Create or join an Organization

Everything you do in Rally happens inside an Organization, your team's home. Straight after you sign in, Rally checks whether anyone has invited your email address to one. What you see next depends on the answer.

• If somebody invited you, you see Choose where to join and pick the invitation to accept.
• If nobody did, you see Create your organization and start a fresh one, with you as its owner.

Both screens show Signed in as and your email address at the bottom, with a Sign out link in case you signed in with the wrong Google account. It happens to the best of us, usually the ones with a personal and a work account in the same browser.

Joining with an invitation#

When a teammate invites you, you get an email saying who invited you, to which Organization, and as what (a member or an administrator). It may also carry a link to download Rally if you do not have it yet.

From the email#

Click the invitation link in the email. Your browser opens a page headed Continue in the Rally app. Click Open Rally, and Rally opens on that invitation.

If Rally does not open, install it first using Install Rally and sign in, then come back and click the link again. If the page says This invitation link is incomplete or invalid. Ask the sender for a new link., the link was damaged on its way to you, so ask for a fresh one.

On the Choose where to join screen#

You do not need the link at all, as long as you sign in with the invited address. Rally finds invitations to your email on its own and lists them under Choose where to join. Each one shows the Organization's name, Invited by and the person's name, and the role you were offered: Administrator or Member.

• Click Accept to join. Rally takes you into the Organization.
• Click Decline to turn it down.

The person who invited you gets an email either way, so nobody is left wondering.

A few rules apply to every invitation.

• They expire after seven days, and each one can be used once. The email says exactly when yours runs out. If it has expired, ask the sender to invite you again.
• They come first. While an invitation is waiting for you, Rally shows it instead of the screen for creating your own Organization. Accept or decline it to move on.
• If accepting fails, you see The invitation could not be accepted. and the list refreshes. Try again, or ask the sender to check that the invitation is still open.
• If the invitation is no longer valid (expired, cancelled or already used) when you open its link, Rally shows a small message window that floats above everything else, rather than something inside the main window.

Invitations that arrive later#

If your account can belong to several Organizations, a new invitation can reach you after you are already set up. Rally may pop up a prompt on its own, or you can open the account menu (your name at the bottom-left of the window) and look under Invitations for Join and the Organization's name, with Invited by underneath.

Click it to open a dialog that says who invited you and as what. Then choose:

• Join to accept.
• Not now to close the dialog and decide later. The invitation stays in the menu.
• Decline to turn it down. (When Rally popped up the prompt by itself, this button is not shown; open the invitation from the menu to decline it.)

Belonging to several Organizations has a page of its own: Belonging to several Organizations.

Creating a new Organization#

If nobody has invited you, Rally shows Create your organization, with the line A shared home for your team and Rally.

1. Type a name in Organization name. Your company or team name is the usual choice.
2. Click Create organization, or press Return.

The name needs at least two characters and can be up to 120. The button stays greyed out until the name is long enough. Pressing Return a few extra times out of impatience will not create a few extra Organizations.

You become the Organization's owner. It starts with one Space, called General, ready for your first Channels. Choose the name with some care: the Organization settings in Rally show it but do not offer a way to change it. Its other settings are described in Organization settings.

What comes next#

If you created the Organization, Rally now walks you through a short guided setup: connecting your tools, choosing how you look and inviting your team.

If you joined someone else's, you get one step of it, choosing how you look, which is described in This is you in Rally. Then Rally takes you into the Organization, and you can skip ahead to A tour of the window.