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Put on-call shifts on everyone's Outlook or Google calendar

One link per rotation. Everyone subscribes once, and their calendar keeps itself up to date.

This is for teams who plan their weeks in a calendar and want to see who's on call there. When you're done, every shift on the rotation appears in each person's calendar, with time off and cover already taken into account. It works on every plan.

What you'll set up

  • A calendar link for each rotation, shared with the people on it.
  • A subscription in each person's Outlook or Google Calendar. Apple Calendar works too.

Steps

  1. Create the link. Go to On-call → Rotations and open the rotation. Under Calendar, choose Create a calendar link.
  2. Copy it straight away. The link is shown once. If you lose it, the only way to get another is to replace it, and that stops everyone else's calendar updating.
  3. Share it with the team somewhere private, such as your team's chat. It's one link for the whole rotation, and anyone who has it can see who is on call.
  4. Subscribe. Each person adds the link once:
    • Google Calendar: Other calendars → From URL.
    • Outlook: Add calendar → Subscribe from web.
  5. Repeat for other rotations. Each rotation has its own link. Someone on two rotations subscribes to both.

What people will see

  • One event per shift, named On call: and the person's name. The calendar is named after the rotation.
  • Time off and cover already applied, so it shows who will actually be rung. A cover shift says who it's covering for.
  • From two weeks ago to a year ahead.
  • Shifts are shown as free time, so being on call doesn't block meetings.
  • Names and times only: no queue names, alerts or phone numbers.

It's read-only. Moving an event in your calendar changes nothing in Standby. To change a shift, book time off or cover. See Vacations, shift swaps and asking for cover.

A few things the calendar doesn't show:
  • On-duty hours. A rotation set to business hours only still shows each person's whole shift, from handover to handover.
  • Gaps. Hours when everyone on the rotation is away are left blank, even when a backup rotation takes over. Subscribe to the backup rotation's own link to see those.
  • Requests waiting for approval. They appear once they apply.

Try it safely first

Subscribe yourself before you share the link. Compare the next few weeks with the list of upcoming handovers on the rotation's card. They should match. Calendar apps check for changes on their own schedule, so a new booking can take a while to appear.

If the link gets passed around

On the rotation, choose Replace link to make a new one, or Stop sharing to turn it off. Either way, everyone subscribed to the old link stops getting updates. Their calendar keeps the last copy and doesn't warn them, so tell people and share the new link.

Variations

  • Someone leaves the team. Replace the link and share the new one with the people who are staying.
  • Your own shifts on your phone. The On Call tab in the Standby app shows your next four weeks, without a calendar link. See Your shifts and asking for cover.
  • The backup's weeks too. If you have a backup rotation (Business), create a link for it as well, so the backup person can see when they're the safety net.

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