Status dots

Once you have a few Channels going, the question stops being "what is Rally doing?" and becomes "where am I needed?". Rally answers it with small coloured dots. Learn them once and you can read your whole workload in the time it takes to say "hang on, let me check".

The dots#

A status dot is a small coloured circle with a label beside it. It tells you one thing about a Channel or a Breakout. There are eight:

Blue is the only dot that moves. The exact shades shift a little between light and dark mode, but the colours stay the same family. On a Space's page the label sits next to the dot, so you never have to tell pink from violet by eye alone.

A run that is waiting its turn to start counts as Running.

Where you see them#

• The sidebar. A Channel's row carries one small dot at its start. It shows the first dot that applies, in the order below, and leaves out Latest run completed, since a finished run needs nothing from you. A Breakout that needs you counts on its Channel's row.
• A Space's page. The Needs attention list on a Space's page shows a dot and its label beside every Channel and Breakout that wants you. That page is described in Spaces.
• A Channel's Breakouts. In a Channel's menu, Breakouts puts a dot beside each one with something new. See Breakouts.

When several things are true at once#

A Channel can be running, unread and have mentioned you all at the same time, but it only shows one dot. The first one that applies in this order wins:

1. New to you
2. You were mentioned
3. Running
4. Needs input
5. Unread
6. Latest run completed
7. Latest run stopped
8. Needs intervention

So a busy Channel where someone named you shows pink, not blue, because a message addressed to you is more pressing than a Rally that is busy anyway. But plain unread messages rank below a running Rally.

A closer look at two of them#

New to you lights up when someone adds you to a Channel: when they create it with you in it, add you later, or confirm an @-mention that adds you. It goes away the first time you open the Channel, and it never comes back for that Channel. Later messages make it Unread instead. The exception is being removed and then added again, which lights it afresh. You never see it on a Channel you made yourself.

You were mentioned goes away once you have read past the message that named you. A Channel's main conversation and each of its Breakouts keep track of mentions separately.

Bold names in the sidebar#

A Channel with something you have not read has its name in bold in the sidebar, as in most mail apps. A Breakout waiting on you makes its Channel bold too, so nothing hides one level down. Open it and read, and the name goes back to normal.

Times in the sidebar#

Each Channel in the sidebar shows when it last had activity. These times read like a calendar rather than a stopwatch:

• A clock time for today, such as 3:42 PM.
• Yesterday.
• A weekday, such as Tuesday, for the last few days.
• A short date, such as Sep 3, for anything older.

They update themselves too, so 3:42 PM turns into Yesterday after midnight without you doing anything. The format follows your Mac's language and region.

The same self-updating times you met on messages (see People in the room) also turn up elsewhere: at the end of each row on a Space's page, in search results, and on a Sidekick's page for its next run and its recent runs.

Next: give a Channel a name and a face, in Names, icons and colours.