# Signals

> Watches you set on what people write and which gifts arrive, so a quiet pattern across twenty results becomes a line on Monday's Overview.

For: Pastor, Admin, Owner
Canonical: https://emmauos.com/docs/signals

![Signals: the watches this church keeps, each with its window, threshold and current count.](/docs-img/signals.png)

## What a watch is

A watch is a question you want asked of every new result, over a window of time, with a line it has to cross before it counts as a signal.

- **Words or tags.** Results whose free-text answers mention any of these words, or that your team tagged with these tags. *grief, loss, widow* over 60 days, threshold 5.
- **A gift.** Results with this gift in the lead band. *Teaching* over 90 days, threshold 8.
- **A step.** When the count crosses the line, what to do, in your words: start a group, ask the pastor to preach on it, call these people.

Signals that crossed their line show on the Overview with the count and the step. The weekly digest says it once, on the week a watch starts rising ("Musicians: rising, 5 in the last 30 days against the usual 1." and the step); a watch that stays up isn't repeated, and one that settles and rises again is said again. If a church hasn't saved its own watches yet, the starting three are saved as ordinary watches the first time one of them rises, so the digest can remember it said so.

## Calendar and events

A watch can be tied to a **calendar**: a season or a date range, so *hospitality* counts only around Easter. If you give EmmauOS an **events feed** (an iCal, RSS or WordPress feed from your church's site), signals can be read alongside what your church was doing that month, and the Overview shows the events beside the week's results.

## Time in church

Once Planning Center is connected, **Time in church** above the watches counts only people who have been in your church under a year, 1 to 3 years, 3 to 10 years, or 10 years or more. It counts from the month they were added to Planning Center, the nearest record of when they came. Use it to ask whether what is arriving comes from newcomers or from people who have been here for years.

- People without that date are left out, and the page says how many are not on file.
- A band with fewer than 5 people shows nothing, so a narrow band can't single anyone out.
- A count opens the same people: the band carries over to the list.
- The usual and the trend are worked out inside the band, against the same windows.

## What a signal isn't

It never names a person on the Overview or in the digest; the count links to the Signals page, where pastors and up can see who. Words are matched against what people wrote on the assessment only, never against the private *something I have walked through* answer.

## Who sees what

Pastors, admins and the owner create watches and see the people behind a count. Leaders and viewers see the signal lines on the Overview, with counts only.