What is an on-call rotation?
An on-call rotation is an ordered schedule that assigns operational responsibility to different people over time. It should tell the monitoring system who to contact, tell the team who owns the current shift and provide a next step when the first responder is unavailable.
A calendar alone cannot handle that full workflow. IncidentRelay combines rotations with alert routes, notification channels, reminders and escalation policies.
Keep current ownership unambiguous
Each route is connected to a team and can use a rotation or escalation policy to select the responsible person. When an alert arrives, IncidentRelay calculates the current on-call user and records the operational context with the incident.
This avoids relying on a chat topic, a pinned spreadsheet or the collective memory of whoever is awake. Those systems work beautifully until they become important.
Layered coverage
Rotation layers make it possible to model schedules beyond a single repeating list. A team can use layers for different time windows, coverage groups or primary and secondary responsibilities. IncidentRelay calculates the final schedule from those rules.
- Maintain separate membership per layer.
- Define restrictions for working hours or coverage windows.
- Preserve historical and future membership periods.
- View the resulting owner in the operational calendar.
Shift swaps and overrides
An override temporarily replaces the scheduled rotation member. It is useful for vacations, sickness, shift trades and short-term coverage changes. The base rotation stays intact, so the schedule returns to normal automatically after the override ends.
From rotation to escalation
A rotation selects the current responder. An escalation policy defines what happens next. IncidentRelay can repeat reminders, move to another user or rotation and continue through ordered policy steps until someone acknowledges the alert.
| Component | Operational purpose |
|---|---|
| Rotation | Selects the person currently responsible. |
| Override | Temporarily replaces the scheduled person. |
| Reminder | Repeats delivery while an alert remains unacknowledged. |
| Escalation policy | Moves responsibility through ordered users or rotations. |
Rotation visibility
Teams can inspect schedules in IncidentRelay and subscribe through CalDAV or private ICS feeds. This gives responders calendar visibility without moving the source of truth into a third-party calendar application.
Open-source and self-hosted
IncidentRelay runs in your infrastructure and stores rotation, user, alert and incident data in your database. It can be deployed with Docker Compose, RPM packages, systemd or Kubernetes using the included Helm chart.
Review the changelog and test real handoffs and escalation paths before relying on it for production coverage.