We investigate observability and Lipschitz stability for the Heisenberg heat equation on the rectangular domainΩ=(−1,1)×T×T taking as observation regions slices of the form ω=(a,b)×T×T or tubes ω=(a,b)×ωy×T, with −1<a<b<1. We prove that observability fails for an arbitrary time T>0 but both observability and Lipschitz stability hold true after a positive minimal time, which depends on the distance between ω and the boundary of Ω:Tmin⩾18min⁡{(1+a)2,(1−b)2}. Our proof follows a mixed strategy which combines the approach by Lebeau and Robbiano, which relies on Fourier decomposition, with Carleman inequalities for the heat equations that are solved by the Fourier modes. We extend the analysis to the unbounded domain (−1,1)×T×R.