Pulse

Pulse delivers weekly alerts to engineering managers and leaders by analyzing system metrics across your teams. When it identifies notable trends in velocity, quality, focus, or individual contributor activity, it delivers them where you already work — Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Webex. If there are no notable changes for a given week, Pulse skips the alert entirely. Past alerts are always available in the DX AI sidebar, so you can review them anytime without leaving DX.

If you manage multiple teams, Pulse rolls up the most relevant trends across all of them into a single summary, prioritizing the changes most worth your attention.

To ask follow-up questions about your metrics or explore trends in more depth, see DX AI chat.

Getting started

There are two ways to get started with Pulse:

  • Admin setup — A DX admin can enable Pulse for team leads from the admin panel. Once added, Pulse alerts begin on the configured schedule.
  • Self-enable — If you manage teams in DX, you can enable Pulse for yourself directly from the DX AI sidebar. When you open the sidebar, you’ll see a banner prompting you to enable alerts — just click Enable to get started.

Once enabled, Pulse appears in the DX AI sidebar and you can configure your alert preferences from the settings gear icon.

Configuring alerts

From the Manage alerts dialog, you can control:

  • Alert types — Toggle which insight categories are included in your alerts: Velocity & throughput, Code quality & stability, Allocation & focus, and Individual contributors.
  • Teams to include — Select which of your teams are included in alerts. Only selected teams contribute to your weekly summary.
  • Alert schedule — Choose the day of the week, time of day, and timezone for alert delivery. The default is Monday mornings.
  • Direct message delivery — If your organization uses Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Webex, you can opt into receiving alerts as a direct message. The message includes a link to view the full alert details in DX.

What alerts include

Alerts can surface insights across four categories, each of which you can toggle on or off:

  • Velocity & throughput — Changes in PR throughput and cycle time
  • Code quality & stability — Shifts in defect ratio and revert rate
  • Allocation & focus — Trends in feature vs. maintenance work allocation and time spent in meetings
  • Individual contributors — Flags team members who may need support based on recent activity, such as a significant throughput drop

How alerts are generated

Pulse compares your team’s metrics from the past 7 days against the prior 21-day baseline. When it detects a statistically notable change — such as a significant drop in throughput, a spike in defect ratio, or a sharp increase in cycle time — it includes that trend in your weekly alert. If none of your enabled metrics show a notable change, no alert is sent that week.

If you manage multiple teams, Pulse prioritizes the most concerning trends across all of them into a single summary.

Scheduling and delivery

You control when alerts arrive. By default, alerts are delivered on Monday mornings, but you can configure the day of the week, time of day, and timezone from your settings.

Alerts are always visible in the DX AI sidebar within DX. You can also opt into direct message delivery via Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Webex (depending on your organization’s configured integrations). The direct message includes a summary of your alert and a link to view the full details in DX.