Pulse, live calls and notice ribbons

Pulse is the real-time view of the dispatch board. It lays events out on one time axis: the past on the left, now in the centre and what is coming on the right. Two more pieces sit along the edges of the board canvas: live call tiles show who is on a call, and notice ribbons show the organisation-wide Q-Notices that are active. Dispatchers, service desk managers and customer success staff use them to see what changed and what is about to.

Before you start: you need a role that can open the dispatch board: Administrator, Service Desk Manager, Dispatcher or Customer Success (see Opening the dispatch board). Dismissing a notice for everyone also needs a sign-in that is linked to a HaloPSA agent.

Read Pulse

Pulse draws its events in lanes. Each lane is split into rows:

Which lanes start on depends on your role: a Dispatcher starts with Tickets only, a Team lead with Tickets, Agents and Upcoming, and Customer success with Tickets and Notices. Turn the others on in the Lanes group, as described below.

Items drawn from schedules, such as a shift start or a projected SLA breach, are marked as projected when you point at them. Point at any item to see its time, a title and detail. Select it to open its ticket, or to focus its agent when it has no ticket.

When items sit too close together to tell apart, Pulse merges them into one marker that shows a count. Select the marker to zoom in until they separate. When they are too close to separate even at the closest zoom, a list opens instead.

Show Pulse as a strip or as the whole canvas

By default Pulse is a strip above the stats bar at the bottom of the board. To switch:

• Press P, or select Expand Pulse, to make Pulse the whole centre canvas in place of the hex field.
• Press P again, or select Dock Pulse, to return it to a strip.

You can also choose in Settings → Canvas → Pulse → Show as: A strip above the stats bar, The centre canvas (replaces the mosaic) or Off.

Zoom and move around the timeline

• Hold Ctrl and turn the mouse wheel, or pinch on a trackpad, to zoom around the pointer.
• Turn the wheel over the time ruler to zoom.
• Drag the timeline, or hold Shift and turn the wheel, to move through time. A plain wheel scrolls the rows.
• Double-click to zoom in. Hold Shift and double-click to zoom out.
• Select Zoom in or Zoom out. The span between them shows how much time the axis covers. The axis can cover from 15 minutes to 72 hours.
• Use the Span presets: 1h, 4h, 12h, 24h and 72h.

Pulse follows the clock, so the now line stays where it is and the events move past. When you move the timeline away from now, following stops and the timeline stays where you left it. Select Now to follow the clock again.

Choose lanes and collapse them

1. In the group Lanes in the Pulse header, select a lane name to hide or show that lane.
2. Select a lane's heading to collapse it into a single summary row, which shows the busy moments as counts. Select the heading again to expand it. The Notices and Pipeline lanes have one row already and do not collapse.

Change the height of the strip

Drag the top edge of the strip up or down. With the keyboard, focus the handle (Resize the Pulse strip) and press the up or down arrow. You can also set Strip height in Settings → Canvas, in pixels.

Set Pulse options

Settings → Canvas → Pulse holds the same choices:

• Show as, Span (how much time the axis shows) and Follow now (the axis moves with the clock).
• Strip height.
• Lanes, with a box for each lane to show it and a second box to collapse it to one summary row.

Pulse stays as you left it: your span, whether it follows now and your lanes are saved with your board settings. See Board configuration.

Watch live calls

Live calls appear as tiles docked to the right edge of the canvas. Each tile shows:

• the agent's initials in a ring, and the agent's name;
• how long the call has lasted, counting up while it is live;
• the caller's name, or the number when the name is unknown, and the client;
• where the call script has got to, or that the script was skipped, and the verification state;
• a ticket chip such as #1234 when a ticket is linked to the call.

Select the ticket chip to open the ticket in the cockpit. Select the agent's ring to focus that agent. When a call ends, its tile stays for a few seconds, marked as ended with the outcome, and then leaves.

Everyone who can open the board sees every live call, including who is calling.

Calls appear from three places:

• the web Call Taking screen (see Taking a call);
• the Call tab of the browser extension;
• the phone system itself, for organisations that have connected it for call presence. Hanging up ends the call for any agent, and answering an inbound call starts one for a dispatcher (for other agents, when enabled for your organisation). A call already started from Call Taking or the Call tab is picked up by the phone (see Connecting your phone system).

Act on notice ribbons

Organisation notices run along the top of the canvas. They are the active Q-Notices posted for the whole organisation, most severe first. Up to three show at a time, and a line tells you how many more are in the Q-Notices panel. A notice for one ticket or one agent does not become a ribbon. A notice for one ticket shows on that ticket's hover card, and on the hex when Overlays on each hex is Everything. A notice for one agent shows as a notice flag on the agent's card.

Each ribbon shows the kind of notice (Heads-up for a Beacon, Background for Intel, Do this for a Directive, Watch for for a Sentinel and Status for a Signal), its title and message, who posted it and how long is left.

• Select Ack to hide the notice on your boards until it expires. It stays active for everyone else, and the board remembers your choice.
• Select the cross to dismiss the notice for everyone. The board asks you to confirm, and then the notice expires for all dispatchers and the audit log records that you dismissed it. This needs a sign-in linked to a HaloPSA agent.

For notice types and severities, see Q-Notices.

Turn ribbons and call tiles on or off

1. Select Settings → Canvas.
2. Under Attention layer, tick or clear Q-Notice ribbons and Live call tiles.

These choices change only your own board.

Related pages

• The dispatch board at a glance
• Board configuration
• Connecting your phone system
• Taking a call
• Q-Notices