Names, icons and colours

Rally names a Thread when you start it, from your first message, and picks it an icon and a colour. Breakouts and other conversations that start without a name get one the same way, as described in Your first Thread. Rally's picks are educated guesses. When you have a dozen Threads, 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 Thread's icon, then its name. Click the icon to change the icon and colour (below). Click the name to open the Thread's menu.

At the top of the menu is a row of buttons:

• Add people brings someone in. See People in the room.
• Rename gives the Thread a new name (below).
• Copy link copies a link to the Thread. Links are covered in Search and links.
• More holds the Thread's settings: the Pinned in my sidebar switch, the Public to organization switch, Import updates for an imported Thread, the Thread's Artifacts, and Archive thread at the bottom.

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

When a Thread is open beside its Channel, its pill also has a close button, which takes you back to the Channel on its own. When the Channel has moved off screen to make room for a Breakout, its name rides as a breadcrumb at the start of the Thread's header. Click it to step back. See A tour of the window.

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

Renaming#

From the title pill#

1. Click the Thread's name in its title pill and choose Rename.
2. In the Rename thread 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.

Things to know about names#

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

Reading a long name#

In the Threads list, a long name wraps onto a second line and is then cut short. Open the Thread to see its full name in the title pill.

Icon and colour#

Click the icon at the left of the Thread'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.

Thread, Breakout, Channel 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 screen of forty Threads 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 Thread, not to you. Change them and everyone sees the change 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 Thread'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 Thread 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 Thread'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 Thread 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. It is the line or two under each Thread in its Channel's feed, so the rest of the Channel can tell what the Thread is for without opening it.

What it is for#

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

How Rally writes it#

When you create a Thread, Rally writes a first description from the opening line of the first message. After that, Rally checks now and then whether the Thread 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 Thread 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 Thread keeps its first description until people have talked in it properly, and a Thread that stays on its subject keeps its description however long the conversation gets. It will not flip-flop every afternoon.

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

Next: Bring in a conversation from Claude or ChatGPT.