Scheduling interviews is made simple with our Study Scheduling Tool. You can easily set up your interview type, hosts, and availability. Check out our tips on Effective Scheduling Strategies
Set Up Rally Scheduling
Setting up Scheduling in a Rally Study is quick and easy. This process can be further simplified by duplicating a Study when the same interviewers or teammates are conducting similar or follow-up research.
Rally Scheduling is organized into 6 sections:
Navigate to the relevant Study and select 'Actions', select 'Edit Study', and select the 'Scheduling' step of your Study from the top.
Event Setup
Select your preferred Calendar App.
Add the Event Name and Event Description.
We suggest using Personalization Tokens to customize outreach, such as including "First Name" or "Interview Length (minutes)".
Set the interview Duration in minutes or hours.
Specify the Location.
Select 'Zoom', 'Google Meet', or 'Microsoft Teams' for online interviews with our integrations. Selecting one of these options is required to enable Observer Rooms.
Select 'Custom Location' for in-person interviews or to use an alternative video conference app.
For alternative video conference apps, include the link in the additional Calendar Location text field.
For in-person interviews, if the location for all in-person interviews for this Study will be the same, use the additional Calendar Location text field to add the physical address and room where interviews will take place, or leave this field blank to add later in location details for each event.
Select 'No Location' to exclude locations during scheduling and manually update the location later in your own calendar tool.
Assignment
Choose your Scheduling Type from the following 3 options:
Standard 1:1: The Participant meets with one interviewer.
Collective: The Participant meets with a group of interviewers when all of them are available.
The Rally Scheduler will only show Participants times when all interviewers are available, so this may result in less available timeslots if the interviewers have different schedules and/or are in different timezones, etc.
Round Robin: The Participant meets with one interviewer out of a rotating pool of interviewers.
As long as at least one of the hosts is available, Rally shows the slot as available. Then we randomly select one of the available hosts as the interviewer. This optimizes for the maximum number of available slots.
Add Interviewers.
By default, the person creating the Study will be set as the first interviewer.
Admins or managers can create a Study on someone else's behalf and assign another Rally user as the interviewer.
For Collective and Round Robin scheduling, include multiple Interviewers by selecting '+ Add Teammate' and selecting from the list or typing to search.
💡 You can add other Rally users as "Interviewers" to consider their availability during scheduling as well, including Rally users with the Observer role type. Developers cannot be added as Interviewers as they do not have calendar connection capabilities, but they can be added as Guests. To include other users as attendees without having their availability affect scheduling availability for Participants, add them as Guests.
Optionally, you can also add Guests. Guests will be included in all interview invites, regardless of their availability and can include users without calendars connected.
Select '+ Add Teammate' to select from the list or type to search Rally users.
Select '+ Add Email Address' to enter the email address of a teammate not on Rally to include as a Guest in the interview.
Availability
Available Dates: Select either a Rolling Date Range or a Fixed Date Range.
Rolling Date Range: Specify the number of days.
Fixed Date Range: Choose a start and end date.
Any Participants trying to access the Scheduler to book time after the set date range has passed will see a "We're Fully Booked" page. You can always return to update or extend the dates by editing the Study.
Availability: Choose between a common schedule for all interviewers, or individual interviewer availability.
Set the same hours for all interviewers: Set the days and hours you want interviews to be held. In the following steps, you can also select specific dates that override the common schedule and set the meeting conflict handling.
Use each interviewer's preferred hours: Use each interviewer's general availability, including Date Overrides for OOO, which can be customized by each Rally user in the Availability section of Settings. If there are multiple interviewers, you can view their shared availability by clicking the 'Check Availability' button in the top right corner. If their shared availability is limited, Admins can override it. Learn more about Conflicts and Overrides.
If you selected 'Set the same hours for all interviewers', you have additional configuration options.
Date Overrides: Add dates when availability changes from normal working hours.
This may include added availability on specific dates, reduced availability on specific dates, or blackout dates with no availability. Adding date overrides with specific times will update that date's available timeslots to use those set here. Adding date overrides with no specific times will update that date to remove all available timeslots.
Meeting Conflict Handling: Decide how Rally's Scheduler treats your interview team's other calendar events when booking new interviews.
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.
Example: Company meetings you've been invited to but have not yet marked yourself as attending can be booked over by Participants.
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. This can provide increased availability when you're on a time crunch, but proceed with caution!
💡 See our Scheduler FAQ for more detailed information on understanding why you may be seeing more or less availability than expected.
Limits
Buffer time before and after interviews: Optionally allow for preparation and wrap-up. When enabled, the buffer time will be included both before and after every scheduled interview, which may reduce the number of available interview timeslots.
Minimum booking notice: Specify your preference for how far in advance an interview needs to be scheduled, such as 12 hours, to avoid last-minute booking surprises and allow time to prepare. Time slots within the minimum booking notice window won't be displayed to Participants.
Daily Interview Limit: Restrict the number of interviews that can be booked on a given day for the study. Leaving it blank means unlimited interviews per day.
Time Slot Intervals: Set the frequency of available time slots on the booking page. For instance, with 30-minute intervals, time slots are available at 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, etc. Smaller increments will provide more available options for Participants.
Advanced
Customize the Participant's view after booking an interview or once the study's interview limit is reached.
Confirmation Page: Edit the message shown once a Participant successfully books a time.
Fully Booked Page: Edit the message shown when the Study is closed, paused, or you have no more availability within the date range.
Observer Room
Optionally, enable a virtual Observer Room to invite stakeholders or teammates to view a live stream of your user research interviews without distracting Participants. Enabling Observer Rooms requires having either Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams set as the interview Location in the 'Event Setup' section.
Enable Observer Room
Toggle on the Observer Room to continue with setup.
Observer Room Guests
Select '+ Add Teammate' and type or select their name from the dropdown.
Select '+ Add Email Address' to input any email address of teammates or stakeholders that do not have a Rally account in your workspace.
Note for Observers
Add a custom message for the Study that only Observers will see during the livestream.
This is a great place to add context on the specific research you'll be conducting during this interview, or to let Observers know where they can best share their thoughts and feedback on the session.
Once interviews are scheduled, if you are the interviewer, you will see both your scheduled interview event and your Observer Room event on your calendar.
Learn more about Observer Rooms and Observer Room Settings.
Become a scheduling expert by learning about Schedule Conflicts and Overrides.
Rally also allows the flexibility to Manually Book Interviews to bypass host availability, interview limits, and other scheduling restrictions, and log past interviews or interviews outside of Rally to ensure a Participant's history stays up to date.
Scheduler FAQ
ℹ️ The Study Scheduler is showing more or less availability than expected. Why is this timeslot available or unavailable?
If a Participant booking an interview sees different availability than you expect, you can troubleshoot availability by checking your Study setup and connected calendar. Select "Edit Study" and navigate to "Scheduling" to review these settings; select "Check Availability" to see the timeslots shown to Participants, and have your default calendar up in another tab to compare with Study Scheduling settings.
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.
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.
Minimum Booking Notice hides timeslots that are within this set time range; if you have a 24 hour minimum booking notice, no same day availability will be shown.
Daily Interview Limit enforces a maximum number of interviews that can be booked within a given day. If a set limit is met, no more timeslots will show for the day.
Available Dates describes what days the Study will be running and available to participants. Sometimes research continues past the expected end date - no problem! If you have participants seeing a "We're fully booked" message instead of open availability, check the Available Dates settings in Scheduling and extend the Study's date range if needed.
If you're still unable to find the discrepancy, contact Rally Support via the in-app chat with information on the Study and expected availability for assistance investigating!