Spaces

A Space holds a set of related Channels and decides who can see them. You met the Space pills in A tour of the window. This page is about making Spaces, looking after them, and putting them away when the work is done.

The General Space#

Every Organization starts with one Space, General. Everyone in the Organization can see it, and it is where Channels land when they have nowhere more specific to go. General has no pill in the sidebar, since All already shows its Channels, and a Channel's row never names it.

General is a little different from the Spaces you make yourself:

• You can rename it and change its icon and colour.
• You cannot change who sees it. It is always open to the whole Organization, and its page has no audience or participants controls.
• You cannot archive it. It is the Organization's home address, and it stays.

Create a Space#

1. Click New space, the round button with a folder and a plus at the start of the Space pills.
2. In Create a new space, type a Name of space and click Create.

Rally opens the new Space's page straight away. A new Space starts private to its participants, which at that moment means you, with a blue briefcase for an icon. Give it a better icon and decide who else belongs from its page, as described below.

Any active member of the Organization can create a Space. Guests (people shared into a single conversation, see Sharing with people outside your Organization) cannot.

The Space page#

Clicking a Space's pill only narrows the Channel list. To open the Space's own page, right-click its pill and choose Open space, or open any of its Channels, click the Channel's name in its title pill and click Open space beside the Space's name. The Space's page fills the window. A Space has no conversation of its own. Its page is the answer to one question: what in here needs me?

Across the top sit the Space's controls:

• The icon. Click it to open Space icon and color, and pick an icon and a colour. They show wherever the Space is named, so pick something you can spot at a glance.
• The name. Double-click it to rename the Space. From the keyboard, focus the name and press F2 or Return. Press Return to save or Esc to cancel; clicking away also saves. Names can be up to 180 characters, which is plenty, even for a committee.
• The audience menu (Space participants or Everyone in the organization). See Who belongs in a Space.
• The avatar stack shows the Space's participants. Click it to change them.
• Copy space link puts a link to this Space on your clipboard. Links are covered in Search and links.
• Archive space puts the Space away. See Archive and restore a Space.

If Rally is still connecting, or you are offline, the page shows what it last knew with a card saying Editing is available once Rally connects. The controls wake up once the connection is back.

Needs attention#

Below the header is a list headed Needs attention. It shows the Channels and Breakouts in this Space that want something from you right now:

• Rally is running, or waiting to run, in it.
• It needs your input, such as a question from Rally.
• It has messages you have not read, or someone mentioned you.
• It is new to you.

Each row has a status dot, the Channel's name (a Breakout shows which Channel it is in), a preview of the latest activity and a time. Click a row to open it. The list keeps itself up to date as messages arrive and runs finish, and a Load more button appears at the bottom when there are a lot. The dots are explained in Status dots.

Once you have read something and Rally has finished, it drops off the list. The list is for things waiting on you. Every Channel is still in the sidebar and in search. When nothing is waiting, the page says Nothing here needs you right now, which is the nicest thing a piece of software can say to you. A Space with no Channels at all says No channels yet.

Who belongs in a Space#

Every Space has an audience, chosen from the menu under its name:

The audience covers every Channel in the Space as well as the Space's page. A Channel in an Organization-wide Space can be seen and found by everyone in the Organization. The full rules, including what happens when a Channel sits in more than one Space, are in Who can see what.

Change the audience#

1. Open the Space's page and choose a new audience from the menu under its name.
2. Rally asks Change who can see this space? and explains what will happen.
3. Click Continue, or Cancel to leave things as they were.

Narrowing a Space back to Space participants does not automatically make every Channel in it private. A Channel that is open to the Organization in its own right, or through another Space, stays open. The dialog says so: Channels stay public if another source still says so.

Rally may refuse to widen a Space if one of its Channels holds something the wider audience is not allowed to read. The message names the problem. Move that Channel out of the Space first.

Add and remove participants#

1. Click the avatar stack on the Space's page. The Space participants window lists the members of your Organization.
2. Tick the people who should be in the Space and untick those who should not.
3. Click Save.

The rules:

• Any member can add people. Taking someone else out needs an Organization owner or administrator. For everyone else, a ticked box beside another person cannot be unticked.
• You cannot take yourself out of a private Space. Rally refuses with You can’t make a space private without yourself in it.
• A Space must keep at least one participant.

In an Organization-wide Space, the participant list is mostly a record of who belongs to it, since everyone can see it anyway. Current participants stay participants if you narrow it later.

Spaces you can see but not change#

Sometimes a Space appears in your sidebar even though you are not one of its participants. That happens when someone added you to a Channel that lives in a private Space. Rally shows you the Space's name, icon and colour so the Channel has somewhere to sit, but nothing else: no audience, no participants and no other Channels. You cannot edit or archive it.

Archive and restore a Space#

When a project is finished, archive its Space to take its pill out of the sidebar.

1. Right-click the Space's pill and choose Archive space, or click Archive space on its page.
2. Rally asks Archive space? Click Archive space to confirm.

What archiving does and does not do:

• The Space's pill leaves the sidebar. Its Channels are not archived. They keep their artifacts, resources and Sidekicks, and they stay in every other Space they belong to.
• Every Channel must live in at least one Space, so a Channel whose only home is this Space blocks the archive. The dialog lists them under Channels to move first. Add each one to another Space (see Arranging your Channels), then try again.
• General cannot be archived, and neither can a Space you only see through one of its Channels. The menu item does not appear for them.

To bring a Space back, right-click New space at the start of the Space pills and choose Restore archived space. It only works while at least one archived Space exists. Pick the Space from the list. If you have an archived Space's page open, its Restore space button does the same.

If you open a link to a Space that has been archived, or one you no longer have access to, Rally shows Space not found and It may have been archived or you may no longer have access. Rally deliberately does not say which.

Next: Arranging your Channels, to put the right Channels on the right shelves.