Who can see what

Before you paste a contract, a salary or a customer's details into a Channel, you should know who can read it. This page explains how Rally decides, how to check for any Channel, and what happens the moment you change it.

Two kinds of Channel#

Every Channel is one of two things:

• Public to organization. Everyone in your Organization can find it, open it and read it. Hover over it in the sidebar and the card says Public to organization.
• Private. Only the people listed as its participants can open it.

To check which one a Channel is, click its name in the title pill. The People row says Public or Private, as you saw in People in the room.

A new Channel takes its starting point from the Space you create it in. Start it in a Space open to the whole Organization and it begins public. Start it in a Space limited to its participants and it begins private.

Where access comes from#

A person can read a Channel if any one of these lets them in:

• The Channel itself. Either the Channel is public to the Organization, or the person is one of its participants.
• Each Space that holds the Channel. A Space open to the whole Organization lets everyone read every Channel in it. A Space limited to its participants lets those participants read every Channel in it.

One open door is enough. Two things follow from that:

• A Channel that is "private" in its own setting is still readable by everyone if it sits in an Organization-wide Space.
• Making a Space private does not make a Channel private if the Channel is also public in its own right or through another Space.

Spaces and their audiences are set up as described in Spaces.

Manage access#

To see exactly who can read a Channel, and why, right-click it in the sidebar and choose Manage access. The window opens with Everyone listed here can read followed by the Channel's name, and lists every source of access:

• This channel. The Channel's own setting, with a sentence such as Only the 3 people in the channel. or Everyone in the organization, from the channel itself. Next to it is a Make private or Make public to organization button.
• One row for each Space that holds the Channel. Each says who that Space lets in, such as Everyone in the organization, through this space. or The 5 people in this space., with a Remove from space button.

Click Done when you have finished.

Rally will not call a Channel private while an Organization-wide Space still makes it readable by everyone. In that case the This channel row says the Channel is public through that Space, and the Make private button does not appear. To make the Channel private, first remove it from that Space (or narrow the Space), then come back and click Make private.

A few rows you may meet:

• A space you can't see. The Channel is also in a Space you are not part of. You can see that it exists, but you cannot change it.
• A Space you only reach through this Channel has no Remove from space button.
• Access from this space is still being applied. or This channel has left this space; its access is still being withdrawn. A change is still taking effect. Give it a moment.

If the list cannot be loaded, Rally says Who can see this channel couldn't be loaded. Click Try again.

Manage access is not offered on Rally's own built-in Channels, or to guests.

Making a Channel public from the Channel itself#

You can also open a Channel up from inside it: click its name in the title pill, choose More, then Make public to organization. That menu has no way back. To make the Channel private again, use Manage access from the Channel's right-click menu in the sidebar.

Breakouts are separate#

A Breakout has its own participants and starts private to whoever made it. Adding someone to a Breakout lets them read that Breakout only, not the rest of the Channel. See Breakouts.

Roles#

Who may change things depends on each person's role in the Organization.

Rally shows buttons according to your role and checks every change again when you make it, so a button that has stopped applying to you will refuse. Roles, and how to change them, are covered in Roles: owners, administrators, members and guests.

When access narrows#

Rally applies a narrowing within moments, including to people who have the Channel open at that moment. Nobody keeps reading a conversation because they happened to have it on screen.

Someone is removed from a Channel or Breakout. As described in People in the room, you remove a participant from the participants window with Remove from main conversation or Remove from breakout.

• If the Channel is private, it disappears from their sidebar, and if they had it open Rally moves them to the next Channel in their list.
• If they are removed from a Breakout, the Breakout closes and they land back in the Channel.
• Removing someone from a Channel's main conversation also means they can no longer open or manage Sidekicks that belong to that Channel, unless they created them.
• You cannot remove the last participant.

A Channel becomes private. People who could read it only because it was public, and who are not participants, are cut off. If they had it open, it closes.

Someone loses a Space. When a person is taken out of a Space, or the Space is narrowed so they are no longer in its audience, the Channels they could reach only through that Space close for them. If they open the Space, they see Space not found and It may have been archived or you may no longer have access. Rally shows the same words for an archived Space and for one you cannot reach, on purpose, so the message gives nothing away.

Next: Sharing with people outside your Organization.