Help on set up schedule across timezone

Hi, guys. Got a puzzle need to solve on setting up a PD schedule across timezones.

So we have multiple devs across three countries. We are doing a rotation across all devs, each of us covers one week.

When dev is on call, we just want them on call in their local daytime.

So this week dev A in the US is on call E.T US timezone daytime 8 hours. next week dev B in Europ will be on call say like France local daytime 8 hours.

And all those gaps in between will be caught by the next escalation layer.

My question will be how can I set up the PD schedule, so each of the dev can only be on-call in local daytime, while we maintain a rotation here?

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out on the community page. Check out the link below, this is an example of a ‘follow the sun’ rotation where you have multiple timezones accounted for across one schedule -

https://support.pagerduty.com/docs/schedule-examples#example-6-follow-the-sun-schedule

Kind regards,
John

John O’Donnell
Team Lead, EMEA Support@pagerduty.com

Thank you for the response!

I read that follow-the-sun schedule post carefully, but I don’t think that applies to our situation.

We do not want it like follow the sun, because, we want to do rotation weekly, each dev covers a week, instead of covering a timezone.

Like I mentioned in the question, it is like, this week, dev A cover US timezone daytime, eg, 10 am - 6 pm, then dev goes offline with NO COVERAGE ON THIS SCHEDULE. NEXT WEEK, dev B will take the place, from rotation, cover Europ timezone with no coverage besides daytime. Then the no coverage gap will be caught by the next escalation layer.

Will that be achievable in PD?

Hello,

Thanks for the update and further explanation. I do not believe this is something that we can achieve as the rotation functions we do have would not allow for this kind of set up.

Sorry about that, but do let us know if you have any questions or any other versions of this that may work instead.
John

John O’Donnell
Team Lead, EMEA Support@pagerduty.com

@robinsonw @Inactive-Member-27144877:

It is possible to setting up a PD schedule across timezones for only working hours. You will need to create one layer for each timezone, and create a no-oncall user as placeholders.

Here is an example:

Assume current user’s timezone is Pacific time (Los Angeles), and each person only needs to cover 12 hours in their own timezone

Layer 1 (Pacific time)

users:

  • person 1
  • person 2
  • no-oncall (we need this no-oncall user to make sure each layer have the same amount of users)

schedule:
Restrict on-call shifts to specific times

  • Monday from 08:00 to 20:00
  • Tuesday from 08:00 to 20:00
  • Wednesday from 08:00 to 20:00
  • Thursday from 08:00 to 20:00
  • Friday from 08:00 to 20:00

Layer 2 (India time)

users:

  • no-oncall (there are 3 persons in total, so this layer should have 2 no-oncall users)
  • no-oncall
  • person 3

schedule:
Restrict on-call shifts to specific times

  • Sunday at 20:00 to Monday at 08:00 (This is still displayed as pacific time, but is Monday morning in India)
  • Monday at 20:00 to Tuesday at 08:00
  • Tuesday at 20:00 to Wednesday at 08:00
  • Wednesday at 20:00 to Thursday at 08:00
  • Thursday at 20:00 to Friday at 08:00

The final schedule will be person 1 for one week, and then person 2, and person 3. You might need to drag and drop the users to make sure each week is only covered by one and only one non no-oncall person.