Team Configuration

Teams are where all the magic happens in Tropos Alerts.


Team Security

There are two roles within a team: managers and members.

Managers are responsible for pretty much configuring everything as it relates to team. They can setup the on-call calendar, escalation chains, and routing rules. They can change the team name (and therefor the alerting email address) and who is in each role. Team managers can also configure inbound phone numbers, live call routing options, and SMS forwarding. There's more, but you get the idea...

Members can be added to the on-call calendar, included directly in the escalation chain, and can be assigned incidents that are associated with the team.

Outside of these two roles exist two other non-team roles: company admins and non-admins.

Company admins can perform the same functions as a team manager across all teams.

Non-admins within the company that are not part of the team can still see alerts and incidents associated with the team as well as the team's on-call calendar and escalation chain.


On-Call Scheduling

A team's on-call calendar allows you to specify for specific time, days, or weeks who should be the primary and backup points of contact for a team.

On-call schedules work directly with the escalation chain so that you can decide who gets notified when and how.

The primary and secondary on-call are also used by our live call routing feature. When a call comes into a team's inbound phone number, the caller is given an option to be forwarded to either the primary on-call, secondary on-call, or the team manager.

Additionally, the primary on-call resource can be contacted if SMS forwarded is enabled for inbound phone numbers.

If live call routing and SMS routing our enabled, the primary on-call essentially has a virtual cell phone that automatically gets handed off as the on-call calendar is updated.

The times seen on the on-call calendar are the start time of the schedule based on your personally configured time zone setting.

Primary vs Secondary On-Call

Outside of live call routing and SMS forwarding, there's no functional difference between a primary on-call and secondary on-call schedule. However, by convention, the primary on-call is who you want to receive a notification first when a new incident is associated with the team.

In an ideal world, this means that secondary on-call will get to sleep soundly, but we know stuff happens. That's why there's a secondary or backup on-call.

You are NOT limited to having a single person as the primary or secondary on-call. You can have multiple of either during any given time period. For example, a single primary on-call and two secondary on-call team members.

Scheduling Single On-Call

From a team's on-call calendar, a team manager will have the option to setup additional on-call schedules. The following information is required:

  • Resource / Team Member - The person on the team that be scheduled. If you don't see someone in the list, make sure they're on the team and an active account.
  • Type - Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, or Manager
  • Start Time - The time (in your personally configured time zone) the on-call schedule will begin.
  • End Time - The time (in your personally configured time zone) the on-call schedule will end.
  • Recurring Schedule - None will schedule a single occurrance. A combination of recurring schedules can also be used for weekly, bi-weekly, or day-shift / night-shift type scenarios.

Daily Recurring On-Call

If you want to skip a certain number of days between each on-call schedule, then choose the daily recurring schedule. Your on-call can be more than one day and still choose daily.

Examples:

  • A 3 days on, 3 days off recurring on-call would use the daily recurring schedule with 3 days between occurrances.
  • A night shift would schedule the start time from 9:00 PM to the next day at 7:00 AM, choose daily recurring with 0 days between.

End after will duplicate the schedule X number of times. Where as end by will stop scheduling once a certain date is reached.

Weekly Recurring On-Call

This is common for teams that rotate on-call on a specific day of week, for example, Fridays at 9:00 AM.

End after will duplicate the schedule X number of times. Where as end by will stop scheduling once a certain date is reached.

Updating On-Call Schedules

On call-schedules can be modified in one of two ways. Primarily, you'll click the on-call schedule on the calendar and the details of the schedule will appear. From there, you can update the resource, type, and time. You can also delete the on-call schedule from this panel.

When editing a recurring on-call, it will only affect that instance of the schedule. If you want to update all schedules in the series, you must delete the series and recreate it.

On-call schedules can also be drag-and-dropped from on day to another. This will not change the time, resource, or type. Only the days it is scheduled.

Automated On-Call Scheduling

Tropos Alerts can actually make your on-call schedule for you. That way you can blame us whenever someone has to work New Year's Day.

From the team's on-call calendar, team managers can click the Auto Schedule button. Once enabled the following options become visible:

  • Rotation Interval - This is how long a single team member will be on-call before that schedule ends and the next begins. Daily is 1 day, weekly = 7 days, biweekly, 14 days, monthly is a specific day of the month.
  • Rotation Time - What time of the day, based on your personally configured time zone, the on-call schedule will end and the next will begin.
  • Secondary On-Call Schedule - None will prevent a secondary on-call from being automatically scheduled, before primary means that after a team member is the secondary on-call they will become the primary on-call. After primary means that after the team member is the primary on-call, they will start a new on-call schedule but as the secondary.
  • Clear On-Call Calendar On Save - This allows you to wipe everything on the on-call from this date forward. Really useful if you don't like what you on-call schedule looks like and want to play with a few options.

Once you hit save the new on-call schedules will be generate and the calendar will be updated. The on-call schedule is also update each night and will schedule 2 primary rotations per team member. For example, if you have 3 team members and setup weekly rotation, you next 6 weeks will be populated.

On-Call Reminders

If an empty day is coming up in your on-call schedule, the team managers can receive a remind via email that their schedule needs to be updated. This is from the team's general settings page.