Set Your Availability

Set up your default availability for interviews before building your first study. You can update your availability at any time, including blocking out-of-office days or adjusting specific dates. Availability can also be set or edited directly in the Rally Scheduler within a study.

1. In the top left corner of Rally, select your workspace name, then select Settings.

2. From the sidebar, select Availability.

3. Select the pencil icon to edit.

4. Select your default Timezone.

5. Customize your Schedule to set interview availability.

   • Toggle each day on or off.

   • Set the times you are available for interviews.

   • Select + to add time blocks for days when you have a break (e.g., lunch or focus time).

   • Select the trash icon to remove a time block.

     

6. Availability blocks let you set dates and times when your availability differs from your normal schedule. Use this to block out dates, track out-of-office time, or add availability on a specific date. Select date(s), click Add hours +, enter the hours you want available on those days, and click Add availability to save; simply select a date and do not add any hours before clicking Add availability to mark a day as unavailable.

   

7. Avoid meeting conflicts controls how Rally handles your existing calendar events when checking availability. Select from the following options:

   • Default - Don't book over Busy events: shows tentative and "free" events as available. Note: "Busy" events with tentative or unconfirmed attendance will also show as available.

   • Strict - Don't book over any events (Free or Busy): shows any event (even tentative) as unavailable.

   • Off - All events can be booked over: ignores all external calendar events. Rally will still prevent double-booking on interviews from the same study.

8. Interview limits across all studies lets you cap how many interviews can be booked for you per day and per week, across all studies in your workspace. Set a Daily limit, a Weekly limit, or both. Leave a field blank for unlimited.

   • When both a per-study limit and a personal limit are set, the more restrictive applies.

   • Timeslots where you have hit your cap will not appear as available to participants.

Understanding availability issues

Missing Interview Availability Timeslots

If you see less interview availability for participants than expected for certain dates, review your source calendar for any events that may correspond with the missing availability.

Various factors on your connected calendar may contribute to less interview availability for Participants than expected, depending on the Meeting Conflict Handling setting you have selected in Settings > Availability in Rally. Some examples of situations on your connected calendar that may limit interview availability include full-day events, accepting your colleagues' out-of-office (OOO) events, and recurring meetings you are a part of but marked tentative or free.

Learn more in our Availability FAQ below.

Unexpected Interview Availability Timeslots

If you see more interview availability for Participants than expected for certain dates, review your Availability settings in Settings > Availability in Rally to ensure you've logged any Date Overrides for out-of-office time or other unavailable times/days, and that you've set your Meeting Conflict Handling to your preference.

Additionally, review your source calendar for any events or missing events that may explain the extra availability. Ensure the relevant meetings are set to 'Busy' or 'Automatically decline meetings' to avoid being scheduled over. See examples below.

• If you have focus time scheduled on your connected Google calendar that should not be booked over, you may want to update the GCal event setting to 'Busy'.

  

• If you have out-of-office time scheduled on your connected Google calendar that should not be booked over, you may want to update the GCal event settings to enable the 'Automatically decline meetings' setting.

  

Availability FAQ

ℹ My study scheduler is showing more or less availability than expected. Why is this timeslot available or unavailable?

• Avoid Meeting Conflicts determines how Rally considers your existing calendar events when checking your calendar and booking interviews. If you're expecting specific timeslots to be available that are not showing up, we suggest checking which Avoid Meeting Conflicts setting was chosen for the study or set in your personal availability and reviewing the expected behavior of the following options alongside your own calendar:

  1. Default - Don't book over Busy events

     • This option will show tentative and "free" events as available.

     • Note: "Busy" events that have tentative ("maybe") or unconfirmed attendance will show as available with this setting.

  2. Strict - Don't book over any events (Free or Busy)

     • This option will show any event (even tentative) as unavailable.

  3. Off - All events can be booked over

     • This option will not allow participants to schedule over Rally interviews from the same study, but may allow participants to schedule over Rally interviews from a different study.

     • This allows any event on your calendar to be booked over.

       

• Date Overrides represent dates when availability changes from normal working hours, which can mean reduced or added availability on specific dates, or blackout dates with no availability. Check Date Overrides for limits or blocks.

• Buffer Time Before & After Interviews can help ensure you have breaks between meetings, but will limit available timeslots close to existing calendar events. Check the study editor and navigate to Scheduling > Limits to see if buffer time is enabled and how that may affect availability. Buffer time is included before and after any new bookings.

  • For example: if you've set a 15 minute buffer time before & after interviews on a 30 minutes interview, this requires 60 minutes of open availability in order to book (15m before, 30m interview, 15m after). If you have existing meetings on your calendar that won't allow for the set buffer time, the timeslots will not be displayed.

  • Buffer time can be shared by bookings/meetings - it just requires available time.

If you're still unable to find the discrepancy, contact Rally with information on the study and expected availability for assistance investigating.