Dear PagerDuty, When Am I On Call?

Tags: devops, oncall, todayilearned
Published: 2022-01-27 20:43:38

If you’re on a few PagerDuty teams or escalation policies, it can be confusing to figure out what all of the schedules look like. For folks who might be on call as escalation for their own teams, available as Incident Commanders, or potentially have other roles, getting all of the info is important.

## Are you On Call Right Now?
When you first log in to the PagerDuty web ui, there will be a box on the right side letting you know if you are on call or not!


![The PagerDuty Web UI, showing the on call status widget](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/46qnhn7wcqk2yetxhtb2.png)
The first listing shows me what I’m currently on-call for, and the second shows me when the next rotation starts. Finally, on the bottom is an info rotation that our team is always on-call for. Hopefully you don’t have too many of those, but you might have some that are for information purposes, escalations, or low-urgency alerts.

On mobile, there are two views. If you click on the menu icon on the left, and then click on your name and avatar at the top, you’ll see your shifts for the next two weeks:


![The PagerDuty Mobile App, with upcoming on-call shifts listed.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7awnn0sk1h708dsbb42c.jpeg)
I also see that I am currently on-call. In the menu, it’s highlighted in green, and in the schedule popout, it’s red.

If you click on the menu and select “My On-Call Shifts”, towards the bottom of the menu, you’ll get a daily view instead:


![The PagerDuty Mobile App, showing current on-call status and shifts.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/feynqyub3zo5nvivd7dv.jpeg)
If you use the PagerDuty app a lot, both of these views can be helpful.

## See the Whole Schedule
You can get a longer view of your shifts for planning ahead. In the web ui, the long-term view of all of your on-call shifts is under People -> My On-Call Shifts.  The URL will be https://My-Account.pagerduty.com/my-on-call/month for the monthly view. You can bookmark this URL!

The layout here will show you when you are on call for all of the teams and escalation policies you are assigned to. Depending on your roles and responsibilities, your calendar might be pretty clear, or it might be busy:


![The PagerDuty Web UI, showing a user's monthly on-call status by team and shift.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bjs25ieyuv71k9x582f2.png)
Our team has a few different rotations that get alerts for different kinds of issues, but are very quiet, so while  I’m always on-call, I often don’t hear anything. Depending on the size of your roster, you might not have any shifts in the current view, and you can select forward to the next months to see more of the schedule.

## Get Notified About Your Shifts
These UI helpers are great if you’re in PagerDuty regularly, but if your on-call rotations are sparse - you have a long roster to rotate through - or you’re just not in the habit of checking in with PagerDuty a lot, you might want to get a [notification] (https://support.pagerduty.com/docs/notifications)  that you have a shift starting.

In your user profile, you can set a number of different notification methods for different kinds of alerts and actions. You can find your user profile by clicking on the avatar in the upper right corner of the web ui. The notification settings are in the “Notification Rule” menu under your name:

![The PagerDuty Web UI, showing a user's profile and notification rules dialog.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pimtvk700eauzqwh5jos.png)
At the bottom of this page, you’ll find a very helpful setting, the shift notification:


![The PagerDuty Web UI, user notification settings notifying a user they are going to start an on-call shift soon.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/x85m3m42c5lnd13f8ouy.png)
You can set up notifications using any of the methods you have configured in your account - email, SMS, app push, etc. You can use multiple alerts to warn you of upcoming shifts at whatever time you prefer.  You can also get notified that your shift is ending!

![The PagerDuty Web UI user notification rules, highlighting the options to receive a notification when an on-call shift ends.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/crdonhxtqqjsctx8tzun.png)
## Summary
Knowing when you are going to be on call can be confusing when you’re just getting started with PagerDuty, but there are plenty of places to look to find out what your schedule is. Make sure to set up shift notifications on your account so you’ll have some warning about your shift! To learn more about PagerDuty, check out our [knowledge base](https://support.pagerduty.com/) or join our [community forums](https://community.pagerduty.com).