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Run a Weekly Team Pulse Survey

By the end of this recipe, Copera will ask your team one short mood question every week, gather the anonymous replies as rows, and trend the score week over week — so you can see morale moving before it becomes a problem, without ever chasing anyone for a response. Because the question, the answers, and the AI all live in one workspace, the same automation that asks can also collect, score the sentiment, and write the trend.

Readiness: Available now. Build it as automations — an asker that posts the weekly question, an optional scorer that reads each comment's sentiment, and a trender that rolls the week up into one data point. A standing teammate that owns the whole pulse loop is rolling out in early access.

What it does​

A pulse survey answers a different question than a stand-up. A stand-up asks what are you working on; a pulse asks how are you doing — and its value only shows up when you watch the answer change over time. One week's number tells you little; a line that slides from 4.2 to 3.6 over a month tells you a lot.

This recipe runs that loop for you:

  • It asks one question, on a schedule. Every week a scheduled automation posts a single mood question to your team channel — "How's your week going? 1 (rough) to 5 (great)" — with a link to a short form. One question, thirty seconds, no meeting.
  • It gathers replies anonymously. Each submission lands as a row on a Pulse board. The form carries no name, so people answer honestly — the whole reason a pulse works. An optional AI sentiment step reads any comment and tags its tone.
  • It trends the result. A second automation closes each week: it finds the week's responses, writes a short digest (the average score, the response count, the sentiment mix, and recurring themes), and appends one row per week to a Weekly Trend table. That table is the trend — a sortable, chartable line of how your team is feeling, week after week.

Unlike an end-of-day check-in that reads the board to narrate work status, a pulse survey has to ask — morale isn't in your task data — and unlike a daily stand-up, it's anonymous and cumulative: the point isn't today's answer, it's the shape of the curve.

Build it yourself​

The pattern is a collection surface (a form feeding a board) plus two or three small automations: an asker that prompts the team, an optional scorer that enriches each reply, and a trender that rolls the week into one point. Every block below is a standard automation building block.

One-time setup​

Create the Pulse board and Responses table

Make a board with a Responses table. Add columns for Score (a 1–5 single-select or number), Comment (rich text, optional), Week (date), and Sentiment (a single-select the AI will fill: positive / neutral / negative). Deliberately leave out a person column — no name is what keeps answers honest. This table is your raw collection point and a permanent archive of every response.

Add a Weekly Trend table

In the same board, add a second table, Weekly Trend, with columns for Week (date), Responses (number), Average score (number), Sentiment mix (text), and Themes (rich text). One row here equals one week — this is where the trend accumulates and where you'll chart the line.

Add an anonymous pulse form

Add a public form to the Responses table with one required question — "How's your week going? 1 (rough) to 5 (great)" — mapped to Score, and one optional field — "Anything you'd like to share?" — mapped to Comment. Because it's a public form with no person field, submissions stay anonymous. The form's link is what your weekly message will carry.

Automation 1 — the asker​

Trigger: Schedule

In Automations, add a Schedule trigger for one moment each week — for example, Thursday at 2:00 PM, which gives people the rest of the week to answer.

Action: Post the question

Add a Post channel message action to your team channel with the question and the form link: "🫧 Weekly pulse — 2 minutes, fully anonymous. How's your week going, 1 to 5? → [form link]". To make sure it isn't missed, you can add a Send notification action alongside it.

People answer by submitting the form; each submission lands as a Response row for this week.

tip

Prefer people answer in the channel? Post the question in-channel and swap the form for a second automation with a Chat message received trigger. Add a condition so it only runs on replies to the pulse, an AI → Extract step to pull a 1–5 score out of the free-text reply, and a Create row action to store it. This lifts response rate, but note the trade-off: chat replies are attributed, so you lose the anonymity a form gives you. For a morale question, the form is usually worth the extra tap.

Automation 2 — the scorer (optional)​

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 step + stamp the week

Add an AI → Sentiment step over the row's Comment and write the result into the Sentiment column. Add a Set date to now action into the Week column so every response is stamped for the weekly roll-up. Now each row carries both a number and a tone.

Automation 3 — the trender​

Trigger: Schedule

Add a Schedule trigger for after the collection window closes — say Friday at 4:00 PM — so the whole week's answers are in.

Action: Find the week's responses

Add a Find rows action on the Responses table with a row filter for rows from the last 7 days. Add a second Find rows on Weekly Trend for last week's row, so the digest can say whether the score went up or down.

AI step: Write the digest

Add an AI → Summarize step over those rows. Prompt it plainly: "Write a one-paragraph team morale digest. Give the average score and the number of responses, the mix of positive / neutral / negative sentiment, the two or three recurring themes from the comments, and say whether the score moved up or down from last week. Keep any quoted comment anonymous."

Actions: Record the point and share it

Add a Create row action on Weekly Trend — set Week to now, and map the average, response count, sentiment mix, and themes into their columns. Then add a Post channel message action to share the digest with the team, or a Send direct message action to send it privately to a manager. Add a Create document action too if you want a running morale journal to look back on.

That's the whole loop: the asker prompts, the form gathers, the scorer tags the tone, and the trender turns each week into a single durable point. Every block used here — Schedule, Post channel message, Send notification, Form submitted, AI Sentiment, Set date to now, Find rows, row filter, AI Summarize, Create row, Send direct message, Create document — is a standard automation building block.

Or just ask Copera AI​

You don't have to assemble the graph by hand. Open Ask Copera AI and describe the whole thing:

"Create a Pulse board with a Responses table (score 1–5, comment, week, sentiment) and a Weekly Trend table (week, responses, average score, sentiment mix, themes). Then build an automation that every Thursday at 2 PM posts an anonymous 1-to-5 mood question with our pulse form link to the #team channel, and a second automation that every Friday at 4 PM finds this week's responses, writes a morale digest with the average score and themes compared to last week, adds a row to the Weekly Trend table, and posts the digest to #team."

Ask Copera AI can create the board, its columns, and both automations for you. It doesn't create the form — add the anonymous form 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 setup and the automations before they exist. See What Copera AI Can Do for the full list of what it can build.

Already collecting responses and just want this week's read? Ask on demand, any Friday:

"Read this week's rows on the Pulse board and post a morale digest to the #team channel: the average score, how it compares to last week, the positive/neutral/negative mix, and the recurring themes from the comments — keeping every quote anonymous."

It reads the rows, writes the digest, and posts it — with a Sources list so you can jump to the responses it drew from.

Make it a standing teammate​

Early access

A standing AI teammate — call it "Pulse" — can own this whole loop: it posts the weekly mood question to your team channel, gathers the week's replies, writes the digest, and adds the new point to the trend, 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.

Tips​

tip

Ask one question, and keep it the same every week. A pulse only works if the number is comparable across weeks, so resist the urge to reword it or add fields. One 1-to-5 question plus an optional comment is the whole survey. If you want to explore a theme, do it in the comment prompt, not by changing the score question.

tip

Protect anonymity, or you'll measure fear instead of feeling. Keep the form free of any person field, and prompt the digest step to quote comments without attributing them. On a small team, hold the digest until you have a handful of responses so no single answer is identifiable. Honest data is the entire value of a pulse — don't trade it away.

tip

Chart the trend, don't just read it. Because every week is a row on the Weekly Trend table, you can group and chart the Average score over time right on the board — a falling line is a signal to act, weeks before it would show up in attrition. The digest tells you this week; the board shows you the direction.

tip

Set a spend cap and start with one team. The scorer and trender each run AI steps, so give both automations a per-automation spend cap and watch the usage dashboard. Prove the loop out on one squad before rolling it across the org.

Frequently Asked Questions​

How do I run a weekly team pulse survey in Copera?​

Create a Pulse board with a Responses table and an anonymous form asking one mood question scored 1 to 5. A scheduled automation posts the question and form link to your team channel each week, and every submission lands as a row. A second scheduled automation finds the week's rows, summarizes them with an AI step, and writes one row to a Weekly Trend table — so the score builds into a chartable trend.

Can a team pulse survey be anonymous?​

Yes. Collect responses through a public form with no person column, so submissions aren't tied to who sent them. Anonymity is what gets honest answers on a morale question. If you'd rather attribute answers you can add a person field, but for sentiment, anonymous is the norm.

How does Copera trend pulse survey results over time?​

Each week's digest automation writes one row to a Weekly Trend table — the week, the response count, the average score, and the sentiment mix. Because every week is a row on a board, you get a running, sortable, chartable trend of team mood, and the AI digest can compare this week's score to last week's.

Can Copera analyze the sentiment of pulse survey comments?​

Yes. Add an AI Sentiment step that reads each optional comment and tags its tone, and an AI Summarize step in the weekly digest that surfaces recurring themes and standout comments. The pulse then gives you both a number to trend and the reasons behind it.

Do I have to build the pulse survey myself?​

No. Open Ask Copera AI, describe it, and it creates the board, its columns, and both automations for your review. You add the anonymous form to the Responses table yourself, since that's a quick board setup step. With the default Ask before acting mode, you approve each change before it's made.

How is a pulse survey different from a stand-up or an end-of-day check-in?​

A stand-up and an end-of-day check-in track work — what's planned, what's stuck — daily and attributed. A pulse survey tracks how people feel, anonymously, and its value is cumulative: you watch the average score move week over week rather than reading a single day's answer.