Names, icons and colours

You name a Channel when you start it, and Rally picks it an icon and a colour. Conversations that start without a name, such as Breakouts, get one from Rally, as described in Your first Channel. Rally's picks are educated guesses. When you have a dozen Channels, a good name and a recognisable icon are what let you find the right one in a hurry.

The title pill#

The name of whatever you are reading floats at the top of the conversation, in a rounded title pill: the Channel's icon, then its name. Click the icon to change the icon and colour (below). Click the name to open the Channel's menu.

The menu opens with the Space the Channel lives in at the top, with Open space beside it (a Channel that is only in General skips this line). Under that is a row of buttons:

• Add people brings someone in. See People in the room.
• Rename gives the Channel a new name (below).
• Copy link copies a link to the Channel. Links are covered in Search and links.
• Share invites someone by email. See Sharing with people outside your Organization.
• More holds the Channel's settings: the Pinned in sidebar switch, Make public to organization, Import updates for an imported Channel, and the Channel's Artifacts.

Below the buttons are three rows, each with a count: People, Sidekicks and Breakouts. Click one and the menu changes in place to show that list, and the pill turns into a breadcrumb, such as the Channel's name followed by People. To go back, click the Channel's name in the pill, or press Esc or ←. The menu always opens at the top again next time. Archive channel sits at the bottom.

A Breakout has a pill of its own, with the same buttons and rows except Breakouts. Its menu names the Channel it belongs to and the message it started from. See Breakouts.

Renaming#

From the title pill#

1. Click the Channel's name in its title pill and choose Rename.
2. In the Rename channel window, type the new name and click Rename.

This works the same way in a Breakout, in a window called Rename breakout. The Rename button stays greyed out until you have changed something.

When Rally is naming a conversation, such as a new Breakout, the name shimmers while it thinks one up. You can rename it once the name has arrived.

From the sidebar#

You do not have to open a Channel to rename it. Right-click the Channel in the sidebar and choose Rename.

Things to know about names#

• A name can be up to 180 characters, and cannot be empty.
• Once you rename a Channel, Rally leaves its name alone. It never renames it automatically again, so your name sticks.
• If a rename does not save, you see The channel couldn’t be renamed. Try again. (or the same for a breakout).

Reading a long name#

Long names can get cut short in the sidebar. Rest your pointer on a Channel in the sidebar and a small card shows its icon and full name. The card also says Public to organization if anyone in the Organization can open it.

Icon and colour#

Click the icon at the left of the Channel's name in its title pill. In a Breakout, open its menu and choose More, then Icon and color. A small palette opens.

• The top part, Color, has 14 round swatches in two rows, in rainbow order: Rose, Red, Orange, Amber, Lime, Green and Emerald, then Cyan, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Purple, Fuchsia and Pink. The second row runs right to left, so Cyan sits under Emerald and Pink under Rose.
• Below it, Icon is a scrolling grid of 37 icons. Twelve are abstract shapes (such as Atom, Orbit and Sparkles) and 25 are everyday things (such as Rocket, Calendar Days, Coins, Megaphone and Heart). Hover any swatch or icon to see its name.

Click a colour, click an icon, and you are done. There is no Save button: each click saves straight away, and the palette stays open so you can try a few. Click outside the palette or press Esc to close it.

Channel, Breakout, Space and Sidekick icons are drawn in a soft, pastel shade of the colour you pick, with the symbol in a deeper shade of the same colour, so a sidebar of forty Channels stays calm. The shades adjust for light and dark mode. People's own colours are not softened: they stay at full strength, so you can tell people apart at a glance.

Things to know about icons and colours#

• Everyone sees the same look. The icon and colour belong to the Channel, not to you. Change them and everyone's sidebar updates within moments. The last person to click wins, so agree on a colour scheme before the office splits into Team Rose and Team Fuchsia.
• A Breakout has its own look. Changing a Breakout's icon never changes its Channel's, and the other way round.
• You cannot add your own. There is no custom colour, no icon search and no way to upload a picture or emoji.
• Older colours: grey, brown, yellow and teal used to be on offer and have been retired. A Channel that already has one keeps it, and no colour looks selected in the palette. Once you pick a new colour, the old one cannot be chosen again.
• Guests, and people who can only reach some of a Channel's conversations, see the icon but cannot change it.
• If a change does not save, the palette shows Couldn’t update the appearance. Please choose again. If you are offline, your clicks wait and are sent when the connection returns.
• Picking the icon and colour is a Mac app feature.

The description Rally keeps#

Every Channel also has a short description of what it is for, which Rally writes and keeps up to date by itself. You do not have to do anything with it, and you will not find it shown in the Channel or the sidebar.

What it is for#

The description is Rally's one-line answer to "what is this Channel about?". Rally reads it at the start of every run in the Channel, alongside the name, so it has the right background without rereading the whole history. It also helps Rally decide which Channel an update from one of your connected tools belongs in.

How Rally writes it#

When you create a Channel, Rally writes a first description from the opening line of the first message. After that, Rally checks now and then whether the Channel has moved on to something new, and if it clearly has, quietly rewrites the description.

Rally is slow to change it:

• It only checks after the Channel has had a rest. The wait starts at six hours and grows, up to two days, each time the description turns out to still be right.
• It only checks after people have had a real conversation since the last check: at least ten messages from people, with a fair amount of text, about things the current description and name do not mention. Messages from Rally do not count.
• It rewrites only when it is confident, and makes the smallest change that makes the description true again.
• It refuses vague descriptions such as "general discussion" or "team chat", and keeps a description short (280 characters at most).

So a new Channel keeps its first description until people have talked in it properly, and a Channel that stays on its subject keeps its description however long the conversation gets. It will not flip-flop every afternoon.

Channels that belong to a Sidekick and archived Channels are left alone.

Next: Bring in a conversation from Claude or ChatGPT.