Team Rotation Notification

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Is anyone aware of a way to automatically notify a user when they become the primary contact for a group rotation? In other words, I would like a notification delivered whenever I am the primary on-call.

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  • Wow... this is one of those questions that SEEMS like it has an easy answer and I want to jump up and be the first to answer it... but then it gets a lot more complicated the more I think about it.

    Anyway, my initial response was that you could set up a scheduled message using the Quick Messaging Panel that targets the group at a specific time each day (or whenever the team is scheduled to rotate) and the primary on-call would automatically be the person to receive that notification. But of course, this only works if the team is scheduled to rotate at a specific time. If the team is a coverage-based rotation, it might be harder to predict when the team is scheduled to rotate.

    I think we can assume that an event round-robin notification is kind of redundant as a notification to the primary on-call would probably cause them to ... no longer be the primary on-call? Depends if the notification targeted the group, I suppose.

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  • We do have team rotation at specific times, so setting up a scheduled message would work great. Thank you.

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  • Hey Corey, (reposted... I am still learning markdown...)
    Currently this is not possible within the product, but I could see others wanting this. Can you send over an email to support@xmatters.com and make a request?

    Some questions for you:
    * Do you think it would make sense to send the user a notification and go through currently available devices, or are you thinking we force it to email?
    * Would this be a group wide setting or a team setting? A User setting? I could see some users not wanting or needing this functionality, especially for teams with very regular schedules. On the other hand, teams with crazy complex schedules might definitely want this.
    * If you are coming on call at 9am for the "Database" group and the "Major Incident" group, do we send you two separate notifications or just one indicating both groups?
    * Anything else you can think of?

    Thanks and Happy Sunday!
    --- Travis

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  • As a manager of on-call rotation, I would want to require notification to both the new on-call person (letting them know their shift is started) as well as the previous on-call person (letting them know who the next on call person is). I would think it would make sense to have this defined at the group level for consistency of notification. Of course, this should be an optional notification at the group level (not the user of a group level).

    Regarding how to notify, I would suggest utilization of the existing devices and the currently assigned escalation of each device. The new on-call person would need to acknowledge that they are now on call.

    If a person is on multiple notification groups, I would think it makes sense for them to be notified for each of the groups to ensure awareness.

    Thank you!

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  • I really need this functionality. This has been raised multiple times. This one was almost 2 1/2 years ago. Any hope to getting it implemented??

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  • Hi Dave!  I can confirm we are working on this on-call reminder feature, but currently cannot provide ETA as it's work in progress. Info will be posted on the Community site when it's available. 

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  • Can you give us another update on this feature?  I'm currently send scheduled messages to provide a similar capability.  However, I set it up to go to the phone device and somebody was on a plane so they didn't get the message.  It then escalated to the next person in the rotation.  They did not like this because the message said that the rotation has just switched and you are now on call (even though they weren't).  

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  • Hi John!  The feature is still in development but timing of release not yet available.  Just to comment on your use case, in order to receive the on-call reminder by a mobile device user on an airplane, he would require access to wifi or data in order to receive app or email notifications, or cellular access for text messages.  If user is on airplane mode, no notifications would be delivered until device reconnected to a network.  I wanted to mention it because you could still run into similar issues due to users being on an airplane.

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  • Any updates here?  My folks are really hoping to be given a heads up when they become primary on-call for any group.

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  • Hi Christopher!  We're working on it, but we had to delay some of the work for other priorities.  It's great to hear such demand for this functionality.  When ready, we will be making some noise about it so stay tuned. 

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  • It's been three years. Sorry, but this seems like base functionality to me. Any estimate on this?

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  • Has there been any update on this at all?  This seems like basic usage, notify a user when they become Primary.  Can you please fast track this?

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  • +1 Brian.  I put a hacky scheduled message in place but the functionality of this solution leaves a lot to be desired.

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  • I can confirm we're working on it and in development.  Without going into all the details, it's taking longer than expected.  I'd love to share an ETA but I'm afraid that someone will hold me to it!  ;-)

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  • What's the lastest news on this functionality? I have users clamoring for it. Thanks! :-)

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  • Hi - we are also very interested in this capability. Any word on an expected delivery date and / or the relative priority of this request? Thanks!

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  • Hi Anthony!  Sorry, I don't have an expected time for its release but it is a high priority feature that is currently in development. I know this is taking longer than expected but I can assure you we are working on it.  :-)

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  • This is something that would be very useful to our company as well. It would be nice if this could be a flag on the group form whether they want reminders and if it should go to the person going on call, the person going off call, or both. I'm surprised this still isn't available. We had an internal team develop an app to page out when the primary assignment changed but having it internal to xMatters would make that a much easier process. I hope this is something they can release soon. It would also help us to extend our xMatters footprint if this functionality was available. Can you add me/our company, Intermountain HealthCare to the enhancement so that we get updates about it? Thanks!

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  • I hope the enhancement also contains an option to set when the reminder should go out. i.e. when it changes, an hour before, a day before, etc. Different groups have different needs so hopefully it will have functionality to cover the broader need.

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  • (Bump)

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  • Hi Andrea!  We are currently developing the feature to send out on-call shift reminders.  It'll be on the mobile app first and user will be able to configure when to be notified (eg: mins/hours/days before shift start).  It's great to hear use cases for configuring this from the Web application as well. 

    Unfortunately, I'm still unable to provide an ETA for when the feature will be released but it is in active development.  We'll make sure to make announcements for when it will be available for release.

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  • If I understand correctly it is being configured as the user has to opt in for a reminder verses it being imposed at the group level? Is that correct? I'd be worried someone would forget to set this up and would love to see it as something configured on the actual Group instead of the User. Like, Group A should notify the new assignee and old assignee when the primary changes. Or Notify an upcoming primary assignee 1 hour before it changes, or 1 day before it changes...I'm sure there are a ton of use cases. Anything is better than nothing to start with!

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  • Correct, on the mobile it will require the user to opt-in.  However, I have heard the same about configuring that at the group level.  We can definitely look at doing that as follow-up enhancements once we have our reminder system in place.  Thanks for the feedback and input!

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  • This seems to be missing the mark initially. Almost all of the requests/comments in this thread are from the point of the administrator of the group - the one that needs the person at the top of the list to be notified. It's a little frustrating how long this has taken and then when we get it, it doesn't meet the need as we've been promised in this thread.

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  •  Hi Dave!  I hear you and definitely noted.  We've had feedback from various sources for an on-call reminder functionality so we're starting with this initial design and will add to it once we have the system in place

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  • I believe this is a highly sort out feature that is missing that competitors have in place. (Notifications when you're now active in the shift, who is taking over in the roster and when you're next rostered).


    There really should be more focus on letting your customers know when this is coming.

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  • Hi guys,

    I hope that xMatters desire to implement this feature is not based on the votes next to Corey's suggestion. The voices in this thread (of which I'll add about 300 to) are indicative of a much higher desire than the vote count.

    Can I please add a request for this feature ASAP? While the 3.5 year time span of "coming soon" don't fill me with hope, I'll still ask for a possible ETA.

    Thanks in advance.

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  • Hi folks - fair comments.

    To be transparent:  after an initial implementation we have had to completely re-architect how we do on-call notifications. While our competition is dealing with 10-50 user systems, we have customers with over 300k users in the system and 15k groups. Being able to set an arbitrary number of on-call reminders for each user is quite a performance challenge. We are addressing this challenge head-on using a number of tactics:

    • We are building a new data warehouse that will not only store on-call data, but it will store the many other objects in the xMatters schema, including event and notification history. For on-call reminders, the data warehouse provides a new location for the on-call reminder service to drive its behavior in a performant manner. (And it is also worth mentioning the new data warehouse allows us to extend customer data retention considerably in the Centipede release in early Nov. With that in place we will be revising our reporting UI over the next year to access historical on-call information, as well as event reporting.)
    • We are building a dedicated on-call reminder service to generate the reminders. The new service falls under our standardized SLI/SLO process to provide a solid customer experience.
    • We are updating the iOS and Android apps to provide a UI for opting into the on-call reminders a user requires.
    • We expect the feature to be available in our Defender release in February. We'll enable it in EAP environments at a sooner date to allow customers to try it out and give us feedback.

    I apologize for the delays in getting this feature to market. We consider this an important feature, and we have teams actively working on it. And we will provide updates here as we have them. Expect to see more details in our Centipede release overview where we show sneak peeks of what is coming in the next release.

    And also note that as a result of this work, our xM API will gain new "point in time" behaviors so you can use the xM API REST calls with a date/time parameter. That new capability will let you use our GET /on-call endpoint for historical dates. Consider it a time-machine for xMatters data! We have several requests for this feature as well.

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  • I don't like waiting until February, but this update is long overdue and much appreciated. Thanks, Doug.

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  • From one Doug to another: me neither.

    We'll be reaching out directly to the folks in this thread to make sure you are enrolled in our Early Access Program, which will help get you visibility into the feature prior to its release.

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