On-Call Management

On-call management makes sure a named person is responsible for responding to alerts at every hour, with a backup if they do not answer. In systems that run around the clock, response time decides how long an outage lasts. SmartSuite holds schedules, rotations, and escalation paths as records and uses automations to route each alert, so coverage is visible and response does not depend on who happens to be awake.

Schedules are records with shifts, rotations, and time zone coverage, shown in a calendar view so the team sees who is on call on any day. When an alert arrives, an automation looks up the current responder from the schedule and assigns the alert to them. Changing a shift is an edit to the schedule record; the routing follows it.

If an alert is not acknowledged within the time you set, an automation reassigns it to the backup responder and notifies the team lead, and repeats up the escalation path until someone acknowledges. Each step is recorded on the alert. The escalation times and the chain are fields on the schedule, so each team sets its own.

Responders are notified by email and in the SmartSuite app on every plan, and automations can deliver Slack or SMS messages on the Professional and Enterprise plans. The notification links to the alert record, which carries the source, the affected system from the CMDB, and the runbook. The responder opens the record and starts work.

Alerts from monitoring tools arrive through webhooks, the REST API, Zapier, or Make and create alert records. An automation can create an incident in IT Incident Management from the alert, assign it to the on-call responder, and link the two records. Detection to assignment is one automated flow, and the incident keeps the alert history.

Yes. Each region or team keeps its own schedule with its own time zone, and routing rules pick the responder by service and region. A single dashboard shows coverage for every team, so a gap in one region is visible to all. Follow-the-sun rotations are three schedules with handoff times, not a special feature.

Acknowledgment and resolution times are calculated by formula fields on each alert and compared with the SLA targets from Service Level Management (SLAs). Dashboards show response times by team, period, and severity, and list the alerts that missed target. Teams review those lists to adjust schedules, escalation times, and runbooks.

Reliability improves when every alert reaches a responder quickly and nothing waits on a missed message. Escalation guarantees a backup, the incident link keeps the response coordinated, and the response-time reports show where coverage is thin. Over time, teams tune schedules and escalation rules from their own data.