one, you still see the button, but the action fails. Saving a survey or downloading a report shows “Permission Denied”, and Comments doesn’t load. Ask a super admin to check your role.
You can’t add or change Pulse permissions in Admin → Roles and permissions yet. A role that already includes Pulse access shows “This role includes Pulse access and cannot be edited here” when you open it. Contact support to change that role.
If your permissions can’t be checked
If the dashboard can’t confirm your role, Surveys, Templates and Questions open read-only, with a note such as “We could not check your permissions, so surveys are read-only. Reload the page to try again.”
What your plan changes
Some Pulse features, such as your own questions and extra survey languages, need Pulse Pro whatever your role. See Pulse Lite and Pulse Pro.