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On call scheduling software and on call rotation software for engineering teams

An on-call schedule has one job: at any minute of the day, it must name the person who answers. IncidentBot keeps that answer correct through holidays, sick days, time zones and team changes, and it shows managers whether the load is fair. Schedules feed escalation policies and paging directly, so there is no second copy to keep in sync. As on call rotation software it covers weekly, daily, split-week and follow-the-sun rotations, overrides and swaps, and plans start at 24 USD per user billed annually, with read-only stakeholders free.

Run a sample incident

Payments primary, weekly rotation

LayerMembersHandoffTime zone
Weekday 4 engineers Monday 10:00 America/New_York
Weekend 3 engineers Saturday 09:00 America/New_York
Shadow 1 new engineer Monday 10:00 Europe/London

On call rotation software that fits how your team works

A schedule is built from layers. Each layer is a rotation with its own members, length, handoff time and time zone. Layers stack, so you can combine a weekday rotation with a separate weekend rotation, or a primary with a shadow for new engineers.

  • Daily, weekly and custom rotation lengths, with handoff at the hour you choose.
  • Restrictions by day and time, for example business hours only or nights and weekends only.
  • Primary and secondary schedules for the same service, used as separate escalation tiers.
  • Shadow layers so new engineers see real pages before they carry the pager alone.
  • A preview of the next weeks before you save, so you see exactly who is on call when.

Follow-the-sun schedules across time zones

Teams spread across regions can hand the pager from one region to the next, so nobody is paged at night for routine alerts. Each layer keeps its own time zone, and daylight saving changes are handled by the calendar, not by someone editing the schedule twice a year.

  • Two or three regional layers with handoffs at local business hours.
  • Per-layer time zones shown in each engineer's own local time.
  • Gaps highlighted before you save, so a missing hour never goes unnoticed.

Overrides and swaps without a manager in the loop

Plans change. An engineer who needs Tuesday night off asks a colleague to take it, the colleague accepts, and the schedule updates. The swap is recorded, and the escalation policy pages whoever is actually on call.

  • Overrides for a single hour, a night or several days.
  • Swap requests sent and accepted by engineers in the web app, the mobile app or Slack.
  • Out of office handled with an override, so the page goes to the cover and not to an empty inbox.
  • A full history of every change for audits and reviews.

On call schedule software that lives in your calendar

Every engineer can subscribe to their shifts from Google Calendar, Outlook or any calendar that reads an iCal feed. Shifts appear next to meetings and holidays, which is where people actually plan their week.

  • Personal feed with only your shifts, and team feeds for the whole rotation.
  • Reminders before a shift starts and a handoff summary when it ends.
  • Slack notice to the team channel at every handoff with who is on call now.

On-call load report

Burnout starts with an uneven rotation. The on-call load report shows, per engineer, how many hours they were on call, how many times they were paged and how many of those pages came outside business hours or at night. Managers use it to rebalance rotations and to argue for fixing noisy alerts.

The on-call load report is included in the Team plan and above. See pricing.

  • Hours on call, pages received and out-of-hours pages per person.
  • Comparison across the team for any period.
  • Links from each page to the incident, so noisy alert sources are easy to spot.

Import schedules from Opsgenie or PagerDuty

If your rotations already exist in Opsgenie or PagerDuty, IncidentBot imports schedules and escalation policies, including layers, members and restrictions. Atlassian has announced the end of Opsgenie as a standalone product and is moving customers to Jira Service Management and Compass, so many teams are choosing their next on call scheduling tool now.

Schedules drive paging and escalation

Escalation policies point at schedules, not at people, so whoever is on call right now is the one who is paged. When nobody acknowledges, the next tier takes over. Tiers, timeouts and paging channels are covered on the on call management page, and the alerts that trigger them on the incident alerting page. You can watch a schedule and a policy work together in the incident simulator.

Questions

How much does on call schedule software cost?

IncidentBot on call schedule software costs 24 USD per user per month billed annually on Starter (49 USD monthly), with up to 3 schedules, paging by push, SMS, voice, email and Slack and one public status page. Team costs 49 USD billed annually with unlimited schedules and unlimited SMS and voice. Only people who can be on call need a seat.

How many schedules can we have?

Starter includes up to 3 schedules and 3 escalation policies. Team and above include unlimited schedules, rotations, overrides and escalation policies.

Do engineers need a paid seat to be on a schedule?

Yes. Anyone who can be on call is a responder seat. Stakeholder viewers who only watch incidents are included in every plan and are not billed.

Can a schedule cover several services?

Yes. One schedule can be used by as many escalation policies and services as you like, and one service can use several schedules across its tiers.

Put your rotation in one place

Import your current schedule or build a new one, then connect your first alert source.