Who Can Edit or Manage Tellspin Schedules?
Two Layers of Permissions
Two separate things decide whether you can change a schedule:
- Tellspin's own roles – who created the schedule, who is a Rotation Manager, and whether you're a Slack admin.
- Slack's user group permissions – whether your Slack workspace lets you create or modify user groups at all. Tellspin manages the schedule's handle by editing a Slack user group, so it can only do that on your behalf if Slack allows you to.
If Edit fails with an error like the one below, one of these two layers is blocking you.
Tellspin Roles
The schedule creator
Whoever creates a schedule can edit its participants, rotation, timezone, reminders, and overrides, and can delete it.
Rotation Managers
The creator (or a Slack admin) can add other people under Rotation Managers in the schedule's Edit modal. Rotation Managers can do everything the creator can for that schedule, including managing new PagerDuty, OpsGenie, or Datadog user mappings on synced schedules. A schedule can have several Rotation Managers.
To add one:
- In the Tellspin App Home, click Edit on the schedule.
- Add the person under Rotation Managers.
- Click Save.
Slack Workspace Admins and Owners
Slack Workspace Admins and Owners can edit or delete any schedule in the workspace regardless of who created it, so schedules are never orphaned when someone leaves.
Everyone else
Other members can view schedules, mention the handle, and contact the on-call person. They can create overrides on a schedule only if Allow users to schedule their own overrides is enabled under that schedule's Customization (optional) settings.
Slack's User Group Permissions
By default Slack only lets Workspace Admins create and modify user groups, and free Slack plans don't offer user groups at all. If Tellspin shows "it looks like you do not have permission to create Slack user groups" on the App Home, or "You can modify usergroups, but not create them" when choosing a contact method, that is Slack's setting, not Tellspin's.
A Slack admin can relax this in Workspace settings → Permissions → User Groups:
- People who can create and disable user groups – needed to create a new schedule with a User Group contact method.
- People who can modify user groups – needed for Tellspin to rotate the members of an existing handle on your behalf.
Tellspin checks this setting when it is installed and doesn't notice later changes on its own. If you relax the permission and the User Group option still doesn't appear, email support@tellspin.com and ask for the permission check to be re-run. Enterprise Grid workspaces are supported but sometimes need this manual check too.
If your admin would rather not change this, the usual route is: a Slack admin creates the schedule with the user group, then adds you under Rotation Managers so you can manage it from then on. Or use a Keyword or Channel contact method instead; those don't depend on Slack user groups.
Each Person Must Authorize Tellspin Themselves
Slack only lets Tellspin change user groups on behalf of a specific person, using that person's own authorization; it can't borrow a colleague's. So even a Slack admin sees the "do not have permission to create Slack user groups" message until they have clicked Add to Slack on https://tellspin.app with their own account. If a teammate who should be able to create schedules gets that message, have them click Add to Slack themselves (this only re-authorizes; it doesn't reinstall the app or affect existing schedules).
Transferring a Schedule When Its Creator Leaves
- A Slack admin opens the schedule with Edit.
- They add the new owner under Rotation Managers and save.
The new Rotation Manager can now manage the schedule. If no admin is available, or you need to move many schedules at once, email support@tellspin.com with your workspace name and the schedules involved.
Related
- How to edit an existing schedule
- How to change the owner of your subscription – billing ownership is separate from schedule ownership