Triggers and schedules

A trigger is the "when" of a Sidekick. Give a Sidekick a trigger and it becomes delegated work: it starts runs on its own whenever the trigger fires. Leave it without one and it stays a page of instructions that Rally loads in conversations (see What a Sidekick is).

You never pick triggers from a list. You say when you want the Sidekick to work, in the Sidekick's conversation, and the drafting assistant sets it up. The triggers it chose then appear in plain words in the details panel under When to expect it, along with Next and how long until the next run.

The kinds of trigger#

A Sidekick can have more than one trigger. A weekly report that you also want to run on demand needs no extra setup: Run now works on any active Sidekick that has at least one trigger. That is covered in The Sidekicks window.

Schedules and intervals#

A schedule runs at a time of day or on a calendar pattern: every weekday at 8, the first Monday of the month, Fridays at 4pm. An interval runs every so often: every hour, every 30 minutes.

When you ask for something that needs checking, the drafting assistant prefers not to poll more often than every 10 minutes, and it tells you how often it will look. Checking your inbox every ten seconds would not make the email arrive any sooner.

Time zones#

A schedule is always read in a time zone. Rally picks it like this:

1. If you named one while drafting ("9am Pacific"), that one.
2. Otherwise, for an Only you Sidekick, your own default time zone.
3. Otherwise, for an Organization Sidekick, the Organization's default time zone.

You set your own default with the Default timezone setting in your account settings, and an owner or administrator sets the Organization's with the Default timezone setting in Organization settings. Both settings still describe themselves as being for "automations"; they mean Sidekicks. See The Settings window and Organization settings.

Events in your other tools#

An event trigger starts a run when something happens in a connected tool. For example:

• Slack: a message or thread reply in channels you choose, Rally being mentioned, a direct message to Rally, a reaction added or removed, a file shared, a message edited or deleted, a channel created, or someone joining or leaving a channel.
• Linear: issue and comment changes, such as a new issue or a new comment.
• GitHub: things like an issue or pull request being opened, closed or merged, a review, a comment, or a release.
• Granola and Fireflies: a new meeting note or a processed meeting.
• Ashby: candidates moving through your hiring process.

Each tool's own page in Connecting your other tools says what it can announce. If the tool you name cannot announce events, the drafting assistant falls back to checking it on a timer instead, and says so.

Event triggers have a few rules of their own.

• Only new events count. A Sidekick reacts to things that happen after it is turned on (or resumed). It does not work through the backlog.
• Some tools need the Organization's connection. Granola, Fireflies and Ashby send events only through a connection made for the whole Organization, so a personal connection will not start a Sidekick. See Settings → Connections.
• Slack channels you name get a visitor. When a Sidekick watches a public Slack channel, Rally's Slack bot joins that channel so it can hear what is said there.
• Private activity stays private. Activity that is restricted to certain people is not passed to Organization Sidekicks, and reaches a personal Sidekick only if its owner was allowed to see it in the first place.

Events with a written condition#

Sometimes "every new email" is too much and you want "every new email from a customer asking about pricing". You can describe the condition in plain words, and each event is checked against it by Rally before a run starts. Events that do not match are skipped.

If the check cannot decide, or cannot run at that moment, the event is skipped rather than run. A Sidekick with a condition will occasionally miss a borderline case; it will not suddenly act on everything.

Inbound webhooks#

If a system you use has no ready-made connector, it can still start a Sidekick by sending an inbound webhook: a small message from that system to an address Rally gives you. Setting one up is covered in Inbound webhook. Once the webhook exists, tell the drafting assistant to run when it delivers something.

Email a Sidekick#

A Sidekick can have its own permanent email address. Send or forward a message to it, and a run starts with that email as its starting material. It suits "here, deal with this" jobs: forward an invoice to be filed, or a long thread to be summarized.

To set it up, ask the drafting assistant for an email trigger ("I want to be able to forward emails to you"). Once the Sidekick has an address, its details panel shows an Email this Sidekick section. Click it to reveal the address, which is at automation.rallywith.ai.

Who can email it depends on the Sidekick's scope.

Mail from anyone else is refused. A paused Sidekick refuses all mail, and starts accepting it again when you resume it; the address stays the same. Archiving a Sidekick retires its address for good.

Instructions-only Sidekicks have no email address, since they never run on their own. Every Channel has an address too, which works differently; see Email into Rally.