Separate business and after-hours shifts (delegated to a partner team)

This schedule configuration is commonly used when two teams in different time-zones are able to provide coverage during different hours of the day.

Note how (unlike the basic after hours) example where every day of the week is treated the same, this example also demonstrates the use of the Weekdays wildcard in the shift configuration to achieve the result of having Saturday and Sunday also treated as after-hours and assigned to the partner team for the full 48-hour period.

Shift Configuration Entries

Sample Assignment for the main schedule

2023-07-24 09:00 person2@example.com    # Mon
2023-07-24 17:00 partner-rotation
2023-07-25 09:00 person1@example.com    # Tue
2023-07-25 17:00 partner-rotation
2023-07-26 09:00 person3@example.com    # Wed
2023-07-26 17:00 partner-rotation
2023-07-27 09:00 person2@example.com    # Thu
2023-07-27 17:00 partner-rotation
2023-07-28 09:00 person3@example.com    # Fri
2023-07-28 17:00 partner-rotation
2023-07-31 09:00 person1@example.com    # Mon

Assignment Details

This configuration results in On-Call Optimizer balancing team members in a very similar way to the business hours example, using a single shift type covering each 8 hour period on Mon-Fri.

There are two additional shift types (16-hour overnight shifts, and 64-hour weekend shifts) assigned to the partner team in the main schedule, however as explained below, these shift types are not used for balance and assignment purposes.

Partner Team Schedule

The shifts delegated to the partner team will be assigned in the final output of this schedule by referencing the existing assignments of the referenced partner schedule which are unchanged by the fact that it has been referenced from this schedule. This allows the partner team to use any rotation configuration they like, independently of any scheduling choices made in the the main schedule.

In this example, the partner team is using the Simple Daily Rotation configuration which assigns a single shift per day, and therefore will continue to aim to assign a balanced number of daily shifts to each member.

Fully Rendered Schedule

When viewed in the On-Call Optimizer web UI, or exported to an on-call products the “fully rendered” schedule combining the above two rotations will be as follows:

2023-07-24 09:00 person2@example.com    # Mon
2023-07-24 17:00 member2@example.com    # Mon 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles
2023-07-25 09:00 person1@example.com    # Tue
2023-07-25 17:00 member1@example.com    # Tue 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles
2023-07-26 09:00 person3@example.com    # Wed
2023-07-26 17:00 member3@example.com    # Wed 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles
2023-07-27 09:00 person2@example.com    # Thu
2023-07-27 17:00 member2@example.com    # Thu 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles
2023-07-28 09:00 person3@example.com    # Fri
2023-07-28 17:00 member3@example.com    # Fri 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles
2023-07-29 17:00 member3@example.com    # Sat 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles
2023-07-30 17:00 member1@example.com    # Sun 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles
2023-07-31 09:00 person1@example.com    # Mon
2023-07-31 17:00 member2@example.com    # Mon 10:00 in partner-rotation America/Los_Angeles

Return to the list of other examples