rallyHelpChapter 3 · Sidekicks / 3.3
Talking to a Sidekick
Every Sidekick has one conversation shared by everyone it is shared with. Ask it for work, watch its runs, answer its questions.
Open a Sidekick and the middle of the window is its conversation. There is only one, and everyone the Sidekick is shared with sees the same thing: what people said, what the Sidekick did, and what it made. It works like a team channel where one member happens to be an agent who never takes lunch.
What is in the conversation
| You see | What it is |
|---|---|
| Messages from people | Teammates talking to each other, or to the Sidekick |
| A folded run row | One run of the Sidekick, with its reply showing |
| A Canvas card | Something the run made for people to work on, such as Checkout latency · Nov 6 |
| Setup messages | Managers changing the Sidekick with its drafting assistant |
The message box at the bottom names the Sidekick, as in Message Incident triage and the team…. It is the same box as in a Canvas, with mentions, attachments and dictation (see The message box).
Asking the Sidekick for work
Write to the Sidekick the way you would write to the colleague who does that job: "can you rerun this week's numbers with the refunds taken out?". A message addressed to the Sidekick starts a run, the same kind of run its schedule or triggers start, with your message as the opening request.
Not every message is for the Sidekick. "Theo, is the fix going out today?" is for Theo, and the Sidekick leaves it alone. Rally reads each new message and decides whether it is for the Sidekick or for the people. To be sure, mention the Sidekick by name, or mention @Rally.
Every message addressed to the Sidekick starts a run, whoever sends it. That includes its managers: a manager asking "can you rerun this week's numbers?" gets a run, the same as anyone else. Changing the Sidekick itself is a separate, marked kind of message, described below. Rally never guesses that a message was meant as a change.
A run started from a message uses the access of the person who sent it, unless that person is on the Sidekick's Delegation allowed list. So asking a shared Sidekick for something never reads anything you could not read yourself. Tools and delegation explains the rule.
Run rows
Every run, whatever started it, appears in the conversation as one row under the Sidekick's hexagon, such as Run 6 · Scheduled · Done · 4 steps: the run's number, what started it (On request, Scheduled, Event or Email), where it stands, and how many steps it has taken. Under that is the start of its reply.
| State | It means |
|---|---|
| Starting | The run is about to begin. |
| Working | The run is going now. |
| Needs input | The run is waiting for something only a person can give it. |
| Done | It finished. |
| Stopped | Someone stopped it. |
| Failed | It could not finish. |
Click the row to unfold it and read the whole reply. Open run opens the run's own conversation, with each step it took and the same activity rows and receipts as a run in a Canvas (see While Rally works). The pill at the top then reads the Sidekick's name and the run; click the Sidekick's name to go back to the shared conversation.
A run can wake up again. If someone replies to something it posted, such as a Slack thread it started, the same run carries on and its row updates. It does not start a second row.
When the Sidekick needs input
Sometimes a run is missing something only a person has: which status page gets the update, which of two spreadsheets is the real one, a sign-in that has expired. The run asks, and waits. Its row reads Needs input and shows the question with its choices right there in the shared conversation. The Sidekick moves to the Needs input group at the top of your Sidekicks sidebar, with its question under its name, and the Sidekicks button on the rail counts it. Whoever asked for the run, and the Sidekick's managers, also get a needs your input row in Activity.
Answer on the row, with the question's choices or in your own words under Other, and press Submit, or Skip to let the run carry on without you. You can also open the run and answer there. The run carries on, and the answer stays in the run's conversation, under the question. Anyone the Sidekick is shared with can answer, unless the Sidekick asked one person by name.
"Needs input" never means a Sidekick is waiting for permission to use a tool. Sidekicks do their work without asking anyone to approve each step.
Canvases in the conversation
When a run makes something people will work on afterwards, such as a weekly report, an incident timeline or a cleaned-up spreadsheet, it makes a Canvas, and a card for it appears in the conversation. Click the card to open the Canvas. It is also in your Canvases list, under From Sidekicks.
From there, you talk to Rally about it and comment on it like any other Canvas, and the Sidekick's managers decide who else can open it. The next time the Sidekick runs, it can update the same Canvas with a new version rather than making another one, if its instructions say so. The Canvases a Sidekick writes to are listed in its details column.
Managers change the Sidekick here too
The people who manage a Sidekick change it in this same conversation. To do it, click + in the message box and choose Edit Sidekick, then write the change: "run it at 8 instead of 9", "leave out weekends". While the Editing this Sidekick chip shows above the box, each message goes to the Sidekick's drafting assistant instead of starting a run; click the chip's × to go back to ordinary messages. Without the mark, a manager's message is a request like anyone else's. Only managers see Edit Sidekick. Everyone in the conversation can see the change being made, and the assistant says when it has saved a new version. A run already going finishes with the version it started with.
People who are not managers can still suggest a change in the conversation, and a manager can take it up. Who manages a Sidekick is covered in What a Sidekick is.
Next: Triggers and schedules, for everything that can start a run when nobody asks.