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Customization: Design & Theme

PulseCAD lets each community theme all terminals independently. Open the editor from Admin → Design & Theme. It is built like a small website builder: pick a terminal, edit its colors, and watch a live copy of the real page repaint as you work.

Theming is part of Customization, which is Pulse Pro and up (Pulse Max ER:LC on ER:LC), along with the ID and license designer, CAD sounds, custom paging tones and the option lists. Terminal looks are the exception: they are free on all plans.

Themes are per terminal and per mode

There is no single global palette. Each terminal (Dispatch, LEO, Fire, Tow, Records) has its own colors, and within a terminal you edit Light and Dark palettes separately. What you change is scoped to the surface you are on.

The editor layout

The page is stacked: the terminal tabs, then a live preview, then the color controls under it.

  • A tab per terminal runs across the top: Community Hub, Civilian Portal, LEO MDT, Fire / EMS MDT, Tow MDT, Dispatch, Court / DOJ, and Records Console. A number on a tab shows how many colors you have changed on it. Switch tabs to theme a different surface. Each tab carries its own set of colors and its own descriptions of what each color drives. The Community Hub is the page your members land on: the banner with your community's name, Go on duty and Other areas.
  • Admin, Billing and your account pages are not themed. They always keep the PulseCAD colors, whatever you set here.
  • Separate Light and Dark palettes. Toggle which mode you are editing with the Light / Dark buttons above the preview. Light and dark are edited independently, so a color that reads well on a dark board and one that reads well on a light portal can be set to different values.
  • Per-color controls with plain-language descriptions telling you exactly what each color affects on that terminal (background, panels, accent, status chips, text, borders, and so on).

Live preview

Above the color controls is a live iframe preview of the actual page for the selected terminal - not a mockup or a swatch grid, but a rendered copy of the real surface. As you change a color, the preview repaints so you see the true result in context.

The preview follows the mode you are editing

Switch between editing Light and Dark and the preview follows, rendering the terminal in that mode. That way you are always looking at the palette you are actually changing.

The preview is a static, read-only rendering. It shows the terminal's chrome and layout (including gated areas) so you can judge your palette without touching or exposing any live data.

Inspect mode

Finding which control drives a particular element can be fiddly on a busy terminal, so the editor has an Inspect mode. Press Inspect above the preview and click an element in the preview - the editor jumps straight to the color control that drives it. Use it when you can see the thing you want to recolor but are not sure which color token it maps to.

Saving and resetting

  • Colors you set on a tab only affect that terminal, but Save design at the top saves your changes on all tabs at once. Nothing changes for your members until you save.
  • The reset button beside the mode you are editing returns that terminal's light or dark colors to the PulseCAD defaults. Reset all at the top clears all custom colors on all terminals.

The Community Hub, Civilian Portal and Court have a new look

Since 10/07/2026 the Community Hub, the Civilian portal and the Court use the new PulseCAD look. The Community Hub, Civilian Portal and Court / DOJ tabs preview that look, and the colors you set there apply to those pages in light and dark mode. Each of the three is themed on its own, so coloring the Civilian Portal does not change the Hub. Colors you chose before the new look were not carried over, so set them again if you had any. A few colors, such as Recessed well, Accent amber and Busy, have no place in the new look; their description on those tabs says so.

Design directives still apply

Themes change colors, not copy or iconography. Keep to the house rules elsewhere in the product: no em dashes in visible strings, no decorative emojis (the UI uses line icons), and legible contrast in both light and dark.

Terminal looks (skins)

Themes recolor a terminal. A skin goes further and changes its layout. All responder terminals (LEO, Fire & EMS, and Tow & DOT) can wear one.

Each department picks its default in Admin → Departments:

  • PulseSquare - the shared PulseCAD console, the same one LEO and Dispatch use: gray toolbar tiles with bitmap icons and function-key labels, navigation across the top. On fire and medical departments this one is called PulseMDT.
  • PulseSquare (fire side) - a navy header with a row of blue status tiles, and navigation on a rail down the right-hand side ending in More. It opens on the calls list. Offered on fire and medical departments, where it carries the PulseSquare name.
  • PulseField - a header of large buttons with a big tile showing your current status code, full-width status bars down the left, and event cards beside the live map. Offered on all responder terminals, in police navy on Law Enforcement, blue on Fire and EMS, and amber on Tow / DOT. All function keys, statuses and More actions of that terminal are still there.
  • PulseMin - a Windows console with two permanent status grids, calls above units, a named-action bar and a working status bar. On Tow / DOT its header and toolbar are amber. See below.

The department setting is the default; a member can pick a different look for themselves from the terminal's More menu (the Terminal Look group on LEO and Tow, Display on Fire and EMS), and "follow my department" is always the way back. Looks are free on all plans, and they stack with themes: pick a look for the layout, then use the editor above to recolor it.

What a look changes

A look reaches past the console itself:

  • The log-in screen is drawn in the look you will land in, so going on duty already looks like your console. Before you pick a department it follows your own choice for that terminal, else the default the departments you can pick share. See Going on duty.
  • Reporting wears it too. On PulseSquare, Reporting opens a Pulse Reporting screen with CITATIONWRITER, FORMS and CRASHWRITER buttons; on PulseMin it opens a Choose a form: list; on PulseField (Law Enforcement) a Reporting screen listing Citation Writer, Crash Writer and Forms, each with Open; the two writers keep their PulseSquare layout inside it. PulseField on Fire, EMS and Tow, and the fire-side PulseSquare, have Reporting screens of their own.
  • Night mode carries through: on PulseSquare and PulseMin the Citation Writer, Crash Writer, Forms and the launcher all have a real dark theme. A filed or printed report is always the light paper document. See Records Console and Fire & EMS reports.

A look never removes a feature. All buttons, reports and actions exist in all looks; only where it sits changes.

The PulseMin console

All other looks are stylesheets. PulseMin is a different console: the call queue and the unit board are its home screen instead of being pages you navigate to, and everything else - a call, a query, a report - opens as a screen in their place. Back (or Esc) returns to them.

What that changes for an operator:

  • The board is home. Leaving a screen returns you to the grids rather than wherever you were before. The Call Queue button gets you there from anywhere in one press.
  • Color is the state. All rows are inked in your community's own configured status colors. A unit row takes its status color; a call row takes its primary unit's color, and a call nobody is on takes your Pending color (or cyan if you have not set one). The Time cell turns red when a unit has sat in a status past its timer.
  • Size the grids by dragging the bar between calls and units. Your split is remembered on that computer; double-click the bar to put it back to even.
  • The map is a page, opened from the toolbar, not a pane.
  • Right-click a call or a unit for its common actions.
  • Day and night: the chrome darkens and the grids do not, so the colours mean the same thing either way. Toggle with Ctrl+F7 or Console → Colors.
  • Its own words. PulseMin has its own names for things, so it reads differently from the other looks: My Call (Display Call), Add CAD Call (New Call), Vehicle and Names (Plate and Person), Returns (Queries; the menu is Search), IM (Messages), Complete Call (Clear w/Dispo) and Activity Log Entry (Time Stamp). The keys are the same. There is no On-Site Call button: Add CAD Call (F4) is the one way to start a call.
  • Watch List is a button at the right end of the action bar, showing how many agencies you watch. It opens a list you can filter. Tick the agencies whose calls and units you want on your board and press OK; Cancel leaves it as it was. Your own agency is always on.
  • Searches have tabs. On a search screen the action bar becomes Vehicle / Names / Gun / Boat / Find Address / Incident Search, so you can move between searches without going back to the board.
  • A search stays open after it runs. Under the form, Status lists what came back (for a plate, the vehicle and its registered owner), each with a link that opens the record. Run the next plate or name straight away; everything also lands in Returns (F7).
  • Every screen is laid out the same way: its name at the top (with the call it is about on the right), the fields in a white box, and Submit or Search to the right of the box. CAD Call Information shows the call number, nature and unit across the top, the address large, the call's buttons in a block to the right, and the primary and responding units above the log.
  • Returns is one page: the list of returns on top, the one you picked underneath. A vehicle, name, gun or boat return with one clear subject is shown as a record: the details on the left, the owner or licence in the middle (with a red bar for an active warrant or a suspended licence), the photo on the right, and the subject's CAD contacts. The full NLETS return is under it in NLETS Return, which you can fold away. A return that matches several people, or a possible match, stays as plain return text. On Name Search the DL Photo box is gone, because the licence photo is on the record itself.
  • Instant Messenger replaces the message inbox (F11). On the left is everyone you can message, grouped by agency with a green dot for on duty and red for off duty; off-duty people are in a folded Offline group. Double-click a name to open a conversation window. To message several people at once, Ctrl-click their names, right-click and choose Send Instant Message: that opens one group window (GRP1, GRP2...) and everyone in it sees the same conversation. Right-clicking an agency messages everyone on duty in it. A new message opens its window by itself. Press Enter to send (Shift+Enter for a new line), and the pin keeps a window in front. Broadcasts from Dispatch arrive in their own read-only window. Conversations last for the shift: going off duty clears the messages you received, as the inbox always has.

Nothing behaves differently underneath. A PulseMin operator and a PulseSquare operator can work the same shift on the same calls, and Dispatch sees no difference between them - the console changes what you see and where you click, never what is recorded.

Community branding

Broader branding for your community lives nearby in the Admin Console, separate from the per-terminal color themes:

  • Community logo - shown on your community home in place of the PulseCAD mark (Admin → Community).
  • State seal - replaces the built-in DMV seal on license cards and the civilian portal header (Admin → Community).
  • ID-card designer (Pulse Pro and up) - the visual layout editor for the driver license, the Concealed Carry permit, the Hunting license and the other license cards (Admin → Licenses & IDs → ID Designer).
  • Website link - an optional link that drives a Website button on your community home (Admin → Community).