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How to install Standby, set up on-call for your contact center, and use the app when you're paged. Can't find it? Email hello@contact-iq.com.

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Quick answers: Frequently asked questions, about pricing, installing, paging, phones and security.

Guides: how-tos for Amazon Connect, on queue alerts, queue capacity and after-hours on-call lines.

Installing Standby

For the AWS administrator who installs Standby in your account.

Before you installWhat has to be true in your AWS account and Amazon Connect instance first. Install the Standby stackLaunch the stack, fill in what only you know, and check it worked. What Standby can and can't do in your accountEvery permission the stack grants, and what is deliberately left out. Check two branches in your contact flowsWhat callers hear when Standby caps or closes a queue, and the one setting it depends on. Update the stackChange a setting, move to a new version, or recover admin access. Remove StandbyWhat happens when you delete the stack, and what to do first.

Running your workspace

For admins setting up on-call in the Standby console.

Getting started in the consoleSign in, find your way around, and follow the setup checklist. People: who can sign in, and who can be pagedInviting people, admins and members, seats, and mobile numbers for calls. Rotations, time off and coverWho is on call and when, what each rotation covers, and what happens if nobody answers. Alert rules and shadow modeWhat's worth waking someone for, and how to check a rule before it pages anyone. Readiness and practice drillsFind out whether tonight would reach someone, and prove it. Take after-hours callsWake the person on call when a caller is waiting out of hours. Workspace settingsNotifications, what they may say, cover approvals, and Contact-IQ support access. Plan and billingYour trial, choosing a plan, and managing payment. Single sign-onSigning in with your organization’s identity provider (Business).

Being on call

For everyone on a rotation, using the Standby app.

Install the app and sign inGet Standby on your phone and sign in to your workspace. Enroll your phoneGet notifications, and approve queue changes with your fingerprint or face. NotificationsWhat reaches you, what it says, and making sure urgent ones get through. When you're pagedNotifications, the phone call, acknowledging, and what happens if you don’t answer. Cap or close a queueMake a time-limited change to a queue from your phone. It undoes itself. Your shifts and asking for coverSee when you’re on call, and hand a shift to someone else. TroubleshootingNotifications not arriving, can’t reach Standby, and other fixes. Delete your Standby accountHow to have your account and information deleted, and what is kept.

Recipes: getting woken for the right thing

Step-by-step setups for the alerts teams ask for most.

An on-call line: reach whoever's on call, without giving out their numberCallers wait in an on-call queue; Standby wakes the person on call to take the call. Call me at night only when it's serious; just notify me during the dayUse paging choices and quiet hours so only serious alerts ring your phone at night, and everything else arrives as a notification. Find out when nobody is available to take contacts during open hoursGet paged during business hours when a queue has no agents available, using the agents-available rule and a business-hours rotation. Catch a broken contact flow after a changeGet paged when contact flow errors jump across your Amazon Connect instance, so a bad flow change is caught in minutes, not at the next report. Get alerted when service level slips or a caller waits too longTwo rules: one for when service level drops below your target, and one for when a single caller has been waiting too long.

Recipes: building the team

Common ways to arrange who is on call.

Two people take turns, and a third backs them upTwo people share the pager week by week, and a third person is rung if neither answers, or covers when both are away. A day team and a night team on the same queuesPage one team during business hours and another overnight and on weekends, on the same queues, without waking the wrong one. The billing team gets billing calls; everyone else gets the restGive one team its own queues, and a catch-all rotation everything else, so each team is only paged about the queues it owns. Vacations, shift swaps and asking for coverBook vacations, swap shifts and let people ask for cover from their phone, with or without an admin approving first. Put on-call shifts on everyone's Outlook or Google calendarShare a rotation as a calendar link, so on-call shifts show up in Outlook or Google Calendar next to everyone's meetings.

Recipes: fixing it and trusting it

Acting from your phone, and proving the setup works before you need it.

Cap an overloaded queue from your phone at 2amA queue is backing up at 2am. Cap it from your phone for 30 minutes, approve it with your face or fingerprint, and let it undo itself. Close the lines in an emergencyClose a queue from your phone during an outage, so callers hear your closed message, and know it reopens by itself. Try a new alert for a week without waking anyoneRun a new alert rule in shadow mode for a week, read what it would have done, then promote it to live, or early with a reason. Prove the whole chain works before you rely on itTest your own phone, clear the readiness checks, then run a practice drill that pages exactly who a real incident would. A team that never wants phone callsSet a team's alert rules to notify only, so Standby never rings their phones, and understand what that trades away.

Contact support

Email support@contact-iq.com with your workspace code (for example acme) and what you were doing. It reaches the people who build Standby.

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