Reading Rally's answers

Rally's answers come with headings, tables, links to their sources and, when it helps, a diagram. This page shows how to check where an answer came from and how to take it somewhere else.

How Rally writes#

Rally writes its answers in Markdown, a simple way of marking up text that Rally then shows as proper formatting. You will see:

• Headings, bold, italics and strikethrough.
• Bulleted, numbered and checkbox lists.
• Quotes, footnotes and links.
• Tables. A wide table scrolls sideways rather than squashing its columns.
• Code, in a shaded block with the language named at the top and colours to make it readable.

Rally avoids the special notation mathematicians use for formulas. It writes symbols such as →, × and ≤ instead, so its answers read the same in the app, in emails and in Slack. When it refers to a teammate, it writes @Name as a link to that person.

The same formatting works in messages you and your teammates write. Your own messages also keep your line breaks exactly as you typed them. A long message from you is folded with Show more, and Show less folds it back.

Web links open in your normal web browser, and show the website's little icon beside them so you can see where you are headed.

Copying code#

Hover a code block and click the copy icon in its top-right corner (Copy code). It changes to Code copied to say it worked.

Diagrams#

Ask Rally to draw how something works ("show me our sign-up flow as a diagram") and it can answer with a flowchart, a sequence diagram or another kind of chart, drawn in your theme's colours. Rally writes these in a diagram language called Mermaid, and the app draws them for you.

• While Rally is still writing, you see the diagram's source text. The picture appears when the answer is finished.
• A diagram that Rally got wrong, or that tries to load pictures or links from the internet, is shown as source text instead.
• Diagrams are pictures to look at. You cannot click things inside them.
• To keep the source, use the copy button on its code block.

Folding long answers#

A long report is easier to skim when you can fold away the parts you have read. Every heading in Rally's answer (below the top-level title) has a small chevron beside it.

• Click the chevron (Collapse section) or the heading itself to fold that section down to a faded three-line peek. Click the chevron or the faded peek to open it again.
• The double chevron beside the answer's header folds every section at once (Collapse all sections) and opens them all again (Expand all sections).

Sections always start open. A smaller heading belongs to the section above it, so it folds along with it rather than on its own. Folding only changes what you see: copying and reading aloud always use the whole answer.

Folding works in the Channel's conversation only. Documents open in side panels, and answers you save as an image or PDF, always show everything.

Where did that come from?#

Rally marks the sources it relied on, so you can check its work with one click.

• Source pills. A small round pill with a website's icon, after a sentence, is a link to the page Rally read. Hover it to see the source's name and something like example.com · Opens in your browser. Click to open it.
• Footnote pills. A numbered pill opens a small pop-up that links to a file or a web page.
• File chips. A phrase can link straight to a file in the Channel. Click it to open the file.
• File cards. When Rally announces something new it made, such as a document, spreadsheet, image or site, it shows a card on its own line with an icon, a title and the kind of thing it is. Images appear as thumbnails, and several in a row make a little gallery. Audio and video open as players.

Rally only cites things it used. If a claim has no citation, that means nothing in the run backed it up, so treat it as Rally's own reasoning and check it if it matters.

If a citation points at a file you are not allowed to open, you see plain text with no link. A citation never reveals that something exists if you cannot see it.

The things Rally makes are called artifacts, and they get a whole chapter: Artifacts.

Actions under a message#

Hover over one of Rally's finished answers and a row of actions appears under it:

Your own messages offer only New breakout.

The actions stay hidden while Rally is still writing. Image and PDF are in the Mac app only, not in the web browser version. What they produce, and how to share it, is in Saving and sharing what Rally wrote. If a save fails, the button says Image failed or PDF failed.

New breakout appears only in a Channel's main conversation, not inside a Breakout or a Sidekick's conversation. Breakouts are explained in Breakouts.

The right-click menu#

Right-click any message, yours, a teammate's or Rally's, for:

• Copy copies the text with its formatting, ready to paste into an email or a document. If you selected part of the message first, only that part is copied.
• Copy as markdown copies the plain Markdown, which is what you want for pasting into GitHub, Notion or another app that understands Markdown.
• Speak reads the message aloud (Stop speaking ends it).
• Look Up shows your Mac's dictionary entry for the word you selected. It is greyed out until you select something.
• Share hands the text to your Mac's Share menu, for Messages, Mail, Notes and the like.

Speak is hidden while a message is still being written.

Right-click a cited file or a file attached to a message and you may get a menu with actions for that file instead. Inside a Breakout, for example, right-clicking a file card Rally made there offers Attach to channel, which makes it part of the main Channel. It is greyed out if the file is already there.

Reading aloud#

Speak reads a finished message out loud with a computer-generated voice. It starts almost at once, and reads long messages in pieces without a pause between them. It reads the whole message, including any sections you folded.

Only one message plays at a time: start another and the first stops. There is one voice and no setting to change it. If speaking fails, the button quietly goes back to Speak, so try again.

On iPhone, tap the speaker icon under a message.

Next: the people you share a Channel with, in People in the room.