How to Easily Plan Your Meetings with Rallly

Tired of the endless email exchanges to schedule a simple meeting? Welcome to the club! Fortunately, I’ve found a little open-source gem that will change your life: Rallly.

Rallly (with 3 Ls) is the perfect tool for organizing your events without any hassle. Its concept is simple yet incredibly effective. You create a poll with dates and times that work for you, invite participants, and voila, everyone votes for their preferred slot. This way, you no longer have to struggle to find a time that suits everyone!

Beneath its sleek interface, Rallly houses a well-oiled machine. Developed with Next.js, Prisma, and tRPC, the backend provides top-notch service, while TailwindCSS adds a touch of elegance to the front end without compromising performance.

But the cherry on top is that Rallly is entirely open-source! You can easily host your own instance with Docker. Clone the GitHub repository, configure your environment variables, launch Docker Compose, and there you have it, your personal Rallly is ready to use.

The installation process involves just a few commands:

git clone https://github.com/lukevella/rallly.git
cd rallly 
cp sample.env .env (and edit the file for configuration)
yarn
yarn db:setup (or "yarn dx" if you don't have a running Postgres database)
yarn dev

If you want to take it to the next level, follow the guide to deploy your instance with Docker Compose. Of course, you can control who can access your instance. Simply specify the authorized email addresses in your configuration file, and you can even use wildcards (*) to allow entire domains.

Once your server is up and running, creating a poll becomes a breeze. Choose your date and time options, send the link to your invitees, and let the magic happen. For instance, you can limit the number of votes per participant to avoid any misuse. You can also close a poll whenever you like, eliminating the need to chase down latecomers or juggle multiple schedules.

Most options are free, but some advanced features do require a paid account. Regardless, it’s a fantastic tool that I highly recommend!