If you're running asynchronous extractions at scale, you've probably built some version of a polling loop. Check if the job is done. Wait. Check again. It works, but it's not elegant, and it adds latency to workflows that could be reacting in real time.
Today we're making webhooks generally available in Pulse, so your systems can respond immediately when extraction jobs progress, without the polling overhead.
How It Works
Webhooks provide real-time notifications for extraction lifecycle events:
- Job started: trigger downstream prep work
- Job completed: immediately process results
- Job failed: route to error handling or alerting
When an event fires, Pulse sends a signed payload to your configured endpoint. You verify the signature server-side to confirm the request originated from Pulse and hasn't been tampered with.
Built for Production
We partnered with Svix to power webhook delivery, which means:
Automatic retries with exponential backoff. If your endpoint is temporarily unavailable, we'll keep trying with increasing delays rather than dropping the event.
Delivery logs and event history. Everything is visible in the dashboard: delivery attempts, response codes, and payloads. When something doesn't look right, you have the data to debug it.
Verifiable signatures. Every payload includes a signature you can check to ensure authenticity. No guessing whether a request actually came from Pulse.
Why This Matters
For teams processing documents at volume, the difference between polling and push is meaningful. Webhooks let you:
- Kick off downstream workflows the moment extraction completes
- Build event-driven architectures without polling infrastructure
- Reduce end-to-end latency in automated pipelines
- Get notified of failures immediately rather than discovering them later
It's a small addition infrastructure-wise, but it came up a lot in conversations with teams scaling their extraction workflows.
Available now in the Pulse platform (Link here)
Questions about integrating webhooks into your pipeline? Talk to our team.
