Observer Rooms give your whole team a front-row seat to research. Teammates and stakeholders can watch interviews live via a private livestream link, then revisit the recording afterward with transcripts, comments, and reactions; all without ever appearing in the call.

Set up Observer Rooms for a study

Observer Rooms work with any interview study that uses Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. Observer Rooms are turned on by default for new studies. This can be disabled for your workspace under settings.

To configure an Observer Room:

1. Open an interview study and go to Scheduling.

2. Select the Observer Room tab.

3. Toggle Observer Rooms on (if not enabled by default).

   

4. Enter a name in the Observer room name field. This will appear as the title of the observer room and is visible to observers only. It appears as the title of the observer room, in calendar invites sent to observers, and in Slack notifications.

5. Optionally, configure Slack notifications from this tab to send reminders to your team before each interview. See the Slack notifications section below for more details.

6. Add observers. You can search for teammates (anyone who accepted their Rally invite) or enter email addresses for external viewers.

7. Optionally, add a Note for observers. For example, write in your research goals or what to watch for.

8. Publish the study. When an interview is booked, observers will receive their own calendar invites with the livestream link. The interviewer will see two calendar events; one for the interview and one for the observer room. Participants do not see observer room events.

If you toggle Observer Rooms on or off while a study is live, you'll be prompted to apply the change to upcoming sessions.

Send a Slack reminder before each interview

You can have Rally post a reminder to a Slack channel before every interview in a study. This is helpful to centralize reminders for observers.

Connect Slack

The first time you enable Slack notifications on a study, Rally will prompt you to connect your Slack workspace. Select Connect Slack, approve the permissions in the popup, and return to the study. This only needs to be done once per Rally workspace.

If Slack is already connected but you're missing channel access, you'll see Reconnect Slack; select it to re-authorize.

Configure the reminder

1. In the Observer Room tab, find the Slack Notifications section and toggle it on.

2. Under Channel to alert, select the channel where reminders should post. You can search public channels in your workspace.

3. Under Time before event, choose how far in advance to send the reminder: 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes (default), 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 1 day.

4. Publish the study.

Once set up, Rally will post a reminder to the selected channel before every interview in the study, with a link to the observer room.

Manage observer rooms

Add an observer room to an existing interview

If Observer Rooms weren't enabled when interviews were booked, toggle Observer Rooms on in the study settings. Rally will automatically generate observer links, send calendar invites, and prepare the bot for each session.

Edit observers on a scheduled interview

If you need to add or remove observers after an interview has already been scheduled:

1. From the study, select Observer Rooms in the sidebar.

2. Find the relevant interview and select the ⋯ menu.

3. Select Edit observers.

4. Add or remove observers as needed.

Observers added here will receive a calendar invite for that session.

Admit the recording bot

Rally uses a notetaker bot to capture the call. It joins the meeting five minutes before the scheduled start time and will automatically time out if not admitted to the call within five minutes of the scheduled start time..

As the interview host, you'll need to admit the bot into the meeting and approve recording permissions when it joins. The bot needs both to start the livestream and capture the recording. If it isn't admitted, observers won't see anything and no recording will be created.

Delay recording for consent

If you need a moment at the start of the call to greet the participant or collect verbal consent before recording begins, you can use meeting platform controls to delay the bot:

• Zoom: Enable Waiting Room in your Zoom settings. The bot will wait until you admit it. Note that this also requires you to manually admit interview participants to all meetings, not just Rally interviews.

  

• Google Meet: Keep the bot in the admission queue. You can delay admission by up to 5 minutes past the scheduled start.

Manually send the bot

If the bot timed out while waiting to be admitted, was accidentally removed, or you need to resend it for any reason while the call is still in progress, you can send it manually:

1. Open the interview from the study page.

2. Select the three dot menu (...) menu and choose Send observer bot to meeting.

3. Confirm.

Watching the observer room live

To access the observer room as an observer, open the link from the calendar invite or wherever it was shared with you, or join from the Interview overview within the study in Rally. If you're an external viewer (i.e. not logged in to a Rally account), you'll need the password shared alongside the link.

Signed-in workspace members get a full collaborative experience. External observers can watch the livestream but won't have access to presence, reactions, or comments.

Presence

Avatars in the top-right corner of the viewer show who's currently watching. Hover over an avatar to see a teammate's name. Your own avatar shows "You."

Reactions

The reaction bar below the video includes five quick reactions: ❤ 😊 🙌 👍 🏆. Select one to send it; everyone watching sees it float up on their screen in real time, tagged with your name. Reactions are timestamped to the video, so they'll replay when anyone watches the recording later.

Comments

Open the Comments tab in the sidebar to leave timestamped notes for your team. Each comment is pinned to the moment in the video when you post it, and appears in three places:

• In the Comments tab, threaded for replies

• As a pink dot on the video progress bar. Hover to preview, select to seek

• Searchable from the top of the Comments tab

You can delete your own comments from the thread menu. Workspace admins can delete any comment.

After the call

Once an interview ends, the recording is available from the study's Observer Rooms page or from the original observer room link. Team members or study owners can view and share recordings at any time, depending on their role permissions.

To access a recording:

1. From the study, select Observer Rooms in the sidebar.

2. Select the Past tab to view completed interviews.

3. Next to the relevant interview, choose what you'd like to do:

   • Watch - select Watch to open the recording.

   • Share - select Share > Copy link to share the recording with teammates. Make sure to include the auto-generated password.

   • Download - select the three dot menu (...) menu and choose Download. You can also download from within the recording viewer by selecting Download in the bottom right corner.

Transcript

The Transcript tab shows the full interview transcription, split by speaker and sentence. Select any sentence to jump to that moment in the video. The active sentence highlights as the video plays. Use the search bar at the top of the tab to jump to a specific moment or keyword.

If an AI summary is available for the recording, it appears at the top of the tab.

Clips

The Clips tab lets you trim a moment from the recording into a standalone clip with its own shareable link.

To create a clip:

1. Open the Clips tab and select New clip, or select a range of text directly in the Transcript tab to clip from there.

2. Drag the start and end handles on the timeline to set the clip range.

3. Give the clip a title; Rally can suggest one based on the transcript.

4. Select Save. The clip is accessible immediately to anyone with access to the observer room, even while still processing.

5. Share the clip URL or share it directly to Slack; it opens just the clip, not the full interview.

Clips can be deleted by their creator or by a workspace admin.

View stats

The views badge near the top of the viewer shows how many unique teammates have watched the recording. Select it to see the full list, ordered by first view.

View counts only include signed-in teammates. Public-link visitors are not counted.

Comments and reactions on recordings

Comments left during a live session carry over to the recording. Reactions replay at their original timestamps as the video plays, giving you a sense of how observers responded in the moment.

Meeting platform requirements

Zoom

Enable the following settings on the Zoom account hosting the interviews:

• Record to computer files (local recording enabled)

• Allow internal and external meeting participants to request recording permissions

Without these, the bot can join the call but won't be able to capture it.

Google Meet

Standard recording permissions are sufficient. To add a consent buffer at the start of the call, simply admit the bot manually when you're ready to begin recording. External accounts (including participants and observer guests) must be manually admitted to the meeting. Guests from your own organization will be admitted automatically.

Microsoft Teams

Standard recording permissions are sufficient. The bot behaves like any other meeting attendee.