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Observer Polls

Observer Polls let you collect external ratings from people who know you. Instead of relying solely on your own subjective scores, you can ask friends, family, or a partner to rate dimensions like your energy, mood, or focus on a daily basis. This gives you an outside perspective on how you are doing -- data that is difficult to capture on your own.

Why observer polls

Self-reported check-ins are valuable, but they have a blind spot: you are the only rater. Observer Polls address this by letting trusted people provide their own independent assessments. Over time, you can compare self-reported scores against observer ratings to identify patterns you might not notice yourself.

Creating a poll

  1. Go to the Observer Polls section.
  2. Give your poll a name (for example, "Daily wellbeing check").
  3. Choose the dimensions you want observers to rate. Each dimension is a single word or short label using letters, numbers, and underscores (for example, energy, mood, focus, appearance). You can include up to 10 dimensions.
  4. Optionally, add a custom prompt that observers will see when they submit their ratings (for example, "Rate how I seem today based on our interaction"). The prompt can be up to 500 characters.

Note

Dimension names use a simple format -- alphanumeric characters and underscores only, up to 50 characters each. This keeps them consistent and easy to work with across charts and exports.

Inviting observers

After creating a poll, generate an invite link to share with your observers.

  1. Open the poll and select the option to generate an invite.
  2. Copy the invite link and send it to your observer through whatever channel you prefer -- text message, email, or in person.
  3. Each invite link is valid for 7 days. After that, you need to generate a new one.

When an observer clicks the link, they accept the invitation and become a member of your poll. They need an OwnPulse account to participate.

Warning

Share invite links only with people you trust. Anyone with the link and an OwnPulse account can join your poll during the 7-day window.

How observers respond

Once an observer has accepted your invite, they can submit daily ratings for your poll.

  1. The observer opens the poll from their "My Polls" list.
  2. They see the poll name, your custom prompt (if you set one), and the list of dimensions.
  3. For each dimension, they rate on a scale of 1 to 10.
  4. They select the date for the rating and submit.

Observers can rate for today or any past date, but not for future dates. If they submit again for the same date, the new scores replace the previous ones.

Viewing responses as the poll owner

As the poll owner, you can view all responses from all observers. Responses include the date, scores for each dimension, and a masked version of the observer's email (for example, "j***@example.com"). You can filter responses by date range to focus on a specific period.

Note

Observer emails are always masked in the responses view. This is a privacy measure -- you can see that responses come from different observers, but their full email addresses are not displayed.

Observer data rights

Observers have full control over the data they contribute:

  • View their own responses -- observers can review all ratings they have submitted for a specific poll.
  • Export their responses -- observers can download all of their response data across every poll they participate in. This ensures they always have a copy of the data they contributed.
  • Delete their own responses -- observers can remove any individual response they have submitted.

These rights ensure that participating as an observer is never a one-way commitment. Observers can retrieve or remove their data at any time.

Managing polls

You can update a poll's name and custom prompt after creating it. Dimensions cannot be changed after creation because existing responses are tied to the original dimension set.

To stop collecting responses, delete the poll. Deletion is a soft delete -- the poll is marked as inactive rather than permanently removed. This preserves the historical data while preventing new responses.