Native on-call

Native on-call lets you build your on-call schedules and escalation policies inside Landfall, so you do not need a paging tool to say who is on call or who is paged next. Landfall answers from your schedules, and an incident that nobody acknowledges moves up your policy step by step.

• Schedules: a named rota in one time zone, built from layers. See who is on call now, who is next, and the next 14 days, with any gap shown.
• Escalation policies: ordered steps, each paging schedules and people, with a wait between steps and an optional repeat.
• A switch, not a migration: choose per organization whether on-call comes from Landfall or from your connected provider. Nothing changes for an organization that does not switch.

What you'll need

• An admin on your Landfall organization to build schedules and policies.
• Your people as members of the organization. A schedule can only hold people who are members.
• Nothing to open on your network and nothing to connect.

Open the On-call tab

In Landfall, open the organization page and choose the On-call tab. Everyone in the organization can see the schedules and the next 14 days, and can cover for themselves with an override. Building schedules, policies and the source switch is for admins, so members do not see those sections.

Schedules and time zones

A schedule has a name and one time zone, for example Europe/London. Every shift boundary, handoff time and restriction on the schedule is read in that zone, so a handoff at 09:00 stays at 09:00 on the days the clocks change. The shifts list shows times in the schedule's zone and, when your own zone is different, yours beside them.

The schedules list shows, for each one, who is on call now and until when, and who is next. When nobody is on call, the list says so, and the shifts list marks the gap.

Layers and precedence

A layer is a rotation of people. For each layer you choose:

• Shifts: daily, weekly, or every N hours. Daily and weekly shifts keep their local time across daylight saving changes. Hour-length shifts are exact durations.
• Handoff time: when one person hands over to the next, in the schedule's zone.
• People, in order: the rotation runs through them one shift at a time, then starts again. Use the Up and Down buttons to change the order.
• Starts, and an optional end: the first shift begins at the start. The rotation is worked out from there.

Layers stack. The layer at the top has the highest precedence, and you reorder layers with the Move up and Move down buttons. Where two layers cover the same time, the higher one wins. Where the higher layer covers nobody, for example outside its restriction, the next layer down is on call.

Restrictions

A restriction limits a layer to some days and hours, for example weekdays from 09:00 to 17:00. Outside those times the layer covers nobody and the layers below it take over. A window that runs past midnight belongs to the day it starts on. A layer can hold several restrictions.

Overrides

An override puts one person on call for a stretch of time, on top of the layers. It is for a swap, leave or a one-off cover. Any member can add an override for themselves, and admins can add one for anyone. You type the times in the schedule's zone, and an override can be up to 31 days long. If two overrides overlap, the newest wins. Members can remove their own overrides, and admins can remove any.

Escalation policies and repeat

A policy is a list of steps. Each step pages one or more schedules and people, then waits between 1 and 60 minutes. If nobody acknowledges, the next step is paged. After the last step the whole policy can repeat up to five more times. The page goes to whoever is on call on a schedule at that moment.

If a step points at a schedule with nobody on call, Landfall does not stall. The room shows a line such as Step 2 skipped: nobody on call on Platform secondary and the next step is paged straight away.

A schedule cannot be archived while a policy uses it, and the default policy cannot be archived until you choose another.

Switching the source

The source panel decides where on-call comes from. Connected provider keeps using your provider, as before. Landfall schedules answers from the schedules you built and pages along the default escalation policy.

• Pick the default policy first. If the setup is incomplete, for example no schedule or no default policy, the panel warns you before you rely on it.
• Switching is per organization and can be reversed. An incident that is already open keeps its current responders until they are looked up again.

Re-approving automatic escalation after edits

Landfall only escalates automatically while an admin's standing approval covers the current setup. That approval is tied to the setup it was granted for. When you edit the default escalation policy, or switch the source, the approval no longer matches and automatic escalation pauses. The room records that it was refused because the setup changed.

The panel shows whether the approval is valid, who gave it, and lets an admin revoke it at any time.

What agents can read

Not through the signal catalog. Native on-call is Landfall's own data, not an external source. Beacon and joined agents see who is on call and who was paged through the war room, the same way they do for a connected provider.

Opening incidents

Native on-call does not open incidents. It answers who is on call and who is paged next, for an incident that was opened another way. See Integrations architecture for how paging and triggering fit together.

What is not in this first version

• Opening an incident and paging someone automatically from an alert.
• Text message, phone call and push notifications. Pages use the channels Landfall already has.
• Teams of schedules, and round-robin or follow-the-sun rotations.
• Exporting a schedule to a calendar.
• Importing schedules from other tools.

Troubleshooting