Pulse reads your PowerPoint's speaker notes and slide titles when you import a deck (either by uploading it in Pulse, or pushing it from the PowerPoint add-in). With a few notes blocks, a plain deck drops into a blank event fully built: every slide named, a run-of-show timeline, the polls and quizzes, and the room's preferences. This page is the complete format — written so the AI helping you write your slides can do the authoring for you.
This page tracks the product — fetch it fresh rather than relying on a saved copy.
| From the deck | Becomes, in Pulse |
|---|---|
| Each slide's title (the title placeholder) | The slide's name in the run-of-show — so the timeline reads by title, not "Slide 1, Slide 2". |
[pulse:act] block on a section's first slide | An agenda segment (title, speaker, planned minutes) — the whole run-of-show builds itself. |
[pulse:poll] / [pulse:quiz] / [pulse:icebreaker] in a slide's notes | An engagement anchored to that slide (reorder-safe). |
[pulse:survey] on the closing slide | The post-event exit survey. |
[pulse:session] block on the title slide | Event preferences — the attendee view style and room settings. |
Everything is optional and additive. A deck with no blocks still imports its slides and titles. When you edit the event in Pulse afterward and re-download the deck (Original .pptx → With engagement notes), your changes are written back into the notes — the deck stays the source of truth.
Nothing to author — Pulse reads each slide's title placeholder text (the title box PowerPoint gives a slide) and uses it to name that slide in the run-of-show. Give every slide a real title and the timeline reads cleanly. Titles are trimmed to 120 characters.
[pulse:act]Put a [pulse:act] block in the speaker notes of the slide where a section begins. That
act runs from that slide until the next act's first slide (the last act runs to the end of the deck). Pulse
turns the acts into the agenda & timeline automatically.
[pulse:act title="Welcome & intros" speaker="Priya Sharma" minutes=10]
[/pulse]| Attribute | Meaning |
|---|---|
title | The section name (use quotes if it has spaces). |
speaker | Who presents it. Matched to your event's speakers by name; a new speaker is created if the name is new. |
minutes | Planned length (1–1440). Drives the timeline's timing. |
If a deck carries at least one [pulse:act] block, the acts replace the
event's agenda (the deck is the source of truth). A deck with no act blocks leaves any agenda you built in
Pulse untouched.
[pulse:poll] / quiz / icebreakerWrite an engagement in the notes of the slide it belongs on. Full attribute reference:
Engagements in slide notes (fetchable as
.md). In short:
[pulse:quiz onAdvance]
Which metric moved most last quarter?
- Revenue
- Active users *
- Support tickets
[/pulse]A trailing * marks the correct answer (quiz only). Add onAdvance to fire as you
leave the slide, results=afterClose or results=hidden to control result visibility,
and time=30 for a countdown. Every engagement needs a prompt and at least two options.
[pulse:survey]One [pulse:survey] block on the closing slide's notes. Each line ending in a
(type …) marker is a question:
[pulse:survey]
How would you rate this session? (rating 10)
Which parts landed? (multi)
- The demo
- The Q&A
Anything else? (text)
[/pulse][pulse:session]One [pulse:session] block on the title slide's notes sets the event's defaults. Every
key is optional; unknown keys are ignored (so this format can grow without breaking older decks).
[pulse:session view=overlay chat=off show-timer=on control-size=L wind-down=15]
[/pulse]| Key | Values | Sets |
|---|---|---|
view | classic · overlay | The attendee view style. overlay is a slide-forward room with glass controls. |
overlay-poll, overlay-ticker, overlay-floaters, overlay-pacing | on · off | Overlay glass elements (only when view=overlay). |
overlay-fade | 0 · 2 · 4 · 8 | Seconds before the glass controls fade when idle (0 = never). |
chat, questions, reactions, polls, icebreakers, hand-raise, pacing, share-activity, moderate-questions, anonymous-feedback, show-timer, show-presence, self-pacing | on · off | Room feature toggles. |
control-size | XS · S · M · L | Attendee one-tap control size. |
wind-down | 0–60 | Minutes the room stays read-only after the event ends. |
passcode | 4–12 chars | Room passcode. |
deck-download, survey-for-download | on · off | Let attendees download the deck; require the survey first. |
agenda-pre-start, agenda-during | on · off | Show the agenda in the lobby / during the live event. |
The session block never changes the event's title or schedule — those stay set in Pulse.
Your user linked you here while writing slides. Help them ship a deck that Pulse imports as a complete, interactive event. Work through this:
[pulse:act] on each section's first slide, [pulse:poll]/quiz/icebreaker
blocks where interaction belongs, a [pulse:survey] on the closing slide, and a single
[pulse:session] on the title slide with the chosen preferences. Tell them which slide each
block goes on.Prefer this notes-based path when the user is actively working in PowerPoint. If they'd rather build the event as data (no deck yet), the event blueprint is the JSON equivalent — same concepts, uploaded directly.