Friends and direct messages

Friends are people you’ve connected with directly. Direct messages (DMs) are private conversations, either one-on-one or in a small group, outside any community.

Open your friends list

Select Home (the Rally logo) at the top of the community rail, then Friends at the top of the sidebar. The friends page has these tabs:

Online: friends who are online right now.
All: all your friends.
Pending: friend requests you’ve sent and received. A red badge shows how many are waiting for you.
Add friend: send a new friend request.

Add a friend

Go to Home, then Friends, and select Add friend.
Type the person’s Rally username. You can include the @ or leave it out.
Select Send friend request.

You can also add someone from their profile card in a community, or from their public profile page. Both have an Add friend button.

If the person already sent you a request, sending one back makes you friends right away. If Rally can’t send the request, you’ll see “Couldn’t send a friend request. Check the username and try again.”

Answer friend requests

Open the Pending tab.

For an incoming request, select Accept (the check mark) or Ignore (the X).
For a request you sent, select Cancel request (the X) to take it back.

Remove a friend

In the Online or All tab, select Remove friend next to their name. This removes the friendship for both of you right away.

Who can message you

One-on-one messages: your friends, and anyone who’s in at least one community with you.
Group conversations: only your friends can add you to one.

If you try to message someone who isn’t your friend and isn’t in any of your communities, Rally tells you that you can only message friends and people who share a community with you. Send them a friend request first.

Start a direct message

Any of these opens a one-on-one conversation:

In your friends list, select Message (the speech bubble) next to a friend.
In a community, select someone’s name to open their profile card, then select Message.
On someone’s public profile page, select Message.
In the sidebar, select the plus button next to Messages (New message), choose one friend, and select Open DM.

Your conversations are listed under Messages in the Home sidebar, with the most recent at the top.

Start a group conversation

Go to Home and select the plus button next to Messages (New message).
Select two or more friends. You can add up to 9 friends, for up to 10 people including you.
Select Create group.

A group is named after its members, and the sidebar shows how many members it has. You can only add friends to a group.

Close or leave a conversation

Hover over a conversation in the Messages list and select the X:

For a one-on-one conversation (Close conversation), this hides it from your list. Nothing is deleted, and it comes back as soon as a new message is sent in it.
For a group (Leave group), this removes you from the group.

What you can do in a direct message

Direct messages work much like channels. You can:

format text, mention the people in the conversation, and reply to messages
react with emoji
share files and images
edit and delete your own messages
start a game of chess, Connect Four or tic-tac-toe with the game controller button. See Games in chat.

For details on each of these, see Channels and messages.

Every new message in a direct message counts as a notification for you. It adds to the red badge on the conversation and on the Home icon, and can trigger a desktop notification. Conversations with messages you haven’t read show their name in bold.