On-call schedules

Plan on‑call schedules in ilert to orchestrate team rotation, ensure coverage for incidents, and adhere to SLA response windows.

A schedule decides who is on call at any given moment, so an alert can be assigned to a person rather than to a name someone hard-coded months ago.

A few things worth knowing before you build one:

• Only one user per schedule can be on-call at a time.
• A schedule notifies nobody on its own. Its members are only paged when the schedule is referenced by an escalation policy.
• To preserve the history of a schedule, any changes to schedules apply to current and future dates only. Shifts that are in the past cannot be deleted or modified.
• Schedules can be embedded into any calendar application that supports the iCal format.

Who is on call now, who is next, and which escalation policy the schedule feeds.

Create or modify a schedule

User role permissions required

• User role permissions are required to create or modify a schedule.
• Stakeholder users cannot be added to a schedule.

ilert offers two types of schedules - recurring and static schedules, which differ in the way a schedule is created and maintained. The schedule type cannot be changed after its creation.

Recurring schedule	Static schedule
Use if shifts are recurring. Example: every team member is on-call for a week. Shifts are created automatically	Use if you cannot plan your schedule beyond a specific time frame and want to schedule them manually on a regular basis. Shifts are created manually by dragging and dropping users onto the calendar

Overrides

Responder role permissions required

Overrides can be added by users with Responder role privileges. A responder can only add themselves as an override. Users with User privileges can add any user as an override.

Overrides are one-time changes to a schedule. Example uses of overrides include

• when a user becomes sick, goes on vacation, or would like to swap a shift with another user
• scheduling different shifts for holidays

An override leaves the underlying rotation untouched. Nothing about the recurring pattern changes; the override simply wins for the period it covers, then the normal schedule resumes.

Add an override in the web app

Open the schedule and click Schedule override, or click directly on a shift in the timeline.

Start and End are prefilled from the current time. The links beneath each field set common durations without typing a date.

Pick the user taking the shift, then set the period. Rather than typing dates, use the shortcuts:

Field	Shortcuts
Start	now, tomorrow, next week
End	+1 hour, +3 hours, +1 week

Click Save.

Overrides can themselves be overridden by a later override. To remove one, click the override on the timeline and then the red ×.

You can also start an override from the schedules list, using the Override button on any schedule row.

A step-by-step walkthrough on YouTube

Adding overrides in the mobile app

Open the Who is on-call? screen, then tap Override shift on the shift you want to cover. Pick the user taking over, set the start and end, and tap Done.

This is the reason overrides only need the Responder role: someone can hand off a shift from their phone at 2am without an administrator.

On-call widget in the mobile app

The on-call widget in the navigation menu of the mobile app displays your current on-call status and quickly lets you take someone else's on-call.

The on-call status is based on the selected policy levels from the My on-call shifts view. Therefore, the status Not on-call means that you are not on-call in any of the selected policies, but you could be on-call in other policies. Click on the Select policies link to modify your policy selection

FAQ

What happens if there is a gap in a schedule?

If an alert occurs during a time with no coverage in your schedule, then the alert will be escalated immediately to the next escalation level, without waiting for the escalation timeout. If no one is on-call on the entire escalation policy, no one will be notified.

Can I choose my own shift color?

Yes. Open the user menu in the top right, go to About me, and set Shift color.