Spaces and folders

Pulse organises notes in two levels: spaces and folders. A space sets the broad question of who can see something; a folder is the unit of classification and team sharing within it. This article covers the difference, creating folders, designing permissions, and automatic posting per folder.

#Using the sidebar

Open and close the left sidebar with ⌘S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). Opening a meeting note closes the sidebar automatically, widening the area for the body. Widen the window and the sidebar pins to the left edge, shown alongside the body. When the window is narrow it appears as an overlay on top of the body.

#Spaces

The sidebar is made up of two kinds of space.

The workspace administrator automatically becomes the owner of folders in the team space. An administrator can also move a team space folder into My notes to make it private again.

You choose which space to put a folder in when you create it. You can change the space afterwards from the folder's sharing settings. Moving a folder between spaces changes who can see it all at once, so check the notes inside before moving a folder containing anything sensitive.

#Custom spaces (administrators only)

As well as My notes and the team space, a workspace administrator can create their own spaces. Custom spaces exist to separate permissions in larger organisations. They let you design things so that notes and folders are shared only with a particular group — a department, a site, a project — and not with the whole workspace.

To manage spaces, open Settings → Spaces, or click Manage spaces in the sidebar.

• Creating a space: Create space, enter a name, icon and description, and add members. Anyone added to the space can see the notes and folders in it.
• Deleting a space: choose Delete space from the space's menu. Deletion cannot be undone, but the notes and folders inside are not deleted — they simply leave that space.

Only administrators can create and delete spaces.

#Creating a folder

Open the sidebar and click the + button beside the space name. Set the folder name and icon, and enter a description. The description helps other members understand what the folder is for, and also gives chat something to work with when answering across that folder. Descriptions that make clear what is inside — “regular sales meetings with key customers”, “records of recruitment interviews” — are the useful ones.

FigureScreenshot: the create folder dialog, with fields for folder name, icon and description

#Subfolders

Creating a subfolder inside a folder gives you one more level of classification — a subfolder per customer under a “Sales” folder, say, or one per initiative under a “Product” folder.

There are two ways to create one.

• From the menu: click the three-dot menu beside a folder name in the sidebar and choose Create folder.
• Drag and drop: drag an existing folder onto another and it goes inside. Only folders you own can be nested. Folders you have joined as a member through sharing cannot be dragged into another folder.

Subfolders go one level deep; you cannot create a subfolder inside a subfolder. Folders can also be dragged to reorder them in the sidebar.

A subfolder inherits its space and sharing settings from its parent. If the parent is in the team space, every subfolder under it belongs to the team space too. A subfolder cannot be made private on its own, so to separate visibility, separate the parent folders.

#Adding notes to a folder

In the notes list, click Add to folder, or drag and drop the note onto a folder in the sidebar.

FigureScreenshot: choosing “Add to folder” from the notes list and picking the destination folder

To add several notes at once, select them in the list.

• Click the checkbox that appears when you hover over a note.
• Shift-click another note to select the range between them.
• Select all selects every note in the current list. Then click Add to folder.

A single note can go in several folders, so you can keep parallel views by theme, by project and by customer.

#Adding recurring meetings automatically

When you add the note for a recurring meeting such as a weekly review to a folder, you are asked whether to add automatically the notes for later instances to the same folder. Turning it on removes the manual step each time.

Turning automatic adding on

1. Put the recurring meeting's note into the folder with Add to folder or by dragging and dropping.
2. When asked “add future meetings automatically?”, click Add automatically.
3. From then on, that recurring meeting's notes go into the folder automatically.

Stopping it, or changing the destination

• To stop: open the folder selector on any note from that recurring meeting and untick the folder. That also cancels automatic adding for that recurring meeting.
• To change folder: remove it from the current folder as above, then add it to the new folder and choose Add automatically when asked.

#Sharing and permissions

FigureScreenshot: a folder's sharing settings, with the three settings — space, members and link visibility

Access to a folder is determined by three settings.

1. Space — which space the folder is in sets its default visibility. You can change it from the sharing settings at any time.
2. Members — add specific people to the folder directly by email address.
3. Link visibility — decides who can get in from the folder's link when you share it.

The sharing scope set on individual notes is managed separately from the folder's settings. For per-note sharing scope and defaults, see Sharing controls.

#Adding members

1. Open the folder's sharing settings.
2. Enter the person's email address.
3. Add.
4. They receive an email telling them they have been added to the folder.

If they already use Pulse, the folder appears in their sidebar as it is. If not, they can view the folder in a web browser and are guided through creating an account to open it in the app.

#Link visibility

#Owner and member permissions

Whoever created a folder is its owner. People added later are members, and can do less.

Note that members can add and remove members too. People the owner did not intend can therefore end up in a folder, so for folders involving anyone outside the company we recommend reviewing the member list in the sharing settings periodically.

Someone you add to a folder can also see the full meeting transcripts when they open it in the desktop app. How it looks when opened from a link in a web browser is covered in Sharing notes. Choose between adding them to the folder and sending them a link according to whether the transcript needs to be shared too.

#Reviewing permissions

A common problem in Japanese companies is permissions not following people when they move. Someone who transfers but remains a member of their previous department's spaces and folders can still read past sales and HR notes afterwards. To manage by department rather than person, use User groups.

Because an administrator owns team space folders, they keep working after the person responsible leaves — but personal folders in My notes do not. Ask people to move the notes the business needs into team space folders before they leave. What to do when notes have to be retrieved after someone has left is covered in Exporting notes in bulk.

#Chatting with a folder or space

Chat can take a whole folder or space as its scope, not just an individual note. My notes and the team space themselves can be the scope too.

Open the folder or space and type your question, and the answer is generated across the notes it contains. You can use it to gather what was said about a particular point across past meetings, pull the matters under consideration out of several sales meetings, or organise the topics that keep coming up.

FigureScreenshot: a question typed into chat with a folder open, and an answer drawn from across the notes in that folder

You can leave the model on automatic selection or choose one from the dropdown. For questions spanning many notes, choosing a model that handles long context can make the result more consistent. How to choose is covered in Choosing a model.

#Automatic posting from a folder (integrations)

You can set rules that send notes added to a folder to other tools automatically. Supported are Slack, HubSpot, Attio and Zapier.

FigureScreenshot: notes added to a folder being posted automatically to a Slack channel

To set it up, open the folder, click the Integrations button in the folder header, and choose from the list which integration to use for this folder.

FigureScreenshot: the “Integrations” button in the folder header and the folder's integrations tab, listing the available integrations with on/off toggles

Once set up, new notes added to that folder are sent automatically to the connected integration. The integration itself has to be set up first, so complete the connection following the articles for Slack, HubSpot, Attio and Zapier before configuring this. The data each integration sends is set out in Integrations overview.

Automatic posting fires the moment a note is added to the folder. Before enabling it, check that it is not set to post to a channel with external people in it, or somewhere referred to across departments.

#If something is not working

• I cannot drag a folder into another folder: only folders you own can be nested. Folders shared with you cannot be moved. Folders cannot be put inside a subfolder either.
• The person I shared with cannot see the folder: if they do not use Pulse, it does not appear in a sidebar and they view it in a web browser. They also cannot get in if link visibility is still “invited people only” and you have not added them as a member.
• The person I shared with cannot see the transcript: transcripts are not shown when viewing in a web browser. Ask them to open the folder in the desktop app.
• The link says “folder not found”: visibility may be set to “everyone in the workspace” while they do not have an account on your domain.
• Recurring meeting notes are not added automatically: either Add automatically was not chosen at the prompt, or the setting was cancelled when the note was later removed from the folder. Add the note to the folder again and set it up once more.

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