Troubleshooting, help and glossary

Every manual has a chapter like this one, near the back, where the tone changes from "here is what you can do" to "here is what to do when it does not". Most readers never open it. If you are reading it now, something has probably gone a little sideways, and we are sorry. Let us sort it out.

Rally rarely fails quietly. When it cannot do something, it says so in a sentence, and that sentence is usually specific: a link it will not follow, a connection that needs you to sign in again, a run that stopped with a reason and a Retry button. Most of this chapter is a guide to those sentences. Find the one on your screen, and the fix is next to it.

Two things are worth knowing first.

First, Rally does not retry on its own when it matters. If a link fails, it will not quietly try it again, because sign-in and connection links are often good for one use only. If a run changed something in another tool and then broke, Rally will not repeat that change behind your back, because sending the same email twice is worse than sending it once. So after you fix the cause, you take the next step yourself: click the link again, press Retry, or start Connect again. That is a little more work for you and a lot less surprise.

Second, most problems turn out to be about which account you are using. You are signed in with a different account from the one an invitation was sent to. A connection belongs to the Organization, not to you, so only an administrator can refresh it. A Channel is private and you are not in it. When something will not open, ask yourself which account you are using and who owns the thing you are reaching for. That usually leads to an owner or administrator in your Organization, who can fix it faster than anyone else.

When you have tried the obvious and Rally is still being stubborn, a person at Rally will help. This chapter says how to reach one and what to send so the first reply is useful. It also lists what never to put in an email, however helpful it seems at the time.

It ends with the glossary: every Rally word in one alphabetical list. That includes the old names one last time. An Organization used to be a Workspace, a Space was a Project, a Channel was a Work stream, a Breakout was a Substream, and a Sidekick was an Automation. The app has mostly caught up, but here and there a button or a message still uses the old word. If you spot one, it is not a different feature, only an older label.