The rotation page

Every rotation has one page. The top of it answers the two questions people open it for, and the tabs below hold everything else.

The top of the page

Two cards, always.

Current duty names whoever is on call right now. Rotate now hands over to the next person on the list without waiting for the schedule, and Set on duty puts a person you name on duty instead, which is what you want when somebody goes offline and the cover is a specific colleague rather than whoever is next.

Next shift names who takes over and when.

Above them, under the rotation’s name, is a line of what this rotation is: whether it rotates automatically or by hand, whether it draws its next person at random, whether it is private, and whether it keeps an on-duty user group or writes the channel topic. Only what is true of this rotation is listed. A rotation that is switched off says Disabled beside its name.

Handover note is in the page header, with a dot when a note has been written. Copy link is in the … menu beside it, along with enabling, disabling and deleting the rotation.

Reading times in your own clock

A rotation can be written in a time zone that is not yours. The Times control in the page header reads every time on the page in whatever clock you pick, and remembers it. It changes nothing about the rotation: the hours a rotation covers are still the hours somebody set.

Coverage

Coverage is when this rotation is covered, and who is on call in each stretch of it.

The tab draws one band per coverage window. A band names the window, states the hours it covers and the clock they are read in, and says whether it is open right now. Under it is a row for each lane, naming whoever holds it and the list it deals from.

When an open lane has nobody on it, a line above the bands says which one, and lists them when there is more than one. The lane itself says Nobody on call from the name of the list it deals from, and that name opens the list, because putting somebody on that list is the fix. Nothing is said while the rotation is working: a rotation outside its hours is doing what it was set up to do, and so is one where everybody is covered.

Everything on the tab is a door to the thing it names. The pencil in a band head opens that window, the one on a lane label opens the lane, and a list is opened by its own name in the row that deals from it. Add a window and Add a lane are on the card header.

A row with nobody in it because its window is shut is the rotation working as arranged, and is not marked. A row with nobody in it while its window is open is drawn as an empty amber track, because it means a page arriving now reaches nobody.

A band states when its window is open, which is a different question from whether anybody is on call in it. A window can be open around the clock and still have nobody on it, and when that happens the band says both.

Each row carries its own Rotate and Set on duty, so you can move the lane that is stuck without disturbing the others.

Lanes

A lane is one person on duty at a time. Most rotations have one, which is a single person on call.

A second lane means two people on duty at once, each from a list of their own: a frontend engineer and a backend engineer, or a primary and a secondary. Each lane says which list it deals from, and on a rotation with more than one coverage window it can deal from a different list in each.

A lane’s page also shows where it appears: every window it crosses, the list each of those cells deals from, and who is holding them now.

Coverage windows

A coverage window is a stretch of hours in one time zone, with its own cadence. Most rotations have one.

A second window is how follow-the-sun works: an EMEA morning and an APAC evening on the same rotation, each covered by its own people, each handing over on its own clock.

Edit on the Hands over card opens the window whose cadence it draws, which is where the handover is changed. On a rotation with more than one window it names them, because a cadence belongs to a window.

Windows that hand over on the same terms share one Hands over panel, named for the windows it speaks for. Two windows written in different names for the same clock, such as Europe/Amsterdam and Europe/Berlin, hand over at the same moments and so share a panel, which says that both names are the same clock. Windows that differ, including two that agree on the day and time but skip different countries’ holidays, keep a panel each.

When it is covered

A window is covered one of two ways, and the window’s page asks which:

• All the time. Round the clock, every day. Nobody holding the window is ever off duty for want of hours. This is what a new window starts as, and what most rotations stay as.
• Only at certain hours. You paint the week, and outside those hours the window is shut and nobody is on call from it.

The week under the answer always shows the one you picked: covered all the time, it is drawn full.

Setting the hours

Choose Only at certain hours and the window’s page draws the week as seven days. Drag across a day to add a stretch of cover. Drag again inside a stretch to take those hours back off it, which is how you make one shorter or split it around lunch, and the × on a stretch removes the whole thing.

Stretches that touch or overlap join into one, including across midnight and around the end of the week, so a Friday evening to Monday morning shift is a single stretch.

Hours are read in the window’s time zone, which is filled in with your own clock as soon as a window states any hours. Change it before saving if the hours belong to a different one.

Under the week is the same set of stretches as rows, to the minute. Use those to set exact times, to say several days at once, and to work without a pointer: the rows and the week are one set of hours, shown twice.

Each day carries a menu, next to its name, for the things that are tedious to drag: copy that day’s hours to the working week, to every day, or to one day you pick, and clear the day.

Start from offers three weeks to begin with: Working week, Extended weekdays and Weekend only. Clear the week empties it; Reset to saved puts the whole page back to what is saved, so a starting point is safe to try. Nothing is written until you press Save.

A window set to certain hours has to cover some: an empty week means nobody would ever be on call from it, and the page says so and holds the save until you paint some hours or choose All the time.

Saving, and deleting

Every one of these pages holds its edits until you press Save, at the top right. Cancel discards them. Deleting the object you are editing is in the menu beside Save, and a deletion that would take somebody off duty names who first.

Plan

Plan is who is on call next, and when it changes hands, as one picture.

The timeline draws a band per coverage window and a row per lane inside it, with a bar for each turn. Colour is the person, so you can follow somebody across the week without reading every bar, and their name is in the bar wherever it is wide enough to hold one. A gap is blank track: nobody is on call there.

Under the rows is a Covered strip: pale where one person is on, solid where two or more are, blank where nobody is. It is the one row that answers “is anyone on at three in the morning”, because that answer crosses every lane and window at once.

Day, Week, 2 weeks and Month rescale the same picture rather than switching to a different one, so no turn is ever hidden behind a “+3 more”. The arrows move by whatever you are looking at, and Today comes back.

Filter by window with the chips, on a rotation that has more than one. Only my shifts dims everybody else rather than hiding them, so you keep sight of who you hand over to.

List shows the same turns as text, grouped by day and window. It is the default on a phone, where a fortnight of turns drawn as bars is too small to read, and the choice is remembered.

A turn somebody is covering for a colleague is marked in the bar.

A rotation with Randomized order on still has a plan. Its windows hand over on their schedule like any other, so the turns ahead have their times; only the name is decided at the moment of handover. Those turns are drawn as an outlined bar with a shuffle mark, and the legend under the picture names it. In List they read Picked at random. They count towards the Covered strip, because somebody will be on call for those hours.

A rotation you rotate by hand, or one that follows an external schedule, is the case with nothing planned ahead: no cadence fires, so there is no date anybody could name. Those draw the turn that is running and say why there is nothing after it.

People

People holds the rotation’s lists. Most rotations have one list; a lane deals from a list, and two lanes can share one or have their own.

Open a list to change who is on it, the order they come round in, and the Slack user groups it draws on. Adding a group adds everybody in it, and Round Robin keeps that in step with Slack.

Used by on the list’s page names every seat it deals into. A list that several seats share is dealt in one order, so changing that order moves all of them.

Channels, History and Activity

Channels is where the rotation posts and which channel topics it keeps in step.

History is who was on duty and when, including the stretches nobody was, and why.

Activity is who changed what, and when.

Settings

Everything with a default you can leave alone lives under Settings, reached from the rotation’s header. It has five sections: the rotation’s details, alerts and mentions, messages and Slack, behaviour, and integrations.

Connecting a rotation to PagerDuty, OpsGenie or Jira Service Management lives under Settings → Integrations → External schedule. A rotation driven by one of those takes its duty from there: Round Robin reports it in Slack and does not decide it, so its Coverage tab is read-only. It has exactly one lane and one coverage window, which you can open and read but not change, and it cannot be given a second of either.

Next steps

• Create or edit a schedule: how often a window hands over, and to whom
• Business hours rotations: covering only part of the week
• External rotations: a rotation whose duty comes from PagerDuty, Opsgenie or Jira Service Management
• Rotation activity: who changed the rotation, and when