Setting Up a Rotation with Multiple People On-Call

Use Cases for Multiple On-Call Users

By default, Tellspin rotates a single person into the on-call position. However, you can easily configure a schedule to have two or more people on-call at the same time. This is useful for many scenarios:

• Primary and Secondary: Have a primary and a backup on-call simultaneously.
• Paired Support: Two engineers work together during an on-call shift.
• Shadowing: A new team member shadows an experienced one.
• Role-Based Shifts: Have a designated 'facilitator' and 'scriber' for meetings, as seen in some agile practices.

Method 1: Using Schedule Triage

If you need to combine people from different teams or schedules (e.g., one person from @dev-team and one from @qa-team), the best approach is to create separate schedules for each role and combine them using Schedule Triage.

Method 2: Setting the 'Number of people on-call' > 1

For rotating multiple people from the same list of participants, you can use a built-in setting. This method is ideal for paired rotations or primary/secondary setups from a single team roster.

Step-by-Step Configuration

1. From the Tellspin App Home, click Create Schedule or Edit an existing one.

2. In the Participants section, add all the individuals who are part of the rotation pool.

3. Click the Edit Users button.

4. In the modal that appears, find the setting Number of people on-call at a time.

5. Change the number from 1 to your desired number (e.g., 2 for pairs).

   

6. Click Save.

How Handoffs Work in this Mode

When you set the number of on-call users to more than one, Tellspin will pull that many people from the participant list for each shift. For example, with a list of (Alice, Bob, Carol, David) and 2 people on-call:

• Shift 1: Alice and Bob are on-call.
• Shift 2: Carol and David are on-call.
• Shift 3: The rotation wraps around, and Alice and Bob are on-call again.

The schedule preview will update to show the pairs for each upcoming shift.

Verifying the User Group

After saving the schedule, the associated Slack user group will be populated with the correct number of on-call users. You can mention the user group in a channel to confirm that all current on-call members are notified.