Rallly

What it's good for#

Arranging anything with more than three people turns into a long thread of "I can't do Tuesday". Rallly replaces the thread with one page: you offer some dates and times, send the link round, and each person ticks the ones that work for them. You can see at a glance which slot suits the most people, then pick it.

The people answering don't need an account, or to install anything. They open the link, type their name and tick their boxes.

Before you install: mail#

Rallly is built around email. It emails the sign-in links for accounts, and notifications about polls. Without a mail server, polls, votes and links all still work, but nothing is ever emailed, which matters for one thing in particular: signing in to an account needs an email.

So there are two ways to use it:

• Without mail, create polls without an account, as a guest. Rallly remembers in your browser that the poll is yours, so you manage it later from the same browser on the same device. That's often all a household needs.
• With mail, you and others can have accounts, see all your polls from any device, and there's an admin. Set the Mail Server, Mail Server Port, Mail Username and Mail Password settings (in its config file, see Settings below) to an SMTP server you can send through, like the one your email provider gives you, or Stalwart if you run your own. Change Support Address to a real address as well: it's the sender on Rallly's emails.

To check: check whether Rallly's Quick Create (a poll without an account) is on in the self-hosted image, and what a guest sees when managing a poll later

The admin#

Rallly makes nobody an admin by itself, and there's no password for LibrePortal to generate, because accounts sign in through email rather than with a password. Instead, you name the address that may become the admin:

From the control panel you can see and manage users. Two more settings decide who can have an account at all: Allow Sign-ups (on to start with) and Allowed Addresses, a list like *@example.com that limits who can sign in. Answering a poll never needs an account, whatever these say.

Good to know#

• It's public on purpose. The people you invite need to reach the link, so Rallly starts public. If everyone's on your home network or your VPN, you can make it private.
• With a domain, poll links read https://rallly.example.com/..., which is much nicer to send round than an address and port.
• Updates are automatic within Rallly 4, and its database is in the nightly backup.
• More than one copy is possible, for example one for a club, each with its own polls and accounts.