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Shift schedules

Shift schedules in GroupAlarm allow you to divide your participants into shifts. If a shift schedule is active at a given time, only those participants who are in the active shift are available for alerting. If your emergency personnel work in shifts, this ensures that only those participants who are actually available for an operation are alerted.

⚠️ If no shift is active at a given time, all participants are available for alerting again.

In addition to shift schedules, you can also define escalations and groups. Escalations allow you to alert multiple shift schedules in chronological order, while groups allow you to combine multiple participants so that they can be assigned to a shift together. Both escalations and groups will be discussed in more detail later on.

💡 Shift schedules are an extension and can be added to your organisation under Admin ⇾ Extensions.

1️⃣ To create a new shift schedule, select CREATE SHIFT SCHEDULE.

2️⃣ In the shift schedule overview, you can see all your shift schedules at a glance. You can expand each shift schedule to get more detailed information.

Configure shift schedule

A shift schedule can contain any number of shifts. These shifts allow you to cover the necessary times individually.

1️⃣ To better distinguish between shift schedules in the overview, you have the option of naming each shift schedule individually. You can also specify whether the shift schedule should be active. This setting can be adjusted at any time. If a shift schedule is not active, it has no effect on the participants who are available for alerting. Inactive shift schedules can still be used for escalation.

2️⃣ You can also name the individual shifts of a shift schedule individually and customise their colours for a better overview. The colour affects the bars displayed for the shift times.

3️⃣ Participants can be assigned to a shift either directly or in groups. Shift groups are predefined groups of participants that can then be assigned collectively.

4️⃣ With the Start date, you set the first day on which the shift is to take effect. Then select the Shift length in weeks, after which the shift schedule is to be repeated. You then specify the individual days of the shift within the weekly cycle under Select weekdays and then determine the times of the shift with Start time and End time. To cover a complete period, several shifts can also be combined in one shift schedule.

An example

Let's assume we want to achieve 24/7 coverage with our participants. This could be achieved, for example, in three shifts of 8 hours each. Our first shift starts on day X with a shift schedule length of one week. We select every day of the week because we want to achieve 24/7 coverage. Now we define the times for the first shift. This could be from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., for example.

Next, we add another shift using the green +. In this shift, we repeat the entries for the weekdays as in the first shift, with the exception that here we set the times from 4:00 p.m. to midnight.

We then repeat the same process for the third shift, covering the period from midnight to 8 a.m.

In total, the three shifts now cover a 24-hour period on each day of the week and are repeated on a weekly basis. If we now assign the corresponding participants to the shifts, only the participants of the respective shift are available for alerting at the defined times.

💡 The times you set in a shift are always based on the time zone defined in the organisation settings.

Escalations

For later use within an alarm in escalation mode or full escalation, you can link several shift schedules together in the Escalations tab and put them in the desired order.

💡 These shift schedules do not have to be active and can contain any number of shifts.

In an alarm in escalation mode, the participants in the first shift schedule, and therefore the first escalation level, are initially used as the set of possible participants for the available positions. If this set is exhausted and positions in the alarm are still unfilled, the set of possible participants is supplemented by the participants from the second shift schedule, and therefore the second escalation level. This procedure is repeated until all positions are filled or no more participants are available.

In an alarm in Full escalation mode, all participants in the first shift schedule, and therefore the first escalation level, are alerted immediately if they are eligible for the available positions. After the specified waiting time has elapsed, the system checks whether any positions in the alarm are still unoccupied. If this is the case, all participants in the second shift schedule, and therefore the second escalation level, are also alerted. This procedure is repeated until all positions are occupied or no more participants are available.

Created escalations can only be used in the Full escalation if you activate the corresponding option and enter valid waiting times. However, escalations created for full escalation can also be used in escalation mode. In this case, the defined waiting times are ignored.

Create escalation

To do this, select Create escalation and give the model a unique name. Then drag the respective shift schedules from the left-hand side to the right-hand side and arrange them in the desired order. You can remove selected shift schedules from the escalation in the same way.

To make it easier to distinguish between the shift schedules, you will see a selection of the assigned participants directly below the name of the shift schedule.

If you are satisfied with the selection and sequence of the escalation, save the escalation using the CREATE button and return to the overview.

Shift groups

Shift groups can be used to organise individual participants into predefined groups. This is particularly helpful if you use several shift schedules in which the same participants should always be stored. Instead of the individual participants, you add the shift group to the shift schedules. This means that the participants only need to be maintained once in the shift group. Changes to the shift group automatically affect all shift schedules in which the shift group is used.

In addition to individual participants, labels can also be added to a shift group. This has the advantage that new participants who are assigned the corresponding label are also automatically added to the shift group.

💡 In combination with a pausable label, it is even possible for participants to independently sign in and out of a shift group and thus also a shift schedule.

If a shift group is already being used in a shift, it cannot be deleted, as otherwise the shift schedule may not have any participants and would no longer work.

Updated on: 14/08/2025

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