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WhatPulse Professional 6.0.2: Web Insights, Portal Visibility, and Deployment Improvements

· 4 min read
Martijn Smit

WhatPulse Professional 6.0.2 introduces Web Insights, expanded portal visibility, and a series of improvements aimed at managed and enterprise environments.

This massive release focuses on one big theme: bringing website activity into the same analytical model as applications, while continuing to harden deployment and stability across Windows and macOS.

Web Insights: website activity tracking​

Web Insights extends WhatPulse beyond applications to include website-level activity tracking through browser extensions.

Browsing activity is now integrated directly into the WhatPulse client, making websites a first-class data source alongside desktop applications.

With Web Insights enabled, you can:

  • Track time spent and activity on websites, including keys, clicks, scrolling, and mouse movement
  • View website activity alongside applications inside the WhatPulse app
  • Associate website stats with profiles to separate work, personal, or other contexts
  • Exclude specific websites or patterns from tracking
  • Export website activity data for reporting or deeper analysis

Privacy-first by design​

Web Insights follows the same privacy principles as the rest of WhatPulse Professional:

  • Only website domains are tracked, never full URLs or page content
  • Browser extensions do not run in private or incognito mode
  • Website data remains private within your organization

For managed environments, browser extension pairing can be auto-approved via settings-overrides.ini when extensions are pre-installed. This makes Web Insights suitable for structured enterprise rollouts. Learn more about deploying the extension here

Web Insights in the WhatPulse client

Web Insights in the Portal: organization-wide website visibility​

Web Insights data is now available directly inside the WhatPulse Professional portal. Administrators can view aggregated website usage across the organization, including:

  • Total time and activity per domain
  • Keys, clicks, and engagement metrics
  • Website metadata such as tags, categories, and productive/non-productive classification
  • Usage trends over time

From the organization overview, you can drill down into individual users and profiles to see website usage at a granular level, fully integrated with application activity dashboards.

This makes it possible to move from "Which websites are used company-wide?" to "How is this specific domain used by a specific team or user?" in just a few clicks.

Website activity in the portal

Managed deployment improvements​

6.0.2 continues to improve reliability in managed Windows environments.

Standardized Windows startup​

Task Scheduler has been removed entirely. Startup is now handled via:

  • HKCU (single-user installs)
  • HKLM (all-users / installer-managed environments)

The client automatically migrates legacy Task Scheduler entries and lowercase registry keys on first run after upgrade.

The installer now sets a startup_managed_by_installer flag in settings-overrides.ini, allowing administrators to fully control startup behavior without interference from the client.

MSI fixes​

Several installer issues have been resolved:

  • Proper 64-bit MSI installation (no more WOW6432Node writes)
  • Fixed HKLM startup registry entry creation
  • Fixed all-users install checkbox behavior

Additional improvements include:

  • OS username included in client authorization requests (portal integration coming)
  • Computer serial number included in asset upload data (portal integration coming)

These changes improve predictability in enterprise rollouts.

UI and usability improvements​

  • Main window is now fully resizable and remembers its position
  • Application Activity charts support forward and backward day navigation
  • Dialogs and confirmations refined across the app
  • New application sync status window with detailed logging
  • Time series handling separated from pulsing to prevent dashboard interruptions during sync delays

These refinements make the client feel more flexible and robust during daily use.

Stability and performance​

This release also focuses heavily on background stability:

  • Heatmaps now render in the background to avoid UI freezes
  • Improved detection of hardware, input devices, and network interfaces
  • Better handling of unusual display and multi-monitor setups
  • Hardened cleanup across network monitor, browser extension server, database, and heatmap components

macOS​

  • Safer GeoIP database updates
  • Fixed timezone-related timestamp crash
  • Standalone .pkg installer for MDM and enterprise deployment

Windows​

  • Third-party shell extensions (e.g. OneDrive, Dropbox) no longer crash icon retrieval
  • Improved MSI uninstall cleanup with proper process shutdown

Client API​

For teams integrating WhatPulse into internal tooling:

  • New /v1/idle endpoint exposing internal last-input timestamp
  • Idle status added to /v1/all-stats and websocket updates

This improves accuracy for idle detection in external dashboards and automation.

Summary​

WhatPulse Professional 6.0.2 brings:

  • Website-level activity tracking
  • Organization-wide website visibility in the portal
  • Cleaner enterprise deployment on Windows
  • Improved stability across platforms

Web Insights closes the gap between application tracking and browser-based work, making it easier to understand how time is actually spent across your organization.