Nick Piggott
Hi,
I want to be able to create a schedule that incorporates the teams entire availability.
The team is reachable 24*7 - we have the bulk of our team working the day shift and the rotations we have aren't set in stone. We cover a day shift typically 7-4 - then our oncall will cover 4-7 ... typically 2 on the on-call and 7 working in the day.
When we're not working "on-call" we will work the day shift... there is no set rule for when we work out of hours. And this needs to be flexible...
How can do this to have a team view of who is the designated HL holder at any time, either at present or looking to the calendar view ? Do I need to have individual shifts for everyone - Day and Night work ?
I hope this is clear. Thanks,
0
Comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Maybe I could have been clearer with the issue I face.
Lets say I have a weekday dispatcher shift with 5 members of the team, the next week 1 might on the on-call, if I take them out of the rotation they will still show as "oncall" in their schedule view. if they add an absence it takes them out of the oncall shift - which i dont want.
So how can I change from 1 day/week the members in a shift on an ad-hoc basis?
Hi Nick,
It sounds like you would need a highly flexible shift strategy. Do you foresee changing the rotation every week? I can see for a single group you can create 2 shifts - one for daytime and one for on-call. You can swap who is in each of these shifts, but this would require a fair deal of manual intervention. It also limits how far you can see on-call schedules for each user or for the group (essentially it'd be one week at a time). Our schedules work best when there are consistent rotations you can assign - someone can be on weekdays one shift and on-call the next and they rotate through separately. I'll give an example:
Daytime shift: 7 AM to 7 PM Mon - Fri
7 members total
member 1 - on-call primary
10 minute delay
member 2 - on-call secondary
9999 minute delay
member 3
member 4
member 5
member 6
member 7
In the above scenario, the primary on-call will get the notification and be seen in the primary on-call filter in the schedule. The second member will be seen as on-call in the primary or secondary on-call.
You can replace member 1 with member 2 using a temporary absence, this should be used if they need to be replaced for a specific amount of time.Notifications will go to the second member instead of the first for that time.
You can have a secondary schedule that handles the weekend on-call in a rotation:
7 PM to 7 AM and weekends
member 6
Primary on-call
member 7
Secondary on-call
member 1
member 2
member 3
member 4
member 5
If this runs in tandem with the other schedule then you can have independent rotations, each person would know which shift they were on-call for and could be replaced as needed if someone is sick, has to be away on an appointment or any other legitimate reason.
If this does not give you enough flexibility, you could just have a single 24x7 shift with no rotation (however I would recommend a delay so only the on-call is notified) and set up some absences for each member so they can in turn be on top of the notification plan for the shift during the appropriate time. This is not really how we intend for it to be used but it could work.
My last idea would be for each user to have their own shift in the group. That way if they are "on" they will get a notification and if they are not then no notification will be sent to them. You just need to make sure they have correct timeframes for their shifts. You can create a series of one-time shifts so you can schedule everyone ad-hoc and that will allow them to see into the foreseeable future. Extremely flexible but time-consuming to set up. Also requires a reasonable amount of maintenance.
Hope that helps! Happy Friday
I agree with Francois that it sounds like two or three shifts (one for your 'weekday dispatcher' and one or two more for your 'on-call' times) will probably work best.
From your first post,
I'll go a step further though and say that this reads like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You don't have/want set in stone rotations, but you want to be able to look at a day in the future on the calendar to see who is on-call. Any tool is only going to be able to display what you know, so if you don't know who is going to be on-call in two weeks the tool isn't going to be able to tell you either.
You can definitely setup your shifts without rotations, and just manually set who is part of what shift as needed. Just don't expect to be able to also look into the future to see who will be on-call.
From the second post,
This is something I think many people struggle with, including us, when setting up shifts, what it means to be 'on-call'. In your example, sounds like you have someone that is part of the dispatch shift for week 1 then is only part of the on-call shift for week 2 and a concern about showing as 'on-call' for week 2 in their schedule view. This is actually what you want, since it provides the most accurate information. You want to emphasis the importance of looking closely at the schedule, reading all of it and not just 'am I on-call or not'. Their on-call schedule in this example will show they are on-call, but it will also show they are only on-call during the 'on-call' shift hours (4-7); representing they aren't on for the dispatch shift but are the on-call shift.
A possible clarification, if 'taking them out of the rotation' means putting them further down the dispatch shift then it is possible someone will still see they are on-call for the dispatch shift in their schedule. This is another common thing we've seen, not changing the schedule view to only show primary on-call.