Running an Organization

Every Organization has an administrator, and few of them applied for the job. It usually goes like this: somebody installs Rally first, creates the Organization to try it out, and a week later eleven colleagues are asking them how to get in. Congratulations. If that somebody is you, this chapter is yours.

Members can read it too. Nothing here is secret, and knowing who can change what saves a lot of "is it me, or is it broken?"

What the job involves#

Rally gives an Organization a small set of roles. The person who created it is the owner. The owner can make other people administrators, and from then on owners and administrators can do the same administrative things. Everyone else is a member, and people you invited into a single conversation are guests, who hold no role at all and see only what was shared with them.

The difference between an administrator and a member fits on a postcard:

• Inviting people into the Organization, choosing whether they join as a member or an administrator, and taking back invitations nobody has used.
• Making members into administrators, and back again, and turning a guest into a full member.
• Setting the Organization's default time zone, which Organization Sidekicks use when they do not name one of their own.
• Deciding where code that Rally runs in its Terminal may reach on the internet.
• Adding, refreshing and deleting the connections the whole Organization shares, and the settings that come with them, such as which GitHub repositories Rally may touch.

Everything else, from starting Channels to building Sidekicks, is open to every member. That is deliberate. Rally has no approval queue for new Channels, no form to fill in before someone connects their own Google account, and nothing to tick before Rally may use a tool. Every gate an administrator has to mind is a gate somebody is waiting at, so Rally keeps them few. You set up the shared parts once and go back to your own work.

What you will not find#

Better to know what is missing before you go looking for it. Rally's settings have no section for billing, plans or subscriptions, no single sign-on (SSO or SAML), and no verified email domains. People join an Organization one way only: by an invitation sent to their email address. If you need something from that list, write to help@rallywith.ai and talk to a person.

Separate worlds, checked every time#

First, an Organization is a separate world. Channels, Spaces, Sidekicks, connections and members each belong to exactly one Organization, and nothing crosses between them. If you belong to two, you switch from one to the other. You never see both at once.

Second, access follows membership, right now. Rally checks someone's role and membership every time they ask for something, so a change you make takes effect straight away, even in windows that were already open. When you promote someone, that means they do not have to restart anything. When someone leaves, it means their access ends while you are still closing the dialog. The last page of this chapter goes through that slowly.

Most of what follows lives in one place: Settings → Organization, which you met in The Settings window. Open it with ⌘ , and keep it handy.