Who can see what

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

Two kinds of Thread#

Every Thread is one of two things:

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

To check which one a Thread 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 Thread takes its starting point from the Channel you start it in. Start it in a Channel open to the whole Organization and it begins public. Start it in a private Channel and it begins private to you and anyone you mention in your first message.

Channels do not open Threads#

A Channel decides who can see the Channel: its name, its feed and its message box. It does not decide who can read the Threads in it. Every Thread has its own setting, and that setting is the whole answer. A person can read a Thread if the Thread is public to the Organization, or if they are one of its participants.

Two things follow from that:

• A private Thread in an Organization-wide Channel stays private. It is not in the Channel's feed for anyone outside the Thread, who sees nothing of it: not its name, its summary, who is in it, or that it exists.
• A public Thread in a private Channel is still public. Anyone in the Organization can open it from a link or find it in search, even though they cannot see the Channel.

Channels and their privacy switch are covered in Channels.

Change who can read a Thread#

To open a Thread up to the whole Organization, or close it again:

1. Click the Thread's name in its title pill and choose More.
2. Turn Public to organization on to make it public, or off to make it private to its participants.

The switch is there for people who can change the Thread. It is not offered on Rally's own built-in Threads, or to guests.

To change who the participants are, use Add people and People in the same menu, as described in People in the room.

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 Thread. See Breakouts.

Asking to join from a link#

If you open a link to a private Thread or Breakout you are not in, Rally shows its name, color and icon and a Request access button. Pressing it sends the request to whoever created it. Once they approve, you are added, the Thread opens on its own within about half a minute, and you get an email. You get an email if they decline, too. Guests do not see this; they are shared in by email instead.

If you created it, the request reaches you in four places:

• By email, with an Approve access button that works in one click.
• In Activity. Click Activity at the left edge of the window. The request sits at the top, under Requests, with a check to approve and a cancel sign to decline. Click the request itself to see it in a dialog with Approve and Decline. It also counts towards the number on the Threads button until you decide.
• In the Mac menu bar, under Needs attention. Choosing it opens Rally on the same dialog.
• Among the conversation's people. Open the Thread's or Breakout's menu and choose Add people: requests are listed under Asked to join, above Suggested, with the same check and cancel buttons.

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 Thread open at that moment. Nobody keeps reading a conversation because they happened to have it on screen.

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

A Thread 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 Channel. When a person is taken out of a private Channel, or an open Channel is made private without them, the Channel leaves their Channels list. If they open it, they see Channel not found and It may have been archived, made private, or you may no longer have access. Rally shows the same words whichever it is, on purpose, so the message gives nothing away. Losing a Channel does not take away any Thread: they keep every Thread they are a participant in, and every public one.

Next: Sharing with people outside your Organization.