Set up reliable on-call rotations with smart escalation policies
With All Quiet, setting up on-call schedules, escalations, and rotations is straightforward. Our user-friendly interface removes complexity, guiding you smoothly through creating a workflow that keeps your team alert and responsive while accounting for different time zones and personal overrides.
Here are three common use cases illustrating how teams on All Quiet typically set up their on-call rotations:
Follow-the-sun rotations enable global teams, especially those distributed worldwide, to leverage time zone differences for around-the-clock coverage. This ensures on-call duties are always managed during the local daytime hours of team members, enhancing responsiveness and minimizing overnight work.
Follow-the-sun rotations enable global teams, especially those distributed worldwide, to leverage time zone differences for around-the-clock coverage. This ensures on-call duties are always managed during the local daytime hours of team members, enhancing responsiveness and minimizing overnight work.
Weekend shifts ensure continuous coverage while respecting work-life balance by rotating weekend duties among team members. Here’s how it works:
Night shifts cover the critical after-hours period, ensuring that incidents are addressed promptly, even during the quietest hours. Setting up night shifts involves:
To access the escalation management page, simply click on the Escalations
option.
Escalation tiers allow incidents to be escalated to the next level when they are not acknowledged / resolved by the members of the current tier or when a manual escalation is triggered. They also allow you to repeat escalations for users that got already alerted.
Check out our example below for a hands-on use case of setting up various escalation tiers.
If you want re-alert the on-call members of one tier in case they did not acknowledge / resolve an incident, you can use our repeat escalation tier
function.
To add a repetition for a specific tier, simply click the label below the tier.
In the overlay, you can set up you repetition rules for the selected tier.
Repeat Escalation Tier
, check the box.Resolves
the incident.In this example, after the initial alert to Tier 1, we chose to repeat the notification twice, with a 5-minute gap between each repetition. This means the alert sequence will be:
If enabled — and if no one in Tier 1 acknowledges / resolves the incident — auto-escalations to Tier 2 will follow.
To enable auto-escalations, you first need to add at least a second escalation tier. Without it, the incident will remain within Tier 1, and no further escalation will occur.
Click + Add Escalation Tier
and select team members to create the second tier.
Next, to activate the auto-escalations between two tiers, click on the label that says “Then, doesn’t auto-escalate” by default.
The repeat
and auto-escalate
features can, of course, be combined. This allows you to notify Tier 1 multiple times before automatically escalating the incident if no one acknowledges / resolves it.
In the overlay, you can set up you auto-escalation rules between the selected tiers.
Auto-escalate to next tier
, check the box.Resolves
the incident.Time Filters
. If added, auto-escalation only take place in the selected times. In the example below, we opted for auto-escalations that happen only during the weekend from Friday afternoon 5 p.m. to Monday morning 8 a.m.Save
to activate auto-escalations.You want to auto-assign an incident to an additional team? To activate auto-assign, click on the same label that shows your current auto-escalation settings.
In the overlay, you can set up you auto-assign rules between the selected teams.
Auto-assign to next selected teams
, check the box.Resolves
the incident. Note that the same rule is used for auto-escalations, if activated.Time Filters
. If added, auto-assign only take place in the selected times. In the example below, we opted for to only auto-assign on Saturdays and Sundays.Save
to activate auto-assign.As the incident is reassigned to a different team or the primary team asks additional people to help, the Assign action starts auto-escalations in the newly assigned team(s). If the incident is assigned to more than one team, auto-escalations are synchronized between those teams and only stop once an action that marks the incident as acknowleged follows after the Assign action / the incident is resolved.
Here’s a breakdown of how reassigning an incident can impact escalations, with examples:
Example 1 - Change Team of an Incident: Assign Incident from Team A to Team B
Example 2 - Escalate Incident to an Additional Team: Assign Incident from Team A to Team A & B
You might want to repeat the escalation tiers to re-alert the on-call members. At the bottom of the page, you will find an element that you can activate by clicking on the label.
Clicking the label opens an overlay.
Resolves
the incident.This is an example of how escalations could be repeated.
We understand that it’s critical to avoid any gaps in your team’s weekly on-call shifts. Therefore, we added an auto fill-up feature that adds on-call team members from higher escalation tiers to lower escalation tiers if there is a gap in one of the lower-tier rotations.
Here’s an example of how it works:
Within the management of escalations, All Quiet allows you to define schedules for each escalation tier. These schedules determine the on-call periods for team members. With schedule customization, you can specify the time of day, such as 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and designate specific weekdays, such as Monday through Friday, for the schedule to be active. This flexibility enables precise control over when team members are available and responsible for incident response within each escalation tier.
To edit the on-call periods of a schedule, simply click on the label located at the top left of the schedule. By clicking on the label, you can access the edit dialogue where you can modify the schedule’s settings. The label will display the current settings, which are set to “everyday” by default, indicating that no specific settings have been defined yet.
In the edit dialogue, you can add as many on-call times as you like for this specific schedule. To start, click + Add On-Call Time
In this example, we want to create a schedule for the weekend, starting on Friday afternoon at 17:00 and ending on Monday morning at 08:00.
Save Schedule
activates the new schedule settings.Check out our example below for a hands-on use case setting up two schedules within an escalation tier.
Round Robin ensures fair and structured incident distribution, preventing any single person from being overwhelmed.
While our Rotations feature automatically cycles on-call responsibilities over time (e.g., week over week for fair coverage), Round Robin steps in when multiple people are on-call simultaneously - assigning incidents in a rotating order.
This guarantees:
At All Quiet, you can activate Round Robin for each schedule seperately. When enabled, Round Robin distributes incidents evenly among all users who are on-call at the same time within this schedule.
To activate Round Robin for a schedule, first click the “No Round Robin” button.
An overlay opens:
Here’s a little example how it works in practice:
Here’s how alerting will rotate with the Round Robin settings from above:
# Incident | Notified On-Call Members |
---|---|
Incident 1 | Peer, Sandra |
Incident 2 | Peer, Nick |
Incident 3 | Sandra, Nick |
Incident 4 | Peer, Sandra |
… | … |
At All Quiet, Rotations
can be added on Schedule
level. Rotations ensure fair distribution of on-call responsibilities among team members.
To add rotations to a schedule, simply click on the label located at the top right of the schedule. It always shows the current rotation settings of the schedule, which are set to No Rotation
by default.
Clicking on it will open the rotation settings dialogue, allowing you to configure and customize the rotation settings according to your requirements.
First, please select how often your on-call duties should rotate. You can choose between the following options:
Next, you need to select your rotation mode, either Explicit
or Auto
. Below, we’ll explain how both modes work.
Explicit
rotation mode, you manually define the members of each rotation group in the next step.Weekly
- in the previous step.Handoff Day
and, depending on the schedule, a Handoff Time
for the on-call duty. Here, we decide on-call duty should move to the next rotation group every Monday at midnight.Save Rotation
to activate your changes.Explicit
rotations, so we need to add at least a 2nd Rotation Group
to make rotations work.Add Rotation Group
to create a new rotation group and add members to it.After adding a 2nd rotation group,
You can check your team’s calendar to see how the rotation will affect future on-call responsibilities.
Auto-rotations create rotations for all members of a schedule without having to add rotations groups manually. All users can be added to one single group.
In the example below, we have 5 members in the Tier 1, Schedule 1.
No Rotation
button.Next, select how often your on-call duties should rotate. You can choose between the following options:
Auto
as rotation mode. This mode will automatically rotate the group of users in the schedule.Auto Rotation Group Size
. This is the number of persons on-call in each rotation group.Weekly
- in the last step.Handoff Day
and, depending on the schedule, a Handoff Time
for the on-call duty. Here, we decide on-call duty should rotate every Monday at midnight.Save Rotation
to activate your changes.You can check your team’s calendar to see how the rotation will affect future on-call responsibilities.
Auto Rotations
, they are automatically included in the rotations. If you remove users, the rotations are automatically adjusted to fill the gaps.To view the calendar of a team and gain an overview of team members’ on-call and off-call periods within each escalation tier, follow this step:
Access the team calendar page: Navigate to the team management section or select the specific team from the menu. Look for the option labeled “Team Calendar”.
The All Quiet calendar provides a visual representation of the on-call schedules for your teams, ensuring that everyone knows their responsibilities at a glance. Below is a breakdown of the key elements of the calendar interface:
The weekly view in the All Quiet calendar provides a detailed look at the team’s on-call schedule, with each day of the week displayed as a separate column. This view contrasts with the monthly perspective by offering a granular, day-by-day breakdown of on-call shifts.
Team Administrators can enter the Team > Overrides
section to add overrides for all team members.
In order to do so, select the team you wan to add an overrride to.
Overrides
Add Member Override
You can select the duration of the override, the type, the user and, optionally, the covering user. Saved overrides will be visible in your team’s calendar.
This section in All Quiet’s documentation focuses on the crucial aspect of managing personal availability, ultimately contributing to a calm and efficient working environment, ensuring smooth coordination and coverage for on-call responsibilities.
Within the main menu, you will find a link titled “Your Availability” which dynamically indicates your current on-call status by displaying a blinking red or green indicator. By clicking this link, you will be directed to the “Your Availability” page, where you can conveniently view all your upcoming on-call duties across various teams.
To create an individual override, such as a “fill-in” for a colleague on vacation or for your own vacation, you can add online or offline schedules with specified start and end dates where you can chooose who will cover your shifts during this time period. Simply click the “Add personal Override” button in the “Your Availability” section of the web app.
A calendar will appear, allowing you to select the start date and end date. This intuitive process enables you to establish personalized overrides with fixed durations, ensuring accurate representation of your availability during specific periods.
The screenshot demonstrates an example of an individual vacation schedule (marked as “offline”) spanning three consecutive days. However, it is worth noting that during this period, the user should have been on call, as indicated by the green schedules in the other columns. Additionally, you can observe that the online status changes to “offline” during this scheduled time off. To modify or remove an existing schedule, simply click on the respective schedule and make the necessary adjustments. This straightforward process allows for easy editing or deletion of individual schedules, ensuring accurate representation of availability within the system.
Stay informed with our automatic on-call reminders. By default, you’ll get an email one day prior to your shift to help you prepare. Prefer not to be reminded? No problem. Just deselect the reminder in your account settings.
Managing time zones in All Quiet is straightforward, ensuring your team’s schedules and rotations are always synced. Here’s how it works:
In this setup, we aim to ensure round-the-clock incident coverage with a focused approach:
Add first schedule
In your team, go to Schedule & Escalations
, click on +Add Escalation Tier 1
& add both engineers to it.
Create an auto-rotation for your schedule
We want to add auto-rotations to the first schedule, so we click on the No Rotation
label.
Edit Rotation
weekly
.Save Rotation
to activate the auto-rotation.
Create a New Tier
You’re done with Escalation Tier 1 and can set up subsequent Escalation Tiers to ensure no incident goes unnoticed.
+ Add Escalation Tier 2
Customize Schedules
Now, we need to customize the schedule of the engineering manager to account for their half-day shift.
everyday
to edit the schedule & adjust the daily hours to 00:00-12:00.Repeat escalations if no one reacts
If no one acknowledged an incident 20 minutes after escalation to Tier 2, we want to repeat the escalations once.
Check your Calendar
We’re done now and can check our on-call rotation directly under Calendar
. Also, you’ll always see who is currently on-call in your relevant tiers.
Set up reliable on-call rotations with smart escalation policies
With All Quiet, setting up on-call schedules, escalations, and rotations is straightforward. Our user-friendly interface removes complexity, guiding you smoothly through creating a workflow that keeps your team alert and responsive while accounting for different time zones and personal overrides.
Here are three common use cases illustrating how teams on All Quiet typically set up their on-call rotations:
Follow-the-sun rotations enable global teams, especially those distributed worldwide, to leverage time zone differences for around-the-clock coverage. This ensures on-call duties are always managed during the local daytime hours of team members, enhancing responsiveness and minimizing overnight work.
Follow-the-sun rotations enable global teams, especially those distributed worldwide, to leverage time zone differences for around-the-clock coverage. This ensures on-call duties are always managed during the local daytime hours of team members, enhancing responsiveness and minimizing overnight work.
Weekend shifts ensure continuous coverage while respecting work-life balance by rotating weekend duties among team members. Here’s how it works:
Night shifts cover the critical after-hours period, ensuring that incidents are addressed promptly, even during the quietest hours. Setting up night shifts involves:
To access the escalation management page, simply click on the Escalations
option.
Escalation tiers allow incidents to be escalated to the next level when they are not acknowledged / resolved by the members of the current tier or when a manual escalation is triggered. They also allow you to repeat escalations for users that got already alerted.
Check out our example below for a hands-on use case of setting up various escalation tiers.
If you want re-alert the on-call members of one tier in case they did not acknowledge / resolve an incident, you can use our repeat escalation tier
function.
To add a repetition for a specific tier, simply click the label below the tier.
In the overlay, you can set up you repetition rules for the selected tier.
Repeat Escalation Tier
, check the box.Resolves
the incident.In this example, after the initial alert to Tier 1, we chose to repeat the notification twice, with a 5-minute gap between each repetition. This means the alert sequence will be:
If enabled — and if no one in Tier 1 acknowledges / resolves the incident — auto-escalations to Tier 2 will follow.
To enable auto-escalations, you first need to add at least a second escalation tier. Without it, the incident will remain within Tier 1, and no further escalation will occur.
Click + Add Escalation Tier
and select team members to create the second tier.
Next, to activate the auto-escalations between two tiers, click on the label that says “Then, doesn’t auto-escalate” by default.
The repeat
and auto-escalate
features can, of course, be combined. This allows you to notify Tier 1 multiple times before automatically escalating the incident if no one acknowledges / resolves it.
In the overlay, you can set up you auto-escalation rules between the selected tiers.
Auto-escalate to next tier
, check the box.Resolves
the incident.Time Filters
. If added, auto-escalation only take place in the selected times. In the example below, we opted for auto-escalations that happen only during the weekend from Friday afternoon 5 p.m. to Monday morning 8 a.m.Save
to activate auto-escalations.You want to auto-assign an incident to an additional team? To activate auto-assign, click on the same label that shows your current auto-escalation settings.
In the overlay, you can set up you auto-assign rules between the selected teams.
Auto-assign to next selected teams
, check the box.Resolves
the incident. Note that the same rule is used for auto-escalations, if activated.Time Filters
. If added, auto-assign only take place in the selected times. In the example below, we opted for to only auto-assign on Saturdays and Sundays.Save
to activate auto-assign.As the incident is reassigned to a different team or the primary team asks additional people to help, the Assign action starts auto-escalations in the newly assigned team(s). If the incident is assigned to more than one team, auto-escalations are synchronized between those teams and only stop once an action that marks the incident as acknowleged follows after the Assign action / the incident is resolved.
Here’s a breakdown of how reassigning an incident can impact escalations, with examples:
Example 1 - Change Team of an Incident: Assign Incident from Team A to Team B
Example 2 - Escalate Incident to an Additional Team: Assign Incident from Team A to Team A & B
You might want to repeat the escalation tiers to re-alert the on-call members. At the bottom of the page, you will find an element that you can activate by clicking on the label.
Clicking the label opens an overlay.
Resolves
the incident.This is an example of how escalations could be repeated.
We understand that it’s critical to avoid any gaps in your team’s weekly on-call shifts. Therefore, we added an auto fill-up feature that adds on-call team members from higher escalation tiers to lower escalation tiers if there is a gap in one of the lower-tier rotations.
Here’s an example of how it works:
Within the management of escalations, All Quiet allows you to define schedules for each escalation tier. These schedules determine the on-call periods for team members. With schedule customization, you can specify the time of day, such as 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and designate specific weekdays, such as Monday through Friday, for the schedule to be active. This flexibility enables precise control over when team members are available and responsible for incident response within each escalation tier.
To edit the on-call periods of a schedule, simply click on the label located at the top left of the schedule. By clicking on the label, you can access the edit dialogue where you can modify the schedule’s settings. The label will display the current settings, which are set to “everyday” by default, indicating that no specific settings have been defined yet.
In the edit dialogue, you can add as many on-call times as you like for this specific schedule. To start, click + Add On-Call Time
In this example, we want to create a schedule for the weekend, starting on Friday afternoon at 17:00 and ending on Monday morning at 08:00.
Save Schedule
activates the new schedule settings.Check out our example below for a hands-on use case setting up two schedules within an escalation tier.
Round Robin ensures fair and structured incident distribution, preventing any single person from being overwhelmed.
While our Rotations feature automatically cycles on-call responsibilities over time (e.g., week over week for fair coverage), Round Robin steps in when multiple people are on-call simultaneously - assigning incidents in a rotating order.
This guarantees:
At All Quiet, you can activate Round Robin for each schedule seperately. When enabled, Round Robin distributes incidents evenly among all users who are on-call at the same time within this schedule.
To activate Round Robin for a schedule, first click the “No Round Robin” button.
An overlay opens:
Here’s a little example how it works in practice:
Here’s how alerting will rotate with the Round Robin settings from above:
# Incident | Notified On-Call Members |
---|---|
Incident 1 | Peer, Sandra |
Incident 2 | Peer, Nick |
Incident 3 | Sandra, Nick |
Incident 4 | Peer, Sandra |
… | … |
At All Quiet, Rotations
can be added on Schedule
level. Rotations ensure fair distribution of on-call responsibilities among team members.
To add rotations to a schedule, simply click on the label located at the top right of the schedule. It always shows the current rotation settings of the schedule, which are set to No Rotation
by default.
Clicking on it will open the rotation settings dialogue, allowing you to configure and customize the rotation settings according to your requirements.
First, please select how often your on-call duties should rotate. You can choose between the following options:
Next, you need to select your rotation mode, either Explicit
or Auto
. Below, we’ll explain how both modes work.
Explicit
rotation mode, you manually define the members of each rotation group in the next step.Weekly
- in the previous step.Handoff Day
and, depending on the schedule, a Handoff Time
for the on-call duty. Here, we decide on-call duty should move to the next rotation group every Monday at midnight.Save Rotation
to activate your changes.Explicit
rotations, so we need to add at least a 2nd Rotation Group
to make rotations work.Add Rotation Group
to create a new rotation group and add members to it.After adding a 2nd rotation group,
You can check your team’s calendar to see how the rotation will affect future on-call responsibilities.
Auto-rotations create rotations for all members of a schedule without having to add rotations groups manually. All users can be added to one single group.
In the example below, we have 5 members in the Tier 1, Schedule 1.
No Rotation
button.Next, select how often your on-call duties should rotate. You can choose between the following options:
Auto
as rotation mode. This mode will automatically rotate the group of users in the schedule.Auto Rotation Group Size
. This is the number of persons on-call in each rotation group.Weekly
- in the last step.Handoff Day
and, depending on the schedule, a Handoff Time
for the on-call duty. Here, we decide on-call duty should rotate every Monday at midnight.Save Rotation
to activate your changes.You can check your team’s calendar to see how the rotation will affect future on-call responsibilities.
Auto Rotations
, they are automatically included in the rotations. If you remove users, the rotations are automatically adjusted to fill the gaps.To view the calendar of a team and gain an overview of team members’ on-call and off-call periods within each escalation tier, follow this step:
Access the team calendar page: Navigate to the team management section or select the specific team from the menu. Look for the option labeled “Team Calendar”.
The All Quiet calendar provides a visual representation of the on-call schedules for your teams, ensuring that everyone knows their responsibilities at a glance. Below is a breakdown of the key elements of the calendar interface:
The weekly view in the All Quiet calendar provides a detailed look at the team’s on-call schedule, with each day of the week displayed as a separate column. This view contrasts with the monthly perspective by offering a granular, day-by-day breakdown of on-call shifts.
Team Administrators can enter the Team > Overrides
section to add overrides for all team members.
In order to do so, select the team you wan to add an overrride to.
Overrides
Add Member Override
You can select the duration of the override, the type, the user and, optionally, the covering user. Saved overrides will be visible in your team’s calendar.
This section in All Quiet’s documentation focuses on the crucial aspect of managing personal availability, ultimately contributing to a calm and efficient working environment, ensuring smooth coordination and coverage for on-call responsibilities.
Within the main menu, you will find a link titled “Your Availability” which dynamically indicates your current on-call status by displaying a blinking red or green indicator. By clicking this link, you will be directed to the “Your Availability” page, where you can conveniently view all your upcoming on-call duties across various teams.
To create an individual override, such as a “fill-in” for a colleague on vacation or for your own vacation, you can add online or offline schedules with specified start and end dates where you can chooose who will cover your shifts during this time period. Simply click the “Add personal Override” button in the “Your Availability” section of the web app.
A calendar will appear, allowing you to select the start date and end date. This intuitive process enables you to establish personalized overrides with fixed durations, ensuring accurate representation of your availability during specific periods.
The screenshot demonstrates an example of an individual vacation schedule (marked as “offline”) spanning three consecutive days. However, it is worth noting that during this period, the user should have been on call, as indicated by the green schedules in the other columns. Additionally, you can observe that the online status changes to “offline” during this scheduled time off. To modify or remove an existing schedule, simply click on the respective schedule and make the necessary adjustments. This straightforward process allows for easy editing or deletion of individual schedules, ensuring accurate representation of availability within the system.
Stay informed with our automatic on-call reminders. By default, you’ll get an email one day prior to your shift to help you prepare. Prefer not to be reminded? No problem. Just deselect the reminder in your account settings.
Managing time zones in All Quiet is straightforward, ensuring your team’s schedules and rotations are always synced. Here’s how it works:
In this setup, we aim to ensure round-the-clock incident coverage with a focused approach:
Add first schedule
In your team, go to Schedule & Escalations
, click on +Add Escalation Tier 1
& add both engineers to it.
Create an auto-rotation for your schedule
We want to add auto-rotations to the first schedule, so we click on the No Rotation
label.
Edit Rotation
weekly
.Save Rotation
to activate the auto-rotation.
Create a New Tier
You’re done with Escalation Tier 1 and can set up subsequent Escalation Tiers to ensure no incident goes unnoticed.
+ Add Escalation Tier 2
Customize Schedules
Now, we need to customize the schedule of the engineering manager to account for their half-day shift.
everyday
to edit the schedule & adjust the daily hours to 00:00-12:00.Repeat escalations if no one reacts
If no one acknowledged an incident 20 minutes after escalation to Tier 2, we want to repeat the escalations once.
Check your Calendar
We’re done now and can check our on-call rotation directly under Calendar
. Also, you’ll always see who is currently on-call in your relevant tiers.