rallyHelp

Chapter 5 · Connecting your tools / 5.2

Google Mail and Calendar

Let Rally search and read your Gmail, write drafts, send mail, and read and change your Google Calendar.

Google gets two cards on Settings → Connections, because mail and documents are different sorts of thing and you may want to share one and not the other. This page covers the first, Google Mail + Calendar. The second, for Drive, Docs and Sheets, has the next page to itself.

Your mail and calendar are always personal. The card has Connect for me only, and there is no shared Organization inbox connection.

Signing in to Rally with Google does not give Rally your Gmail or Calendar. It is a separate permission you give here.

What Rally can do

With Google Mail + Calendar connected, Rally can:

  • search your mail, including finding someone's address by their name
  • read whole threads and single messages
  • write drafts, which wait in your Gmail Drafts until you send them
  • send mail
  • list your calendars and read their events
  • create events and change them, including adding or removing guests

Rally cannot delete mail or change labels.

Warning

Rally does not ask before each action. When you ask it to send an email, it sends it, and a sent email cannot be called back. When you ask it to add a guest to an event, Google sends that person a real invitation. If you want to check first, ask for a draft, or ask Rally to show you the event before it saves it.

Connecting

  1. Open Settings → Connections and find the Google Mail + Calendar card.
  2. Click Connect for me.
  3. Choose your Google account in the browser and approve access.
  4. Come back to Rally. The card says Connected.

Things to try

  • "Find the thread with Dana about the offsite and draft a reply saying Thursday works."
  • "Put a 30-minute call with Sam on Thursday afternoon."
  • "What is on my calendar tomorrow, and is anything double-booked?"
  • "Summarise the unread mail from this week that needs an answer from me."

When it stops working

  1. In Settings → Connections, look at the Status column for the Google Mail + Calendar row.
  2. If it says Reconnect required, click Refresh and approve again in Google.
  3. If the connection is healthy and Rally still cannot find a message or an event, look for it yourself in Gmail or Calendar with the same Google account. If you cannot see it, neither can Rally.

Next, Google Drive, Docs and Sheets.