Get started with on-call

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Introduction

On-call is the practice of always having a team member on standby, ready to respond in case of an urgent incident, even if it occurs outside of the regular working hours. Itโ€™s one of the core aspects of Incident Management  as well as being the key to minimizing downtime and ensuring a reliable service.

On-call schedule is a dedicated calendar allowing teams to assign and monitor shifts.

How on-call alerting works in Uptime

When an incident happens and no one is currently on-call, we notify every team member.

Below, we can see the example incident flow for a monitor configured to alert every team member after 3 minutes if the current on-call person doesn't acknowledge the incident.

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Creating an on-call rotation schedule using a calendar

Before starting with the on-call calendar setup, it's ideal to have already invited all team members that will have on-call duties. If you have your team set up in Uptime, then let's create your first on-call calendar!

Step 1: Naming your on-call calendar

  • Go to Who's on-call โ†’ Add on-call calendar.
  • Name your on-call calendar (for example: "Main calendar").

Step 2: Creating an on-call rotation

  • Scroll down to Pre-fill calendar rotations and select the team members that will rotate the on-call duty.
  • Select the rotation length (it can be anything from a day to multiple weeks).
  • Then select the starting date and time for the on-call rotation to be pre-filled in the calendar.
  • Once that's done, the changes will auto-save.

Common on-call rotation setups

  • Daily rotations mean that the on-call person changes after 24 hours
  • Weekly rotations mean that on-call person changes each week

Step 3: Checking the on-call duties

Now, you can check the current on-call person's details, like email or phone number, or look up future on-call duties.


Next steps to enhance your on-call ๐ŸŽ