Creating Studies in Rally

Last updated: October 21, 2026

Use this guide to plan a study from start to finish: set up shared components first, create your study, then recruit, run, and wrap up your research.

Prepare shared components first

Ops Managers or Admins usually set these up once for the whole team. Doing it before anyone creates a study saves time later and keeps the participant experience consistent.

  • Add people to Rally: Import people with the Salesforce or Snowflake integrations, a CSV upload, or manual entry.

  • Properties: Create custom properties to enrich person profiles and target the right participants.

  • Consent forms: Create consent and opt-in forms to include in studies and emails.

  • Documents: Upload NDAs and other files to attach to consent forms.

  • Branding: Add your logo and brand colors for a consistent participant experience.

  • Email domains: Connect a custom domain to send bulk email from your own brand.

  • Email templates: Write approved, reusable emails for study outreach and reminders.

  • Question templates: Save reusable questions for screeners and surveys.

  • Study templates: Build preset studies your team can start from in the study gallery.

  • Governance: Set rules that limit how often people are contacted or incentivized.

Create a study

Pick the study type that fits your research, then follow its setup guide:

Study type

Use it for

Setup guide

Interview

One-on-one conversations with participants

Create an interview study

Group interview

Sessions with several participants at once, like focus groups

Create a group interviews study

Survey

Questionnaires participants complete on their own time

Create a survey study

Unmoderated test

Tasks, prototype tests or AI-moderated tests in a connected testing tool

Create an unmoderated test study

After you create a study

Most studies follow the same steps once they're created. Steps marked with a study type only apply to that type.

  1. Add participants to a study: Add people from your Rally database, a CSV upload, or manual entry.

  2. Test your study: Before inviting anyone, check what participants will see. Select Preview on a builder step to see that step as a participant would, and send yourself a test of any message from the Messages step. For a full run-through, add yourself as a participant and send yourself the invitation.

  3. Invite participants to a study: Send emails or share a public link.

  4. Qualify participants (studies with a screener): Qualify or disqualify participants automatically with conditional logic. See Screener statuses for what each status means.

  5. Schedule and manage interviews (interviews and group interviews): Book, reschedule, and run sessions.

  6. Manage studies: Track progress, add teammates, and keep your study up to date.

    1. Participant statuses: What each status means and how to update them by hand, for example when a test tool doesn't send people back to Rally.

  7. Send incentives: Send or resend incentives to participants.

  8. Study statuses: Close a study when your research is done, then archive it to keep your Studies page tidy.

Recruit from an external panel

To recruit participants outside your Rally database through a paid panel provider, see the External panel recruitment collection. External panels are available for interviews and unmoderated tests, but not surveys.