Read your server's weekly pulse

Pulse is a weekly health check. It takes eight readings of how your server behaves, compares each with what is normal for your server, and tells you which ones moved. Open it from This week, under What changed in the sidebar, or press Open Pulse on the This week strip on Home.

Pulse comes with Pro and Titan. On Free, the page shows what it would read and how to upgrade.

Which week it reads

Pulse always reads the last complete week, the seven days ending yesterday in your server's time zone. It compares that week with the eight weeks before it. There is no date range to pick: every reading covers the same week, so they can be read side by side.

Two readings look a little further back, because they need time to settle. Newcomer reception waits a day to see whether first messages got a reply, and activation waits a week to see whether joiners took part.

The eight readings

You see only the readings your role lets you read. Someone who can read engagement but not growth, for example, sees fewer tiles.

When a reading counts as moved

Each reading has a usual range, worked out from the eight earlier weeks: the typical week, give or take how much your server normally swings. A steady reading shows usually followed by that range. A reading outside it has moved, and shows how far from usual it landed.

A moved reading is marked by which way it went:

• Needs attention: it moved the wrong way, such as fewer active members or slower replies.
• Worth knowing: it moved the good way.

Because the range comes from your own server, a quiet server and a busy one are each judged against themselves. A small server's numbers wobble more from week to week, and Pulse widens the range to allow for that, so a handful of messages does not set it off.

The board puts readings that need attention first, then the good news, then the steady ones. Within each group, the reading furthest from usual comes first. The line under each tile draws the eight earlier weeks and this one, so you can see whether a move is sudden or part of a trend.

What to do about a reading

Every tile that has a reading offers two things:

• The lightbulb shows a next step for that reading, such as welcoming newcomers faster when newcomer reception drops.
• See the numbers opens the analytics view behind the reading, where you can dig into which channels or which days changed.

Pulse itself has no settings. The readings, the week and the ranges are the same for every server.

While Pulse is learning

A reading needs five recorded weeks, this one and at least four before it, to know what normal looks like. Until then its tile is dimmed, counts the weeks recorded so far, and says when the first reading should arrive.

A reading can also sit out a week that is too quiet to judge, such as a week with only a few joins. It comes back when there is enough activity again. Weeks the bot could not record are left out rather than counted as zero, so an outage does not make everything look like it dropped.

On Pro and Titan, importing your server's history gives Pulse past weeks to learn from, so it can start reading straight away.

The weekly briefing

On Pro and Titan, the Weekly briefing posts the week's findings to a Discord channel of your choosing. It is set at the foot of This week, under the readings, by people who may see the server's settings; the Weekly briefing button on Findings opens it.

• Post the briefing turns it on. It posts up to three findings your staff have not heard yet; a quiet week posts one line.
• Channel picks where it goes. Everyone who can read that channel reads the briefing, so pick a staff channel.
• When picks the day and hour, in the server's time zone.
• Name members lets findings about members name them. Off, the briefing leaves those findings out.
• Preview shows what this week's would say if it went now, without posting it.

Changes are saved from the bar at the bottom of the page. Recent briefings lists the last briefings and whether each was posted.

What happened after an annotation

If your plan includes annotations, the Impact page, under What changed in the sidebar, takes your three most recent annotations and asks whether messages, voice and joins moved in the three days after each one.

Each day's three days are compared with the same three days a week before, which cancels out the usual weekly rhythm. The change is then held against how much that comparison normally swings on days with nothing marked. A change outside the usual swing is shown in colour; one inside it reads as steady.

An annotation needs three full days after it before it can be read, and the page reads the last ten weeks or so. Marks from the same rule within a day of each other count as one, so a busy announcement channel does not flood the page.