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Run an Engagement Pulse and eNPS

By the end of this recipe, Copera will send your team a short engagement pulse on a schedule, gather the replies as anonymous rows, and let you turn each cycle into a single eNPS score you can trend over time — automations do the sending and collecting, and Ask Copera AI does the one part an automation can't: read every response and work out the score. Because the question, the answers, the sentiment analysis, and the assistant all live in one workspace, you never export a spreadsheet or stitch a survey tool to a dashboard.

Readiness: Available now, as a hybrid: a sender automation and a collector automation gather the responses, and Ask Copera AI computes and trends the eNPS each cycle. A standing teammate that owns the entire loop is rolling out in early access.

What it does​

eNPS — employee Net Promoter Score — is one question: "How likely are you to recommend us as a place to work?" scored 0 to 10. Answers split into three groups — Promoters (9–10), Passives (7–8), and Detractors (0–6) — and the score is % Promoters − % Detractors, a number from −100 to +100. One cycle's number tells you little; the value is in the direction as you run it again and again.

An engagement pulse wraps that score in context. This recipe runs the whole loop for you:

  • It sends the pulse on a schedule. Each cycle — say the first business day of the quarter — a scheduled automation posts the eNPS question and a short-form link to your team channel (or emails it). No calendar reminders, no chasing.
  • It collects replies anonymously. Every submission lands as a row on an Engagement Pulse board. A formula column tags each row Promoter / Passive / Detractor the moment it arrives — no AI, just the score. An AI sentiment step reads any comment's tone, and an AI classify step files it under a theme like compensation, workload, or growth.
  • It turns the cycle into one durable number. At close, Ask Copera AI reads the responses, works out the eNPS, response rate, and top themes, compares it to last cycle, and writes one row per cycle to an eNPS Trend table. That table is your trend line.

This is a different instrument from a weekly team pulse, which asks a light 1-to-5 mood question every week. eNPS is the formal, company-wide, lower-frequency measure leadership tracks quarter over quarter — a single benchmarkable score, sliceable by department or tenure, with the qualitative "why" attached.

Build it yourself​

The pattern is a collection surface (an anonymous form feeding a board) plus two small automations — a sender that invites the team and a collector that enriches each reply — and then Ask Copera AI for the cross-response math. Every block below is a standard automation building block from Automations.

One-time setup​

Create the Engagement Pulse board and Responses table

Make a board with a Responses table. Add columns for Score (a number, 0–10), Comment (rich text, optional), Cycle (a single-select like Q3 2026 or a date), Sentiment (a single-select the AI fills: positive / neutral / negative), and Theme (a single-select the AI fills: compensation, workload, management, growth, recognition, other). Optionally add coarse Department and Tenure single-selects for segmentation. Deliberately leave out any person column — no name is what keeps answers honest.

Add a Category formula column

Add a Category formula column that classifies each response from its score, so every row is tagged the instant it lands — no AI required: IF({Score} >= 9, "Promoter", IF({Score} >= 7, "Passive", "Detractor")). Now grouping the table by Category and Cycle gives you live Promoter / Passive / Detractor counts you can eyeball at any time.

Add an eNPS Trend table

In the same board, add a second table, eNPS Trend, with columns for Cycle, Responses (number), Promoter % (number), Detractor % (number), eNPS (number, −100 to +100), Change vs last cycle (number), and Top themes (rich text). One row here equals one cycle — this is where the score accumulates and where you chart the line.

Add the anonymous eNPS form

Add a public form to the Responses table with one required question — "How likely are you to recommend us as a place to work? (0 = not at all, 10 = extremely)" — mapped to Score, and one optional field — "What's the main reason for your score?" — mapped to Comment. If you're segmenting, add the Department and Tenure fields to the form too. Because it's a public form with no person field, submissions stay anonymous. The form's link is what your sender automation will carry.

Automation 1 — the sender​

Trigger: Schedule

In Automations, add a Schedule trigger for the start of each cycle — for example, the first Monday of every quarter at 9:00 AM. The same build runs monthly or on any rhythm; just change the schedule.

Action: Send the invite

Add a Post channel message action to your all-team channel with the question and the form link: "📊 Quarterly engagement pulse — 60 seconds, completely anonymous. How likely are you to recommend us as a place to work, 0 to 10? → [form link]". Prefer inboxes? Use a Send email action instead (or as well). Add a Send notification action so it isn't missed.

Optional — a mid-window reminder

Add a second automation with its own Schedule trigger a few days later and a Post channel message (or Send notification) action — "Last call on the pulse, it closes Friday" — to lift the response rate before the window closes.

People answer by submitting the form; each submission lands as a Response row, auto-tagged Promoter, Passive, or Detractor by the Category formula.

tip

Nudge without breaking anonymity. You can add a Schedule trigger that fires on the cycle's last day with a Send notification to your People lead — "Q3 pulse closes today; time to run the eNPS roll-up." That notification is the bridge from the automation to the Ask Copera AI step below, so the cycle never quietly closes without a score being logged.

Automation 2 — the collector​

Trigger: Form submitted

On the Responses table, add an automation with a Form submitted trigger (or Row created), so it runs the moment a new response arrives.

AI steps: read the comment

Add an AI → Sentiment step over the row's Comment and write the result into the Sentiment column. Add an AI → Classify step that sorts the comment into your theme labels (compensation, workload, management, growth, recognition, other) and write it into Theme. Add a Set field action to stamp the current Cycle so every response rolls up to the right period.

Condition: flag detractors fast

Add a Condition that checks whether Score is less than or equal to 6 (a Detractor). On the true branch, add a Send notification (or Send direct message) to your People lead with the comment and theme — so a rough score with a reason gets attention within the cycle, not a quarter later. Because the form is anonymous, this surfaces the signal and the theme, never a name.

That's the collection engine. Every block used here — Schedule, Post channel message, Send email, Send notification, Form submitted, Set field, AI Sentiment, AI Classify, Condition — is a standard automation building block, and the Category column is a plain formula. What's left is the one thing a fixed automation can't do cleanly: read all of a cycle's responses at once and compute a ratio across them. That's the next section.

Or just ask Copera AI​

You don't have to assemble the graph by hand — and, more importantly, Ask Copera AI is how you compute the score.

To build the whole thing, open Ask Copera AI and describe it:

"Create an Engagement Pulse board with a Responses table (score 0–10, a Category formula that marks 9–10 Promoter / 7–8 Passive / 0–6 Detractor, comment, sentiment, theme, cycle, department, tenure) and an eNPS Trend table with one row per cycle (cycle, responses, promoter %, detractor %, eNPS, change vs last cycle, top themes). Then build an automation that on the first Monday of each quarter posts our eNPS question with the form link to the #people channel, and a second automation that on each form submission reads the comment's sentiment and theme, stamps the cycle, and notifies me when the score is 6 or below."

Ask Copera AI can create the board, its columns, the Category formula, and both automations for you. It doesn't create the public form — add that to the Responses table yourself, which is a couple of clicks on the board — and then you're collecting. With the default Ask before acting permission mode, it shows a review card for each change before anything is created, so you approve the board and the automations before they exist. See What Copera AI Can Do for the full list of what it can build.

To compute and trend the score, at the end of each cycle ask:

"Read the Responses on the Engagement Pulse board for Q3 2026. Promoters scored 9–10, detractors 0–6. Work out our eNPS — percent promoters minus percent detractors — plus the response count, the promoter and detractor percentages, and the three biggest themes from the comments, and compare the eNPS to last cycle. Add a row to the eNPS Trend table with those numbers, then post the read to the #people channel. Keep every quoted comment anonymous."

It reads the rows, does the arithmetic, creates the trend row (you approve it first), and posts the summary — with a Sources list so you can jump to the responses it drew from. This is the hybrid seam: the automations gather clean, categorized data all cycle long, and the assistant turns that pile into the single −100-to-+100 number and the story behind it. Need it sliced? Ask "break the eNPS down by department" or "what changed since last quarter?" — the kind of flexible, cross-row analysis a fixed automation can't pre-build.

Make it a standing teammate​

Early access

A standing AI teammate — call it "Pulse" — can own this entire loop: it sends the pulse each cycle, watches the responses come in, computes the eNPS, logs the trend row, and posts the read to your People channel, on its own schedule and under its own identity. AI teammates are rolling out gradually. If you don't see them in your workspace yet, they're on the way — everything in this guide can be built today as an Automation plus an on-demand Ask Copera AI roll-up. See AI teammates for what's coming.

Tips​

tip

Keep the eNPS question identical every cycle. A trend only means something if the number is comparable across quarters, so never reword the recommend question or change the 0–10 scale. Explore new angles in the comment prompt or in a separate engagement question — never by touching the score question itself.

tip

Protect anonymity, or you'll measure fear instead of loyalty. Keep the form free of any person field, and only segment by coarse groups (department, tenure band) once each group has enough responses — a common floor is five — that no single answer is identifiable. On a small company, report the whole-org number only. Honest data is the entire point of a pulse.

tip

Want the score fully hands-off? Instead of asking Copera AI each cycle, keep running counters. Give the eNPS Trend table Promoters, Passives, and Detractors number columns, and on the collector automation add a Find rows step for the current cycle's trend row and an Increment number action on the right counter (branch on Score with a Condition). Then make eNPS a formula column: IF({Responses} = 0, 0, ROUND(({Promoters} - {Detractors}) / {Responses} * 100)). The score updates live as every response lands — the assistant then only adds the narrative themes.

tip

Set a spend cap and start with one cycle. The collector runs AI sentiment and classify steps on every submission, so give it a per-automation spend cap and watch the usage dashboard. Prove the loop on one quarter before you build department dashboards on top of it.

Frequently Asked Questions​

What is eNPS and how is it calculated?​

eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score) asks how likely people are to recommend your company as a place to work, on a 0-to-10 scale. Scores of 9–10 are Promoters, 7–8 Passives, and 0–6 Detractors. The score is % Promoters − % Detractors, a number between −100 and +100. Its value comes from watching it move cycle over cycle, not from any single reading.

How do I run an eNPS survey in Copera?​

Create an Engagement Pulse board with a Responses table and an anonymous public form asking the 0-to-10 recommend question plus an optional comment. A scheduled automation sends the form link each cycle, and every submission lands as a row that a formula tags Promoter, Passive, or Detractor. An AI step reads each comment's sentiment and theme, and at cycle close Ask Copera AI computes the eNPS and adds it to a trend table.

Can Copera calculate the eNPS score automatically?​

Yes. A formula column classifies every response with no AI. To turn those into the score, either ask Copera AI to read the cycle's responses and compute % Promoters − % Detractors, or keep it fully hands-off with counter fields and a formula that computes the eNPS live as each response arrives.

How often should you run an engagement pulse?​

Quarterly is the standard eNPS cadence — it gives change time to show up without survey fatigue — while some teams run a lighter monthly pulse. The Schedule trigger fires on whatever rhythm you set, so the same build works monthly, quarterly, or on any cadence.

Can eNPS responses stay anonymous?​

Yes. Collect through a public form with no person field, so answers aren't tied to who sent them. To compare groups, add coarse Department or Tenure fields and only report a segment once it has enough responses that no single answer is identifiable.

How is this different from a weekly team pulse survey?​

A weekly team pulse asks a light 1-to-5 mood question every week to catch morale shifts early. An engagement pulse and eNPS is the formal, lower-frequency, company-wide instrument: one benchmarkable 0-to-10 score, a −100-to-+100 result leadership tracks quarter over quarter, sliceable by department or tenure, with themes attached.