Create a rotation

A rotation is the core element of Round Robin: a pool of people (added directly or through Slack user groups) who take turns being on duty. This tutorial walks you through creating your first rotation from the web dashboard (the primary way to manage Round Robin), with Slack as a quick alternative.

Create a rotation from the dashboard

1. Sign in at app.roundrobinbot.eu and open Rotations. This page lists all rotations you can see, with search and filters.

   

2. Click Create Rotation.

3. Work through the three tabs: Details (name, code, description, public/private), People & Groups (owners, members, member user groups), and Channels. Everything is saved together.

   

4. Click Create Rotation. You land on the new rotation’s page, where you can continue with schedules, templates, and integrations.

A few dashboard-specific details:

• The Code field accepts only letters, numbers, and hyphens, and is stored uppercase.
• You are pre-filled as an owner and cannot remove yourself.
• You can leave members, groups, and channels empty and configure them later from the rotation page or from Slack.

Rotation fields

Field	Required	Plan	What it does
Name	Yes	All	Identifies the rotation everywhere.
Description	No	All	Helps members understand what the rotation is for.
Code	No	All	A short, memorable identifier (no spaces) other users can use to notify whoever is on duty by mentioning the bot, e.g. @Round Robin ENG-ONCALL. See Mentions.
Duty size	No	Pro	How many members are on duty at the same time (default 1).
Owners	Yes	Pro	Owners manage the rotation and are the only ones who can edit it. Being an owner does not make you a member. You must always be in the owners list yourself: the form is rejected otherwise, so you cannot lock yourself out. On the free plan the field is hidden and you become the owner automatically.
Visibility	No	Pro	Mark the rotation as private to make it visible only to owners and members. Admins and owners can still see every rotation, private ones included: pick Everyone’s rotations on the Rotations page. By default a rotation is public. On the free plan there is nothing to hide from anybody, so every rotation is public.
Channels	No	All	Channels notified on rotation events, such as a change of duty. The bot cannot post to private channels it is not a member of. A rotation can also keep a channel’s membership equal to whoever is on call (see Sync a channel’s membership).
Members	No	All	Users in the on-call pool who take duty turns.
Groups	No	All	Slack user groups whose members join the pool. If the group’s membership changes later, the rotation updates automatically.

The channel picker is empty, or a channel is missing

The Channels picker only offers channels Round Robin has been invited to. It is not a search of your whole workspace. If it comes up empty, the bot is not in any channel yet.

Invite it from Slack in the channel you want to use:

/invite @Round Robin

Then come back and press the reload button next to the picker; it can take about a minute for a newly joined channel to appear. Two more rules apply: a private channel shows up only if you are a member of it too, and #general and Slack Connect shared channels are never offered, because the bot cannot manage them.

At the rotation limit, creation is blocked

If your workspace is at or above its plan’s rotation limit, no new rotations can be created until you free a slot or upgrade. See Billing.

At the people limit, new members are refused

Your plan includes a number of people in rotation (8 on the Free plan). Once they are all in a rotation, adding somebody new is refused and nothing is saved. Adding somebody who is already in another rotation still works, since they are already counted. See Billing.

The rotation page

Opening a rotation shows who is on duty now, who takes over next and when, and how much the rotation covers, before you click anything. Underneath are six tabs, opening on the Schedule:

• Schedule: the cadence that drives the rotation, when it next hands over, and its time zone.
• Plan: who is due next, and when, for the whole upcoming period. A rotation you rotate by hand, or one that picks at random, has no plan ahead and says so.
• Roster: the people in the rotation, in turn order, and the Slack user groups it draws from.
• Channels: the channels the rotation posts in.
• History: every shift that has already happened, for any date range, exportable as CSV or JSON.
• Activity: every change made to the rotation, and who made it. See See who changed what.

Everything you can configure lives behind the Settings button at the top. The rarer actions (the handover note, disabling the rotation, deleting it) are in the ⋯ menu next to it.

Members from other workspaces and organizations

Rotations aren’t limited to full members of your workspace:

• Guests (single- or multi-channel) can be rotation members like anyone else. They are marked (guest) in the pickers. Note a Slack platform limitation: guests can’t mention user groups, so they can’t use an on-duty group handle to reach whoever is on duty. Mentioning the bot with the rotation’s code (@Round Robin CODE) works for them in channels the bot is in.
• Slack Enterprise Grid: the people and user-group pickers search your whole organization, not just the current workspace. Results from another workspace show a badge with that workspace’s name, and cross-workspace members work in rotations like local ones.
• External people (from another organization, connected through a Slack Connect shared channel) can take duty turns, and are marked with an external badge in pickers and member lists. Because Round Robin isn’t installed in their organization, some things can’t work for them: the bot can’t send them direct messages, can’t add them to on-duty user groups, and won’t sync them into channels. Reach them by notifying a shared channel the rotation posts to.

Edit a rotation

Open the rotation from the Rotations list and edit it. The same tabs appear pre-populated with the current values: use People & Groups to manage owners, members, member user groups, and duty size, and Channels to change which channels are notified.

External rotations own their own members

Rotations linked to an external schedule (PagerDuty or OpsGenie) are externally managed: you cannot edit their members or duty size, because the on-call pool is synced from the integration.

From Slack

Creating and editing rotations happens in the web dashboard (above), because the forms are richer there and everything stays in one place. Inside Slack you view and act on rotations: see who is on call, rotate duty, and summon whoever is on duty. See Round Robin in Slack for the full Slack surface.

Two quick ways to jump into creating a rotation:

• Open the bot’s App Home and press New rotation: it takes you straight to the dashboard form.
• If you use an AI assistant connected to the MCP server, just ask it, e.g. “create a rotation called Payments On-Call with me and Dana.”

Next steps

• Create or edit a schedule to rotate duty automatically.
• Customize messages the bot posts on duty changes.