> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.sreagent.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Set up on-call

> Create a rotation, cover shifts with overrides on the calendar, choose how people are paged, and acknowledge from your phone or Slack.

export const Plan = ({tier}) => <Badge color="blue">{tier} plan</Badge>;

On-call tells SRE Agent who holds the pager now, pages that person when an alert needs a human, and keeps paging until someone acknowledges.

<Plan tier="Free" />

Every role can open **On-call** and see who is on call. Organization admins create and edit schedules. Any member can cover shifts. See [Cover a shift](#cover-a-shift) for the exact rules.

<Frame caption="The On-call page shows the rotation and who is on call now. The calendar below it marks overrides, and Recent notifications stay empty until a page, shift reminder or override notice is sent.">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/sre-agent/Raxc5b9_k_oZDOIp/images/screenshots/oncall.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=Raxc5b9_k_oZDOIp&q=85&s=aa6ea6dc297752e4a5d6fd8ed7b523fd" alt="On-call page with the Primary on-call weekly rotation, an empty Recent notifications card, and a month calendar of shifts for three people with override markers" width="2880" height="2000" data-path="images/screenshots/oncall.png" />
</Frame>

## Create a schedule and its rotation

<Steps>
  <Step title="Add the schedule">
    Go to **On-call** and click **New schedule**. Fill in **Name**, **Timezone (IANA)** such as
    `America/New_York`, and **Rotation**: **Daily**, **Weekly** or **Custom** (then **Days per
    rotation**). A weekly rotation also takes a **Handoff weekday**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set the handoff">
    Enter the **Handoff time (local, 24h HH:MM)** and **Starts on (YYYY-MM-DD)**. Nobody is on call
    before the start date. Leave **Enabled** ticked and click **Save**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Build the roster">
    On the schedule's card click **Roster**. Click `+ email` to add members, use the arrows to set
    the order (the first person takes the first shift), then click **Save roster**.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## What you see

Each schedule card shows **On call now**. The answer is worked out each time from the roster, the rotation and any overrides, so an edit takes effect immediately. Handoffs happen at the local time in the schedule's own timezone, so a daylight saving change makes a shift 23 or 25 hours instead of silently drifting. A member who leaves the organization or is disabled is skipped when their shift comes up, and the next person on the roster takes it.

## Cover a shift

An override puts someone else on call for a window, for example "Ana covers for Ben from Friday 18:00 to Monday 09:00".

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the calendar">
    Click **Calendar** on the schedule's card. Use **Prev**, **Today** and **Next** to change month.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Pick the days">
    Click a day. A panel lists every shift on it with exact start and end times, who holds it, and
    whether it comes from the rotation or an override. To cover several days, click **Select
    range**, then click the last day.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Cover them">
    Click **Cover these days**. The form opens prefilled from the first handoff to the handoff after
    your last day. Fill in **Who covers**, adjust **Starts** and **Ends** (`YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM`, in
    the schedule's timezone) and add **Reason (optional)**. The form shows what the override
    replaces before you save. Click **Save override**.
  </Step>
</Steps>

**Add override** at the bottom of the calendar opens the same form blank. An override covers at most 90 days. Overridden spans carry an **override** badge on the calendar, and **Edit** and **Remove** appear in the day panel for the ones you may change.

Any member can cover their own shift: you are the covering person and can edit or remove overrides where you are the covering person. Naming someone else, or changing an override that covers someone else, needs an organization admin.

## Send pages to the person on call

On-call does nothing by itself until an alert reaches the schedule.

1. Go to **Settings**, **Outbound Alerting** and click **Add Config**. Set **Provider Type** to **On-call schedule** and choose the schedule under **On-call schedule**.
2. Click **Add Rule** to say which alerts page it: match on source, severity or labels, and set **Escalate after (minutes)** to wait before paging or leave it empty to page at once.
3. To mention the person on call in the Slack thread of a service's alerts, set **Mention on call (optional)** on that service's route under **Settings**, **Notifications**, **Per-Service Alert Channels**.

To choose how people are told and how to acknowledge a page, see [Notifications and acknowledging pages](/guides/respond/on-call-notifications).

## Related

* [Triage alerts](/guides/respond/alerts): the alerts that page the person on call.
* [Work incidents from Slack](/guides/respond/slack): mention the person on call in alert threads.
* [Connect PagerDuty](/guides/respond/pagerduty): page PagerDuty as well or instead.


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