Web-based on-call schedules

Grafana OnCall allows you to map out recurring on-call coverage and automate the escalation of alert notifications to on-call users. Configure and manage on-call schedules directly in the Grafana OnCall plugin to easily customize rotations with a live schedule preview, reference teammates’ time zones, and add overrides.

This topic provides an overview of key components and features.

Schedule settings

Schedule settings are initially configured when a new schedule is created and can be updated at any time by clicking the gear icon next to an existing schedule.

Available schedule settings:

Slack channel: Choose a primary Slack channel to send notifications about on-call shifts, such as unassigned on-call shifts.
Slack user group: Choose a Slack user group to receive current on-call updates.
Notification frequency: Specify whether or not to send shift notifications to scheduled team members.
Action for slot when no one is on-call: Define how your team is notified when an empty shift causes a gap in on-call coverage.
Current shift notification settings: Select how users are notified when their on-call shift begins.
Next shift notification settings: Specify how users are notified of upcoming shifts.

Schedule view

The schedule view is a detailed calendar representation of your on-call schedule. It contains three interactive weekly calendars and a 24-hour on-call status bar for visualizing who’s on-call and what time it is for your teammates.

Understand your schedule view:

Final schedule: The final schedule provides a combined view of rotations and overrides
Rotations: The rotations calendar represents all recurring on-call rotations for a given schedule.
Overrides: The override calendar represents temporary adjustments to the recurring on-call schedule. Any events on this calendar will take precedence over the rotations calendar.

Schedule quality report

The schedule view features a quality report that provides a score for your schedule based on rotations, overrides and shift swaps. It’s calculated based on these key factors:

Gaps (amount of time when no one is on-call)
Balance (uneven distribution of on-call shifts between team members)

Quality score is a numeric value between 0 and 100. The higher the score, the better the schedule quality. Web UI uses the following scale to show the quality score:

0-20: Bad
20-40: Low
40-60: Medium
60-80: Good
80-100: Great

To improve quality score:

Minimize the amount of time when no one is on-call.
Ensure users in the schedule have a similar amount of on-call time.

Depending on the quality score, the report can also provide:

Percentage of time when no one is on-call. E.g. “29% not covered” means that 29% of the time no one is on-call for the schedule. 24/7/365 coverage is considered ideal, so reducing this number will improve the overall schedule quality.
List of overloaded users. A user is considered overloaded if they have more on-call time than average for the schedule. E.g. “+15% avg” in quality report means that user has 15% more on-call time than average for the schedule. A perfectly balanced schedule is considered ideal, so reducing this number will improve the overall schedule quality.

Note: The next 52 weeks (~1 year) are taken into account when generating the quality report.

Schedule export

Export on-call schedules from Grafana OnCall to your preferred calendar app with a one-time secret iCal URL. The schedule export allows you to view on-call shifts alongside the rest of your schedule.