Rally in Slack

If your team lives in Slack, Rally can live there too. Once it is installed, anyone can hand Rally a job without leaving Slack: send it a direct message, mention it in a channel, type /rally, or use a shortcut on a message. Rally does the work in your Organization and posts the finished answer back in the same Slack thread, with a link to the full Channel in Rally.

Before you start#

Two things have to happen, once each.

An owner or administrator installs Rally in Slack. This is the Connect for organization button on the Slack card in Settings → Connections, and the Slack page in chapter 5 walks through it. It needs a paid Slack plan, and one Slack workspace connects to one Rally Organization. After the install, your Slack workspace has a new member: a bot called Rally.

Each person links their Slack account to their Rally account. This is how Rally knows that the Slack person typing is you, so it can work with your own access and your own connected tools, and show the work under your name.

Linking your Slack account with Connect Rally#

1. In Slack, open the Rally app (under Apps in Slack's sidebar) and go to its Home tab.
2. Click the green Connect Rally button.
3. A pop-up called Connect Rally appears. Click Open Rally.
4. The Rally app opens on your Mac and finishes the link. You need to be signed in to the Organization that installed Rally in Slack.

Rally may then carry straight on and ask you to approve your own Slack connection as well. That part is optional and is explained on the next page.

Rally can also send you a private prompt with the same button, when a task needs your Rally account to continue.

A few things about the link:

• It works once and expires after 15 minutes. If it has expired, or you clicked it twice, click Connect Rally again for a fresh one. Each new link retires the old ones.
• Your Rally account must belong to the Organization that installed Rally in Slack. If you are signed in to a different one, the link is refused.
• If Rally says the installation has been disabled, clicking again will not help. A Rally owner or administrator has to reconnect Slack in Settings → Connections.
• Linking is per Slack workspace. If you belong to two Slack workspaces that both have Rally, you link twice.

You can use Rally in Slack without linking, too. You will get the Organization's shared tools only, not your personal ones (your Gmail, your calendar), and the work is credited to your Slack name rather than your Rally account.

Four ways to start work#

Send Rally a direct message#

Open the Rally app in Slack, go to its Messages tab and type what you want. Slack offers a few starter ideas, such as Morning email briefing, Analyze a business idea and Investigate an issue.

Rally starts the task and replies in a thread under your message. To keep going, reply in that thread. No need to mention Rally again.

• If a task is still running and you send a new message at the top level, Rally does not start a second job. It asks you, once, to reply in the thread of your original request, and gives you a link to it. Once the first request is finished, a new top-level message starts fresh work.
• Send the word help on its own and Rally replies with a short how-to.

Mention @Rally in a channel#

Type @Rally and your request in any Slack channel, private channel or group message that Rally has been invited to. Rally replies in a thread under your message, and that whole thread becomes one task. Anyone in the thread can carry on without another mention, so the whole team sees the work and the result.

• Rally reads the threads it is part of and ignores the rest of the channel.
• Each message runs with the access of the person who sent it. Linked members work as themselves; everyone else gets the Organization's shared tools.
• If Rally asks a question of one particular person, only that person can answer it.
• Who can see the task in Rally follows the Slack room. A public Slack channel makes a public Channel in Rally. A private channel, direct message or group message makes a private Channel for the people in that conversation.

If Rally refuses to start, for example because it could not tell whether the Slack channel is public or private, or because its Slack permissions need updating, it says so in the thread. Once the problem is fixed, reply try again in the thread. Rally keeps your request for up to a day.

Type /rally#

/rally works in any Slack message box. Type it with your request after it:

/rally summarize the launch thread

Or type /rally on its own and a pop-up called Start a Rally task asks What should Rally do?. Type your request and click Start.

Either way, Slack shows you a private note, "Rally queued your request. I'll continue in your Agent conversation.", and the work continues in your direct messages with Rally, not in the channel where you typed the command. Use /rally when you want Rally's help without an audience.

Use a shortcut#

Rally adds two shortcuts to Slack.

• Start a Rally task opens the same pop-up as /rally. Find it in the shortcuts menu (the lightning bolt) in Slack's message box.
• Work on this with Rally sits on every message. Hover over a message, open its More actions menu (the three dots) and choose it. The pop-up opens with that message already filled in. Add what you want done and click Start.

The second one turns a bug report or a customer question into a job for Rally in two clicks, and nobody retypes anything.

Watching Rally work#

Rally does not type its answer into Slack word by word. It puts a single emoji on the message that started the task, and changes it as the work moves along.

Rally keeps one of its own emoji on a message at a time, and it never touches yours. When you send a new request in the same thread, the emoji moves to that message. It is, in effect, a tiny progress bar that went to art school.

When the answer is ready, Rally posts it in the thread in one go. A long answer is split over several messages, breaking between paragraphs and keeping code blocks whole. Each answer has two buttons, Open task to see the full Channel in Rally, and Give feedback to tell the team whether it helped. A note under it reminds everyone that the answer was generated by AI, so check important facts and actions before relying on them.

The Home tab#

Rally's Home tab in Slack is your own small dashboard.

• Before you link, it says Meet Rally, with the Connect Rally button and some example requests.
• After you link, it says Welcome and your name, with three buttons: Start a task (opens the task pop-up), Create automation and Notifications. Below them, Needs attention & recent tasks lists your running tasks and anything waiting on you, and Automations lists your scheduled helpers with their next run time.
• Owners and administrators also see a Workspace administration card showing whether the Slack connection is healthy, with a Manage button that opens Settings → Connections in the Mac app.

The Notifications button opens a pop-up with Notify me in Slack choices. How Rally tells you about mentions and new Channels is covered properly in Notifications.

Inviting Rally into a Slack channel#

Rally's bot does not wander into Slack channels on its own. To use @Rally in a channel, invite it first, with /invite @Rally or from the channel's settings (Integrations → Add apps).

When Rally joins, it creates a matching Space in your Organization for that Slack room, and posts one line: "Rally is here. Mention @Rally in a thread to start work on it; each thread becomes a Channel in this conversation's Rally Space." From then on, every Slack thread where someone mentions Rally becomes its own Channel inside that Space, one Channel per job.

• A public Slack channel makes a public Space everyone in the Organization can see. A private Slack channel or group message makes a private Space for the people in it whom Rally can match to Rally accounts. Who can see what explains the difference.
• If a linked Slack channel later becomes private, Rally refuses new threads there with a notice, rather than letting them land in a Space the whole Organization can see.
• If Rally is removed from the Slack channel, or the channel is archived, the link is paused. Invite Rally again, or mention it, to bring the link back. Unarchiving the Slack channel on its own is not enough.
• If the Space in Rally has been archived, Rally does not start work in that Slack room and says so. A Rally administrator can restore the Space.

When Rally stops answering in Slack#

Work through this list, which is also on Rally's Slack support page:

1. Open Settings → Connections in the Mac app and find the Slack row.
2. If its status says Reconnect required, ask an owner or administrator to click Refresh and approve Rally in Slack again.
3. Open Rally's Home tab in Slack and check that your account is linked.
4. Try your mention, command or shortcut again.

There is a public overview of all this at rallywith.ai/slack. Send it to a Slack administrator who wants to know what they are agreeing to. Its Open Connections in Rally button opens the right screen in the Mac app.

Next, what Rally can read and do once it is in Slack.