Adding a Schedule
Create and manage on-call schedules and rotation for your team, using Squadcast.
An On-call Schedule is a staff rota that defines which team members are available to handle incoming incidents at all hours of the day/night.
When an incident impacts a Service, notifications are sent to the user mentioned in the Service’s Escalation Policy. These users will be the first contact when dealing with issues such as major bugs, capacity issues, or product downtime.
With Squadcast, a default schedule is automatically created when an account gets created.
Prerequisites
The User Role associated with the user in the Team must have required permissions to manage Schedules.
Create a Schedule
To create an on-call schedule,
Navigate to Schedules -> Add Schedule. On the next screen, you will be guided through three creation steps. Navigate between these steps by clicking on any of the steps on the top bar.
1. Add Schedule Details
Enter the Name, Timezone, Owner, Tags, and an optional Description for the schedule.
How to pick a Time Zone?
Each schedule can be configured for a specific timezone. Helps in the case of a distributed team to ensure you get the shift timings right. Add a tag for the timezone to any schedule to denote which timezone is affected by the schedule, such as L1 APAC On-call.
How do Schedules adapt to Daylight Savings Time (DST) changes across the world?
Our system handles the changes corresponding to the start and end of DST for the time zones that it is applicable for.
Rotation shifts and Gaps get re-calculated and displayed accordingly.
No user intervention is expected for manual changes corresponding to DST
In case any observation needs to be reported that does not adhere to the points above, do reach out to us at [email protected]
How to pick an Owner?
A schedule owner is someone who can be contacted to understand, modify or delete the Schedule.
Note: By default, the user who creates the Schedule is it's owner. You may change it using the drop-down.
🔹 Best Practice Tip 🔹 You can assign a user or a squad as a schedule owner.
🔹 Best Practice Tip 🔹 Give your schedules meaningful names that reflect the pattern it follows (24x7, Business, Non-Business, Weekend), the team it is defined for (24x7 L1), and the timezone it affects (L1 APAC on-call).
How to use Tags?
Use tags to organize, classify and add context to your schedules. Adding tags such as Type: 24x7 Business, Environment: Prod, and Team: 24x7 L1 can help structure and add more context to your schedules.
Click Next: Choose Rotation Template, and navigate to the next step.
2. Choose a Rotation Pattern
Next, choose a rotation pattern from the predefined templates listing some of the most common use cases, or you can set up rotations from scratch using the Add one or more custom rotations or events option.
By default, the Daily 24x7 rotation is selected for a schedule.
Note:
If you want to add one-off stand-alone on-call events or a custom template, then, add a custom event and configure the same in the next step.
Note: You can change rotation timings & add users in the next step.
Click Next: Customize Rotation Pattern, and navigate to the next step.
3. Customize Rotations
Add Participants: Enter the participant groups in the order of the rotation. Add more participant groups using the Add participant group button. Each participant group contains one or more users or squads. The rotations happen across participant groups, not within each group's participants.
To reorder participant groups, you can simply drag and drop and the changes will be reflected in the preview.
Start Date: Enter the Start Date of the rotation.
Repeats: Repetitions can be daily, weekly, monthly, or custom. You can also restrict the schedules to specific times of the day or during specific days of the week, or month based on your need. Now, choose the appropriate option:
None - Use this to create a stand-alone event. (Note: This is not an override, overrides can be set up separately).
Daily - Use this to create a daily schedule (applicable for all 7 days of the week).
Weekly - On-call repeats every day, weekly
Monthly - On-call repeats every day, monthly
Custom - Use this to create any other custom shift of your choice. You can customize the number of days/weeks/months you want the on-call to repeat.
On-call repeats once every few days
On-call occurs and repeats on the selected day(s), weekly. Additionally, time intervals (via slots) can be defined, to define the active on-call hours for the chosen day(s)
Change Participants: You can change participants according to the repeat rotation function, i.e., change participants for every new rotation
On-call Start and End Time: Select the Start and End Time for the rotation. This period can span a maximum of 24 hours. This means that the on-call start time can be 9 PM the current day till 9 PM the next day. If the schedule extends into the next day it's represented by a "+1". Users also have the option to manually enter the time range.
Note: You can edit both the On-Call Start and End Time using the dropdown.
On-call hours/ Day: Select the number of hours you want this rotation to be on-call per day.
Note:
On-call Start and End Time and On-call hours/day fields are available for configuration only for repetition options other than “Custom” are selected by the user. When “Custom” is chosen, these parameters will be configured within the specific options chosen.
End Date: Add the End Date for the rotation. You can choose from:
Never - this rotation never ends
On - this rotation ends on the selected date
After - this rotation ends after repeating the specified number of times
Rotation Name: Enter a name for the rotation.
Rotation Colour: Choose a color for your rotation. By default, each of the rotations of every schedule has a color selected (as shown in the preview). Users can choose other color options via the color picker to distinguish between rotations in the schedule.
🔹 Best Practice Tip 🔹 Keep your rotations as simple as possible, preferably with a continuous rotation of the same users to make your on-call schedule easy to manage.
🔹 Best Practice Tip 🔹 You can leverage scheduled overrides to address holidays or schedule conflicts.
Click Save to complete creating the Schedule.
Important:
Add the Schedule to an Escalation Policy to activate it.
Gaps in your Schedule
It is important to ensure that there are no gaps in your Schedule.
You will be able to view gaps both in the creation flow and on the details page of the Schedule, just use the View Gaps toggle.
The Schedule view will show red highlights for all identified gaps in the Schedule. You can consequently make edits to your On-call Schedule.
🔹 Best Practice Tip 🔹 Use the View Gaps toggle during Schedule creation to ensure there are no gaps.
Pause a Schedule
Sometimes you might want to stop using a schedule without deleting it.
For example:
The schedule is a draft that you are not ready to implement.
The schedule is only used for particular occasions, such as on-call shadowing.
Note: Paused schedules are marked grey and they are only shown in the 2-week view.
To pause your schedule,
Navigate to Schedules -> Click on the Pause Schedule icon, against the schedule you wish to pause.
Click Pause. Your Schedule has been halted until you resume it again.
Note: To resume a halted On-Call Schedule, click on the same button and Click Resume.
Export a Schedule
You can sync your Squadcast schedule with other calendar tools you use such as Outlook, iCal, and Google Calendar. You can sync either your individual on-call schedule or the entire on-call schedule.
Note: For any changes that occur in your schedule, we recommend that users generate a new export link and add it to their respective calendar app.
Please be aware that overriding or modifying schedule changes may take up to 24 to 48 hours in your calendar app, a process beyond Squadcast’s control.
To sync Squadcast schedules with your calendar tools,
Navigate to Schedules -> Click on the Export Schedule icon, against the schedule you want to export.
Choose between exporting your own on-call schedule or the entire on-call schedule -> A Calendar link will be available, which can be copied and used in the calendar app of your choice.
Clone a Schedule
Cloning an existing schedule to make a new one with the same users and settings is an easy way to create new schedules at scale.
Note: The cloned schedule will display both the date and time when it was cloned, along with the name of the schedule. You can always choose to edit the schedule name.
To clone a schedule,
Navigate to Schedules -> Click on the Clone Schedule icon, against the schedule you wish to clone.
A copy of the schedule you cloned with a toast message indicating the same.
Edit participants of an existing schedule
Add users to an existing schedule:
Navigate to Schedules -> Click on the Edit Participants icon against the schedule you wish to add users to.
Add users to the Schedule using the type participant’s name option.
You can reorder the participants of the schedule using the drag icon against the participant name.
Remove users from an existing schedule:
Navigate to Schedules -> Click on the Edit Participants icon against the schedule you wish to add users to.
Hover over the participant group, click Edit -> Remove the participants individually, and click Save.
Edit Rotations
To edit rotations,
Navigate to Schedules -> Click on the Edit Rotations icon, against the schedule you wish to edit.
Edit the details of the rotations of the schedule selected -> Click on Save.
Note:
Schedule Start Date Dependency:
The Schedule Start Date depends on the Rotation Start Date.
In cases of multiple rotations within a Schedule, the Schedule Start Date is determined by the earliest Start Date among the rotations.
Rotation Start Date Modification:
Changes in the Start Date of a rotation affect only that specific rotation.
For rotations with altered Start Dates, events will be deleted and re-populated based on the newly selected Start Date.
Other rotations and their events remain unchanged.
Override History:
The history of overrides is preserved, regardless of whether the Start Date is edited.
Overrides, once created, are not deleted, ensuring a comprehensive historical record.
Delete a Schedule
You can delete a schedule if it is no longer needed.
Note: If a schedule is referred to in an escalation policy, users will be required to substitute it with another user, squad, or schedule to maintain the continuity of the escalation process
If the schedule is not linked to any escalation policy, deleting a schedule is a one-step process.
To delete a schedule,
Navigate to Schedules -> Click on the Delete Schedule icon, against the schedule you wish to delete.
Click on Delete. Your Schedule will be deleted.
Have any questions? Ask the community.
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