Set Your Availability
Before building your first Study, set up your default Availability for interviews and configure settings for how meeting conflicts are handled. Easily update your Availability again at any time, including tracking out-of-office days or setting date overrides for days when you have additional availability outside your default schedule.
In the top right corner of Rally, select your user icon and select 'Settings'.
From the sidebar, select 'Availability'.
On the right, select the three dots and select 'Edit Availability'.
Select your default Timezone.
Customize your Schedule to set interview availability.
Select the toggles next to each day to enable or disable availability.
Set the custom times you are typically available for interviews.
Select the '+' to create additional time blocks for each day to accommodate your lunch or focus time.
Select the trash icon to remove available time blocks.
Date Overrides allow you to set dates and times when your availability changes from your normal availability. Use this to track when you are out of office or add more availability on a specific date.
Meeting Conflict Handling determines how Rally considers your existing calendar events when checking your calendar and booking interviews. Based on your use case, select from the following options:
Default - Don't book over Busy events
This option will show tentative and "free" bookings as available.
Note: "Busy" bookings that have tentative ("maybe") or unconfirmed attendance will show as available with this setting.
Strict - Don't book over any events (Free or Busy)
This option will show any booking (even tentative) as unavailable.
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.
8. After confirming everything is correct, select 'Save'.
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.
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
ℹ️ The Study Scheduler is showing more or less availability than expected. Why is this timeslot available or unavailable?
Meeting Conflict Handling determines how Rally considers your existing calendar events when checking your calendar and booking interviews. Based on your use case, check the Study Editor and navigate to Scheduling > Availability to see which setting was chosen for the Study and review the expected behavior of the following options alongside your own calendar:
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.
Strict - Don't book over any events (Free or Busy)
This option will show any event (even tentative) as unavailable.
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.
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, so may limit available timeslots close to existing calendar events.
If you're still unable to find the discrepancy, contact Rally with information on the Study and expected availability for assistance investigating.