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What's New

What changed in On-Call Optimizer, by month.

User interface refresh

Watch this short video showing the key changes, or check Simpler, faster scheduling on the blog for full details.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Matt, founder of On-Call Optimizer.

Today I'm excited to introduce you to our refreshed interface. It incorporates lots of your feedback, and makes managing schedules and swapping shifts simpler and faster than ever before.

Let's start on Home, where you land when you sign in.

The sidebar is gone and navigation is now along the top. Your calendar connections have moved under the profile menu.

The calendar now defaults to a four-week view, focused on what's coming up, not what's already passed.

If you prefer the old month-based calendar view, use the menu at the top right of the calendar to switch back.

In that menu you'll also see new options to control which events are shown on the calendar.

On Home, the event layers default to your upcoming shifts and the availability imported from your connected calendars.

Hover over or click on any event for details, or to start a swap request.

Swap requests are now integrated with the calendar.

Shifts with a pending swap request are clearly marked on the event and in the popup.

A summary of all swap requests sits just above the calendar, to the left of the view menu.

A click in the popup or on the summary opens the swap panel, so you can view and respond without leaving the calendar.

A request waiting for your response takes you straight to the options, while a swap you've requested shows the progress of responses.

The calendar for a schedule shows all assigned shifts, as well as those planned for the next scheduled assignment.

Availability information for all schedule members, which was previously hidden in a separate tab, is now an event layer that you can enable on the main calendar.

A new card on the right-hand side of the schedule header shows who's on call right now, and the status of any connected integrations.

The swap indicators and the summary are also present, providing visibility into swap requests for any member's shifts, not just your own.

The Reports tab provides quick access to the latest evaluation of the schedule's balance and penalties applied by other rules.

And the Timeline tab lists the assignments that contributed shifts to the schedule or are awaiting confirmation.

If you're an admin, make sure to check out the next video covering configuration and settings.

Otherwise, thanks for watching. Check our docs for full details,

and if you have any feedback or questions, I'd love to hear from you. Email me: matt@oncall-optimizer.com. Thanks!

For admins

For organization and schedule admins, the admin video provides additional information on the changes to settings, including the move to configuration templates for all schedules.

Back-to-back availability blocks are merged into one swap request

Busy days often show up in a calendar as several back-to-back blocks — a meeting with travel time either side, or the same appointment recorded in both a work and a personal calendar. Previously each of those availability entries was treated separately, so a single conflicting shift could open several automatic swap requests.

On-Call Optimizer now merges availability entries that overlap or follow on from one another, and opens just one swap request per shift for the merged block. The whole merged block is also used to decide whether a full or partial swap is requested. If you have automatic swap requests turned off, you’ll receive a single Assignment conflict notification for the merged block instead of one per entry.

For more details see the swaps docs.

More reliable destination exports

A set of improvements to improve the robustness of schedule export to connected destinations:

  • When several shorter overrides exist within a single longer On-Call Optimizer shift and only one of them is missing or wrong, just that one override is fixed. Previously all the overrides were removed and replaced by one long override. This reduces churn and API request rates.
  • When an on-call product connection is unhealthy, an export now stops straight away with one clear error message instead of reporting a separate failure on each exported shift.
  • Destination failure notifications are no longer held back when a destination fails for a different reason soon after an earlier, unrelated failure.
  • Post-export validation checkes are now immediately retried rather than leaving the destination out of date.

For Splunk On-Call specifically:

  • Changing who is on call for an existing override now updates that override in place, so cover for other schedules sharing the override is never disturbed.
  • Exports for schedules sharing the same connection now run one at a time, so changes to shared overrides between schedules cannot race with each other.
  • In exceptional cases when an export to one schedule cannot restore an override impacting a different schedule, the impacted schedule’s destination is immediately scheduled for synchronization.

Bugfixes and minor changes

  • New schedules confirm their scheduled assignments automatically.
  • Fixed Splunk On-Call exports occasionally reporting a missed shift, and finishing with only partial success, when an unrelated override at the same time was removed.
  • Cancelling a swap that another member has simultaneously modified now returns you to the swap and explains why it can no longer be cancelled. Accepted swaps now also stay with your open requests in the Swap requests panel until they are confirmed.
  • New availability blocks now check for existing swaps (including manual requests) before automatically requesting a swap to avoid duplicate swap requests for the same time period.
  • Fixed Slack new shift messages failing to send for members with many shifts. Long lists now show the first 10 shifts and swaps, followed by how many more there are.
  • Fixed Slack destination status messages failing to send when a destination reported several errors with long descriptive text. The message now shows the (possibly truncated) first error and links to On-Call Optimizer for the full list.
  • Fixed ICS calendar feeds that don’t include a calendar name failing to load. These feeds are now listed using the calendar’s standard name, or “ICS Feed” when no name is provided.
  • Fixed Slack messages beginning with an emoji (such as :link:) occasionally failing to be processed.

Older changes are listed by month below.

Last updated October 22, 2026