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.
Create an on-call schedule for your team.
Note: If you select a pre-built template, you are directed to a pre-filled on-call schedule.

Procedure

  1. To create custom on-call schedule template, click Create your own.
    The On-call schedule form appears.
    On-call schedule form.
  2. In the New shift section, fill in the fields.
    Field Description
    Shift name Name of the shift.
    Start date Date when the shift starts.
    End date Date when the shift ends.
    Start time Time when the shift starts.
    End time Time when the shift becomes inactive.
    Days Days this shift is applicable.
    Rotate every

    Type of rotation that periodically changes a set of primary and backup members in a shift.

    Rotation happens between sets of primary and backup members and not between the primary and backup member of the same set. Incident Response supports only daily or weekly rotation. For weekly rotation, enter the number of weeks for which you want to rotate the members. By default, the rotation is set to be a weekly rotation.

    Figure 1. Rotate members
    Update rotation for a shift.
    Members

    Primary and backup members for the shift.

    You can invite a new or existing user to the team by clicking the Invite users icon Add team member icon.. For more information on how to invite team members, see Invite users to your team. After sending the invite, a confirmation dialog box appears. On the confirmation dialog box, you can choose to auto-fill users to the current shift.

    Note: Each shift can have any number of primary members or a set of primary and backup members. If one primary member in a set has a backup, then all other sets must have a backup for their primary member. To add a backup for a primary member, select Add Backup and add the member.
    Auto fill

    Auto fill lets the system recommend primary and backup users based on the best fit for capacity. For example, if you have only added the primary member for a shift, selecting Auto fill adds the backup member for that shift. Suppose you have a team of multiple members and no member is assigned as primary or backup and if you select Auto fill, all the team members are assigned as a primary or a backup member and the Auto fill option is disabled.

    When you create a shift, the shift details appear in real-time in the on-call calendar. If you decide not to create the shift, you can cancel the shift creation by clicking the Cancel icon (Cancel icon.) that appears next to Save. You can also click Skip this step to move to the next step to setup escalation policies.

    Note: If you cancel or skip the shift, information is not saved.
  3. Click Save.
    The shifts are saved under the Current schedule tile on the on-call schedule page.
    Current schedule tile.

What to do next

Click Next to set up escalation policies for the team.