On-call rotas and paging

On-call makes sure urgent things reach a person, out of hours included. A rota says who is on call when. An escalation policy says who a page goes to, in what order, and how long each level has to acknowledge before the next is paged. Pages come from critical alerts and urgent tickets by default, and from any rule with a Page whoever is on call action.

Nothing is paged until on-call is set up (at least one policy or an enabled rota), so an MSP without rotas is never surprised by a page.

The On-call page#

Team > On-call is one page with four tabs:

• Rota: an Out of hours card saying who handles each queue outside business hours, a card for each rota with who is on call now, until when, and who is next, and Came in out of hours, what arrived overnight. Under them, My on-call has your coming turns for the next 60 days, your hand-overs, swap requests, and your calendar address.
• Pages: every page with its Status, the Page title, Customer and who was Paged.
• Calendar: a Week or Month view with a band per rota showing who is on call, cover and swaps in their own shades, and approved leave from the schedule on its own row.
• Hours: standby and call-outs from the rotas, a sheet per person each month, submitted, approved and then paid through payroll. See Payroll export and on-call pay.

A page's status is Paging while it is escalating, Acknowledged once someone has taken it, or Nobody answered when every level and round passed without an acknowledgement. Click a page to see who was paged how and when. Send a test page pages the current on-call people so they can check their phones. Page on-call pages someone by hand (see below). Rotas and escalation opens the settings (Settings > Channels, the On-call tab).

Rotas#

Rotas are set up on the On-call tab of Settings > Channels, by anyone who manages automation.

Making a rota#

1. Click New rota.
2. Enter a Name and a Description.
3. Under People, in turn, click Add a person for each member, and drag them into order. The first person starts on the start date.
4. Choose Turns: A week each or A day each.
5. Choose Hand over on (for weekly turns), At (the hand-over time), Starting and the Time zone.
6. Choose what it Covers: Day and night, or Out of hours, where nobody is on call during the business hours set in Settings > Ticket setup.
7. Click Add the rota.

Hand-overs follow local dates and times in the rota's time zone, so the clocks changing never moves a hand-over. The rota card shows In turn (the order, with a dot next to whoever is on call now) and the Coming turns.

Anyone on approved leave on the schedule is skipped automatically, and the next member covers. Anyone past the leaving date on their staff profile drops off the rota after that day.

Cover#

For a swap or a holiday, click Add cover on the rota:

1. Choose Who covers.
2. Set From and Until.
3. Add Why, for example "Swap with Jamie".
4. Click Add the cover.

Cover wins over the rota while it lasts, and shows under Cover and in the coming turns. Remove it with its cross.

Swaps and hand-overs#

People arrange most swaps themselves from My on-call on the Rota tab:

1. Under Your coming turns, press Ask for a swap on a turn (or click your turn on the Calendar).
2. Choose the colleague and add a note.
3. They accept or decline in the app, or with the link in their message. Once accepted, the swap goes in as cover.

With Swaps need a rota manager on (the On-call tab of Settings > Channels, under Turns, swaps and snoozing), an accepted swap also waits for someone who manages on-call to approve it in the Approvals inbox.

Under Hand-overs, whoever hands over leaves a note (anything the next person should know) and presses Save note. The incoming person is reminded a set time before their turn with the note: set Remind the incoming person (in minutes, 0 for no reminder) in the same settings.

Make my calendar address gives you a private calendar feed of your turns to add to Outlook or Google Calendar. Making a new one stops the old address working.

Escalation policies#

A policy is a list of levels. Each level pages rotas (whoever is on call on them), people or roles, then waits a number of minutes for an acknowledgement. If nobody acknowledges, the next level is paged. After the last level, the policy goes round again as many times as it says. If still nobody answers, everyone who was paged and the administrators are told "nobody answered".

Making a policy#

1. Click New policy.
2. Enter a Name and Description.
3. For Level 1, choose who to Page and how many minutes to Wait for an acknowledgement.
4. Click Add a level for each further level.
5. Set Go round: how many times in all to work through the levels.
6. Tick The default policy if critical alerts, urgent tickets and rules without a policy of their own should use it.
7. Click Add the policy.

A typical setup: level 1 pages the out-of-hours rota for 15 minutes, level 2 pages the servers rota for 15 minutes, level 3 pages the service desk manager for 30 minutes, going round twice. Make default on another policy moves the default to it.

What pages on-call#

Without any rule, the General tab of Settings > Channels, under Paging whoever is on call, decides what pages on-call through the default policy:

• Critical alerts page on-call: once per alert, when it opens. Optionally Only out of business hours, and only for Critical alerts on these devices (for example servers and network gear, not laptops). Leave the device list empty for every critical alert.
• Tickets at these priorities page on-call: the most urgent priority until you choose others.
• Default escalation policy: which policy these use.

Rules can page too, with the Page whoever is on call action and their own policy. For example, a rule on "A ticket is created" with the conditions Ticket priority is Critical and Business hours out of hours.

Out of hours: who handles each queue#

Not every MSP runs a rota. Out of business hours, each queue (or every queue) is handled one of three ways:

Choice	What happens out of hours
Nobody (business hours only)	Alerts and tickets on the queue are held for business hours: nobody is paged and the SLA clocks follow business hours, even on a 24/7 SLA policy. Still page someone for Critical alerts out of hours? keeps paging for Critical alerts and tickets
Our own on-call rota	Pages whoever is on call, as described above, through the escalation policy or one rota for that queue
A third-party provider	Urgent work goes to the provider instead of paging anyone (below)

A mix is simply different answers for different queues. Business hours are those on the Business hours tab of Settings > Ticket setup, and in business hours nothing changes. Pages you raise by hand, and test pages, are never held.

You make the choice in setup: the Alerts, automation and on-call section asks first Out of hours, who handles things? and then only what applies (the rota and hand-over for your own rota, the provider's details for a provider). The Out of hours card on the Rota tab of Team > On-call shows the answer per queue, with Change in setup for administrators.

The morning list#

When business hours start, what came in overnight on queues nobody covered, or that went to a provider, is listed under Came in out of hours on the On-call page and on Home, and each of the queue's people gets one email with it.

Out-of-hours providers#

A provider is a third party that handles some queues out of hours. It is not a member of staff and uses no seat. Add one on the Out-of-hours providers tab of Settings > Channels with New provider, and say:

• How it gets the work: an email to their desk, the ticket forwarded with its conversation, a webhook signed like every webhook Tenvara sends, or simply their PSA or portal link or phone number for people who get in touch. Several are allowed.
• What it may see: the ticket only (subject, priority, who raised it and the conversation, never internal notes), or also the ticket's and alert's devices, read only.
• Instructions sent with every piece of work, and whether the provider is on.

Out of hours, a Critical alert or urgent ticket on the provider's queue is sent to them, with a line on the ticket saying so. Their replies come back to the ticket by email, as a third party's message that the customer never sees, and when business hours start they hand the work back with a summary. If sending fails for good, the ticket says so and the administrators are told, since nobody of yours was paged. Then choose the provider for its queues in setup.

How pages reach people#

A page reaches people on the channels they chose for On-call pages in their notification settings, and ignores their quiet hours. A page about an alert leads with what raised it (Raised by), with its key facts and a link. As well as the inbox, email, Teams, Slack and text messages, a page can ring their phone, arrive as a push notification, and be answered by a text reply. Phone calls and text replies use your own Twilio account (texts can also use ClickSend); push needs no outside account.

Phone calls for pages#

Phone calls need a Twilio account with a voice-capable number. Twilio calls back to Tenvara as each call rings, is answered and ends, so your Tenvara address must be reachable from the internet.

1. Go to Settings > Channels and click Add on the Phone calls card.
2. Enter a Name, the Twilio Account SID and Auth token, and the number to Call from, starting with + and the country code.
3. Set Ring for: 10 to 60 seconds (30 by default). After that the call counts as not answered and escalation carries on.
4. Save, then use Send a test.

Each person then ticks phone call for On-call pages in their notification settings, with their mobile number. Only on-call pages ever call. The call reads the page out in the person's language: press 1 to acknowledge or 2 to escalate to the next level now. Anything else asks again, three times in all.

Answering pages by text#

1. Edit the Text messages channel in Settings > Channels and switch on Take replies to pages.
2. Save. The channel now shows an Incoming messages address.
3. Paste that address into your Twilio number's (or ClickSend's) setting for incoming messages.

Page texts then say how to answer. A reply from someone's number answers their newest open page: 1, ack, ok or yes acknowledges, and 2, esc or escalate pages the next level now. They get a text back saying what happened.

Push notifications#

Each person switches push on for themselves, per browser, in Settings > Notifications under Push notifications: click Turn on in this browser and allow notifications when the browser asks, then tick Push for On-call pages in the table above it. Send a test checks it arrives. On an iPhone, add the app to the home screen first.

Pages arrive as urgent notifications that stay on screen, with an Acknowledge button.

Paging someone by hand#

When something needs a person now but no rule would page, press Page on-call on the On-call page, or choose it from a ticket's or device's menu, an alert's row, or Cmd+K.

1. Choose Who: A policy (level by level until someone acknowledges), A rota or A person.
2. Say What is wrong, and add More detail. It is read out on a phone call, so keep it short.
3. Choose the Urgency: Critical, Warning or Info.
4. Press Page now.

A page raised from a ticket, device or alert is linked to it.

Acknowledging a page#

To acknowledge a page:

• click Acknowledge in the inbox, on Home or on the page itself,
• press 1 on the phone call, reply 1 to the text, or press Acknowledge on the push notification, or
• use the one-click link in the email, text or Teams or Slack message. It opens a page with an Acknowledge button, so link checkers and message previews never acknowledge by accident. The link expires, and a tampered link is refused.

Acknowledging stops the escalation, and the page shows who acknowledged it, how and when. Anyone who can view automation can acknowledge a page.

On an open page:

• Escalate now pages the next level straight away.
• Reassign to... (in More) pages a person or a rota instead of the policy's levels, with the same timing.
• Add someone... pages one more person once and keeps the policy going.
• Whoever acknowledged it can snooze it for the time set in Snooze holds a page for (15 minutes by default), and is reminded when the snooze ends.

Every step is on the page's Timeline.

Each page lists Who was told on which channel, every phone call with its result, and every text reply.

The on-call report#

Reports > On-call hours (in the Operations group) shows, per person and month, the hours on call (rotas and cover, less leave), how many of them out of hours, the pages, how many were acknowledged and how fast, call-outs out of hours, and the time logged out of hours on the tickets they were paged about. Filter by rota, person and dates, and export as CSV or Excel. On-call pay for standby and call-outs is on the Hours tab of Team > On-call: see Payroll export and on-call pay.

Related: Notifications and channels, Webhook triggers and inbound alerts.