Free tool
Make an on-call schedule, and see who's stuck with the holidays.
Type the names, pick the shift length and the handover day, and get a rotation with the US holidays each shift covers. Download it as a spreadsheet or a calendar, or check it against everyone's time off on a live board.
| On call | Dates | Holidays |
|---|---|---|
| Maya | Oct 19 – Oct 25 | |
| Jordan | Oct 26 – Nov 1 | |
| Priya | Nov 2 – Nov 8 | |
| Tom | Nov 9 – Nov 15 | Veterans Day |
| Sam | Nov 16 – Nov 22 | |
| Maya | Nov 23 – Nov 29 | Thanksgiving |
| Jordan | Nov 30 – Dec 6 | |
| Priya | Dec 7 – Dec 13 | |
| Tom | Dec 14 – Dec 20 | |
| Sam | Dec 21 – Dec 27 | Christmas Day |
| Maya | Dec 28 – Jan 3 ’27 | New Year's Day |
| Jordan | Jan 4 – Jan 10 |
Holiday load: Maya 2 · Tom 1 · Sam 1 · Jordan 0 · Priya 0 · uneven, consider a swap
A rotation looks fair until someone books a vacation.
On-call tools know the rotation. They don't know Tom is flying home on December 23. This board puts on-call next to time off and public holidays. Shifts that land on someone's own days off get a warning, and the hover card says why.
- On-call shifts are teal bars on each person's row
- A shift over someone's vacation or holiday gets an amber warning
- Holidays come from where each person lives
- Drag a shift to another day or person to fix a clash
On-call rotations, the common shapes.
Weekly
One person for seven days, handing over on a weekday morning. The default for most teams of four to eight.
Two-week
Fewer handovers and shifts that come around less often. Works for small teams with quiet systems.
Primary and secondary
Two people per shift: the primary is paged first, the secondary backs them up. Next week's primary is often this week's secondary.
Follow the sun
Each region covers its own daytime, so nobody is paged at night. Needs people in at least two or three time zones.
More on the hard parts: on-call over the holidays, follow-the-sun rotations and how teams pay for on-call. After an incident, write it up with the postmortem template.
Questions
What is an on-call rotation?
An on-call rotation is a schedule that hands responsibility for urgent issues, like production incidents or customer escalations, from one person to the next on a fixed cycle. Each person is on call for a shift, often a week, then the next person takes over.
How long should an on-call shift be?
A week is the most common: long enough to learn the week's problems, short enough not to burn people out. Small teams sometimes use two weeks so shifts come around less often. Busy teams split the day with a follow-the-sun rotation across time zones.
What day should on-call hand over?
A weekday morning, so both people are working when the handover happens. Monday or Tuesday are common. Avoid Friday handovers, which put a new person on call for the weekend before they've settled in.
How do you make an on-call schedule fair?
Rotate in a fixed order, count holidays and weekends per person, swap shifts that land on someone's planned time off, and give comp time or on-call pay for holidays covered. Our generator shows each person's holiday load so you can spot an uneven rotation.
How do you handle on-call during vacations?
Check every shift against people's time off and public holidays before publishing the rotation, and again when someone books a vacation. In Forgot, an on-call shift that lands on the same person's time off or holiday gets a warning on the calendar.
What is a primary and secondary on-call?
The primary is paged first. The secondary is the backup if the primary doesn't answer within a set time, or needs help. Many teams make next week's primary this week's secondary.