Set up an on-call schedule for your team
Set up an on-call schedule for your team to ensure that the right person is always available to quickly respond to incidents and critical alerts. On-call schedules determine who is on call or available at a given time.
Before you begin
Role required: Responder, Manager, or Administrator
Note: Only the responder who created the team or the manager of the team can set up an
on-call schedule for that team.
About this task
On-call schedules allow you to represent your teams’ on-call responsibilities.
Schedule members can begin receiving incident notifications once the escalation
policy is defined. Escalation policies ensure that the right people are notified at
the right time. In the escalation policy you can define the primary or backup member
to be notified when an alert or incident is triggered.
Note: If the primary or the
backup user is not yet signed in to Incident Response, they will
not receive any notification.
Incident Response supports creating and managing on-call schedules in
a few short steps. You can set up a custom on-call schedule from the scheduling
calendar or use one of the available templates. The available pre-built templates
are:
- Follow the Sun: The follow-the-sun schedule is used by teams that may work internationally in different time zones, and ensures full 24/7 coverage. Having someone on-call across different working hours means nobody has to wake up in the middle of the night.
- Week/Weekend: This schedule is set up for teams that rotate shifts that are on for one week or weekend. Sometimes a dedicated schedule for people on-call during week or weekend can help keep clear division of responsibilities and help with planning and estimating other work.
- Off-hours: Some teams only schedule on-call for hours outside of regular working hours. This assumes someone will already be available to respond to anything that happens during working hours.

Note: If you select a pre-built template, you are directed to a pre-filled
on-call
schedule.
Procedure
What to do next
Click Next to set up escalation policies for the team.