Documentation Grafana Cloud Alerts and IRM IRM Manage On-call schedules Shift swaps and overrides Automate shift swaps

Automate shift swap requests

Grafana IRM can automatically generate shift swap requests based on your Google Calendar Out of Office events. This integration helps ensure coverage for your on-call shifts when you’re unavailable, without requiring manual intervention.

Before you begin

To set up automatic shift swap requests, you need:

• Access to Grafana IRM
• SCHEDULES_WRITE permission if RBAC is enabled
• On-call schedules where you’re an assigned user
• A Google account with calendar access

How automatic shift swaps work

When you connect your Google Calendar to Grafana IRM:

• The system periodically checks your calendar for Out of Office events
• If an Out of Office event overlaps with your on-call shifts, Grafana IRM automatically creates a shift swap request
• Team members can volunteer to take these automatically generated requests
• If the Out of Office event changes, the corresponding shift swap request updates accordingly

Connect your Google account

To link your Google Calendar with Grafana IRM:

1. Navigate to the IRM tab of your Grafana user profile.
2. Select the Google Calendar tab.
3. Click Connect.
4. Follow the on-screen prompts to authorize Grafana IRM to access your calendar.
5. Select which on-call schedules should be considered for automatic shift swap generation.
   • By default, all schedules you participate in are selected.
   • You can deselect any schedules you don’t want to include.
6. Click Save to complete the setup.

Configure schedule selection

After connecting your Google account, you can modify which schedules are monitored for automatic shift swap requests:

1. Navigate to the IRM tab of your Grafana user profile.
2. Select the Google Calendar tab.
3. Select or deselect schedules as needed.
4. Click Save to apply your changes.

Manage Out of Office events

Grafana IRM responds to changes in your Google Calendar Out of Office events:

Create an Out of Office event

1. In Google Calendar, create a new event.
2. Mark the event as “Out of office” in the event type dropdown.
3. Set the start and end times that cover your absence.
4. Save the event.

Grafana IRM will detect this event during its next sync cycle (typically within 1 hour) and create corresponding shift swap requests for any overlapping on-call shifts.

Update an existing Out of Office event

When you modify an Out of Office event in Google Calendar, Grafana IRM automatically updates any related shift swap requests to match the new event schedule. This includes changes to the event duration or timing.

Delete an automated shift swap

If you delete a shift swap request that was automatically created from an Out of Office event, IRM will not recreate the request, even if the Out of Office event still exists.

Exclude specific events

To prevent an Out of Office event from generating a shift swap request:

1. In Google Calendar, create or edit an Out of Office event.
2. Add the tag #grafana-irm-ignore to the event title.
3. Save the event.

Grafana IRM will ignore this event when generating shift swap requests, even if it overlaps with your on-call shifts.

Disconnect Google Calendar

If you need to disconnect your Google Calendar:

1. Navigate to IRM > Users > View My Profile.
2. Select the Google Calendar tab.
3. Click Disconnect.
4. Confirm your decision when prompted.

This will stop all automatic shift swap request generation based on your calendar events.

Troubleshooting

If automatic shift swap requests aren’t being created:

• Verify that your Google account is properly connected in your profile
• Confirm that the affected schedule is selected for monitoring
• Check that your Out of Office events don’t contain the #grafana-irm-ignore tag
• Ensure your Out of Office events are properly marked as “Out of office” in Google Calendar (not just regular events)
• Allow time for calendar app sync delays (up to 1 hour)
• Check if you have overlapping shifts during your Out of Office period