Rolling Out the Extension to Your Team

The browser extension is what makes everything else work. It is available for both Chrome and Edge. Without it installed on your team's machines, no pulses fire, no data is collected, and your dashboard stays empty. Rollout isn't a nice-to-have. It's the single most important step in your first two weeks.

This article covers three rollout paths, from smallest team to largest:

The email path: 5-20 people, ~30 minutes
The Google Workspace path: 20-500 people, ~1 hour of IT time
The MDM path: 500+ people or regulated environments

Pick the one that fits your scale. For all three, the goal is the same: every person assigned to an AI tool has the extension installed, signed in, and page pulses turned on within 7 days. All three, in that order. The third is the one rollouts lose people on.

Before you start: three things to get right

1 · Everyone understands they have to turn page pulses on

Pulses run on a cadence. When one comes due, the extension places a card on whatever page the person happens to have open, which is why Chrome treats the access it needs as broad and makes it optional. Each person grants it themselves, from the extension popup, by pressing Enable page pulses. No admin console, force-install or MDM policy can grant it on their behalf.

Miss this and the rollout looks fine and produces almost nothing: the extension is installed, people are signed in, pulses come due on schedule, and the only place they appear is inside the extension's own popup behind an amber "Page pulses are off" banner. Almost nobody opens a toolbar popup they haven't been given a reason to open.

So make it a named step in whatever you send, not a footnote. There's wording for it in the email template below.

Tool websites, by the way, have nothing to do with delivery. The domains you enter against a tool are part of its record (they're what we use to find its logo). No pulse depends on anyone visiting them.

2 · Your people are invited and have the right roles

Invited users get the extension sign-in flow. Un-invited users can install it, but it'll dead-end at a "you're not on any team yet" message. Invite first, then roll out.

3 · Tool assignments are set

Assignments decide which pulses fire for which users. Assign people to the tools you believe they use. Nothing breaks if an assignment's wrong. The worst case is a user sees an irrelevant pulse, and you can fix it later.

Path 1 · The email path (5-20 people)

Good for: small teams, founder-led orgs, pilots.

Send one email with a single purpose: get them to install the extension and sign in. Here's a template you can paste:

Subject: Two minutes to install. Helps us pick which AI tools to keep paying for

Hi team,

We've just rolled out The GAiGE, so we can work out with real data which of the AI tools we pay for are actually useful. It's a short pulse, a few questions, about thirty seconds. That's it.

What to do (takes 2 minutes):

Install the extension → Chrome Web Store or Microsoft Edge Add-ons

Pin it to your toolbar (click the puzzle icon, then the pin next to The GAiGE)

Click the G icon, sign in with your work email

Press Enable page pulses, and say yes to the Chrome prompt. Without this step the pulses have nowhere to appear and you'll never see one

From then on a short pulse turns up now and then on whatever page you're on, say what you actually think: nobody sees individual answers, only the team's aggregated patterns.

Any trouble, reply to this email or see [help article link].

Thanks. This genuinely helps us make better decisions with your time and our budget.

What makes this email work:

Explains why before how
Links directly to install (no clicking through menus)
Makes the page-pulses permission a numbered step, with the consequence of skipping it stated plainly
Explicit privacy reassurance up front
Gives them something to reply to if they hit trouble

Follow up 7 days later with the people who haven't installed. You can see who's active by looking at the Users page. The Active column tells you who's submitted a pulse.

Path 2 · The Google Workspace path (20-500 people)

Good for: mid-sized orgs with Google Workspace / Google-managed Chrome.

Force-install the extension via Google Workspace Admin Console so it appears automatically in everyone's Chrome with no install action required.

Steps

Sign into admin.google.com as a Workspace super-admin
Devices → Chrome → Apps & extensions → Users & browsers
Pick the organisational unit(s) you want to target (usually everyone)
Click the + button → Add Chrome app or extension by ID
Paste the extension ID (you can find this in the Chrome Web Store URL)
Set Installation policy to Force install
Save

Within minutes to hours, every Chrome browser managed by your Workspace account will have the extension pre-installed. Users can't remove it.

After force-install:

Users still need to click the extension, sign in once, and press Enable page pulses. The extension can neither authenticate nor grant itself site access. Send the team an email covering both (a shorter version of the template above). Force-install saves them the install, and nothing else.
Users who sign in via Google SSO (if your org uses it) skip most of the friction here.

A note on what policy can and can't do

Chrome enterprise policy can put the extension on every machine. It can't sign anyone in, and it can't grant the optional site access that lets a pulse appear on the page. Budget a short comms step for both, whichever path you take.

Path 3 · The MDM path (500+ people or regulated environments)

Good for: large enterprises, healthcare, finance, government, anywhere with a managed-device policy.

The extension supports Chrome enterprise policies via any MDM that handles Chrome:

Microsoft Intune
Jamf (for managed Chromebooks)
Kandji
VMware Workspace ONE
SCCM / Configuration Manager

The manifest to push is a standard Chrome ExtensionInstallForcelist entry. Your Chrome enterprise team will know how to add it. Just give them the extension ID.

One-liner for the ExtensionInstallForcelist policy

{
  "ExtensionInstallForcelist": ["<EXTENSION_ID>;https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx"]
}

Replace <EXTENSION_ID> with the 32-character ID from the Chrome Web Store URL.

Security-sensitive environments

For environments that need to audit what data the extension handles before deploying:

The extension does not read or send the content of pages users visit, and it does not send us any web address. What leaves the browser is the user's answers, which pulse and tool they relate to, the extension's version, and whether the pulse was scheduled or self-started. The current tab's address is read on the user's own machine only, to rule out pages no extension may draw on.
Data is sent over HTTPS to api.thegaige.com, hosted on AWS (ap-southeast-2, sydney).
See What data is collected and how it's used for the full enterprise-ready privacy brief.

Measuring rollout success

Two numbers to watch during the first two weeks, both on the Users page:

Install %: how many invited users have installed the extension (we detect this via sign-in events)
Active %: how many have submitted at least one pulse

A healthy rollout gets 80%+ installed and 60%+ active within 7 days. If you're below that by day 7:

Ask a few people to open the extension popup and tell you what they see. An amber "Page pulses are off" banner means the permission step was missed, and that is the single most likely reason a well-installed rollout produces no answers
Send a reminder email (most common fix), naming the Enable page pulses step explicitly
Check that your Chrome Web Store link works from a clean profile
Check the Users page for users whose role is wrong or who aren't assigned to any tools

Anything under 50% active by day 14 usually means a communication gap, not a technical one. See Why is my response rate low?.

When a new person joins the org

Invite them on the Users page, then either:

If you're on Paths 2 or 3: the extension auto-installs when their Workspace/MDM-managed Chrome profile first loads. They just need to sign in.
If you're on Path 1: send them the email template above.

Assign them to tools as you would any other user.

Related: Installing the browser extension (admin guide) · Inviting users · User roles explained · Why is my response rate low?