Tutorial: How to set up an on-call schedule

Step 1: Invite some users

Start by adding a few teammates to share on-call duties with.

Access the side menu and click Settings then Users, then Add User.

Step 2: Create a team

Now that you have some users uploaded, let’s use them to create a team.

In Opsgenie, a user can be a member of multiple teams. Note that before adding a user to a team, the user has to first be added to the account (which we did in Step 1).

From the side bar, click Teams. Click Add Team.

Give your team an easily-recognizable name and description.

Add members by typing their names in the Search for Users field. You’ll see options surface as you begin typing.

Step 4: Create a rotation

Inside the schedule you just created, you’ll see three main components:

• Rotations
• Overrides
• Final schedule

You can think of rotations as the persistent scheduling blocks you put in place, and overrides as any one-time or conditional exceptions to those rotations. The combination of rotations and overrides makes up the final schedule. Ultimately, the final schedule is what Opsgenie uses to send alerts.

As rotations and overrides are defined, Opsgenie automatically updates and displays the final schedule.

Here are some of the key parameters of a rotation:

• Starting date and time: Indicates when the rotation becomes active.
• End date and time: Indicates when the rotation ends and becomes inactive. This is optional, if left unspecified the rotation will continue indefinitely.
• Participants: Any users, teams, and escalations added to the rotation (more on escalations in a bit). There is also a “No-One” option, which lets you designated times without coverage.

You’ll see in the default schedule all your team members are assigned to a rotation. But the one we just created is currently empty. Let’s put some people in it by adding a rotation.

Create a new rotation by clicking Add Rotations by the Rotations label.

You can now see the new rotation in your rotations section. Try by dragging different elements to change the ordering. You can also click the edit bar to edit details, delete rotations, clone, or download rotations.

Fill in the participants, a start time, and rotation type.

Step 5: Set up an override schedule

You can schedule specific modifications to your on-call schedule without modifying your overall rotation. You’ll see the Overrides section between Rotations and Final Schedule. By default it will be empty.

Overrides are helpful for one-off situations when a team member is on vacation or otherwise needs to swap their coverage with someone.

To set up an override, click Add Override.

The user field designates who will take over during the override period. By default your own account is prefilled, but you can change to another user. Be sure to add a start and end time. If you have multiple rotations set up, you can choose which one the override applies to.

Step 6: Set up escalations

Escalations allow you to route alerts to multiple people in a pre-designated order based on conditions you set up. This is helpful for setting up backup responders in case the person on-call isn’t able to respond.

For example, you can escalate the alert to the entire team if the person on-call doesn’t acknowledge the alert within 5 minutes.

Start from your On-Call dashboard (click Teams then On-Call if you’re not already there). Next to escalation policies click Add Escalation.

Add a name and description.

Explore the dropdowns to explore the different ways you can configure an escalation.