Exploring On-call Scheduling in Service Operations Workspace

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring On-call Scheduling in Service Operations Workspace

    On-Call Scheduling in Service Operations Workspace ensures that support team members are always available to address issues promptly. It enables setting up on-call schedules, managing roster rotations, configuring escalation policies, and handling notifications to the correct contacts during escalations. Users can conveniently access shifts and schedules within the Service Operations Workspace, and managers have administrative tools to manage teams and schedules effectively.

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    Key Features

    • Shift and Schedule Management: Shift admins create shift and group templates, assign roles, and configure escalation triggers. Shift managers manage shifts by adding or removing members, designing escalation processes, and handling time-off requests.
    • Roster Member Capabilities: Members can view their schedules, specify availability and preferred contact methods, submit time-off requests, and refer others to cover shifts. They also receive escalation notifications and can access on-call reports.
    • Escalation Policies and Notifications: The system supports customizable escalation trigger rules and policies. Notification preferences can be set for entire teams, using multiple delivery channels such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, mobile push notifications, SMS, and voice messages.
    • Administrative Tools: Managers can approve or reject time-off requests, resolve scheduling gaps, assign extra time, and review team performance reports to ensure continuous coverage.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Ensures continuous support coverage by automating on-call scheduling and escalation management.
    • Improves team coordination through clear role assignments and accessible schedule views.
    • Enhances communication with multi-channel notification support tailored to team preferences.
    • Provides administrative control to manage schedules, coverage gaps, and team performance effectively.

    Additional Information

    This feature requires appropriate user roles such as itil, rotamanager, rotaadmin, and admin to perform various scheduling and management tasks. Customers should refer to the role assignment documentation for detailed permissions. For configuring notification delivery channels, specific setup guides are available for Slack, Microsoft Teams, SMS, voice messaging, and mobile push notifications.

    On-Call Scheduling ensures that dedicated support team members are always available to resolve issues as they arise. You can set up on-call schedules, roster rotations, and escalation policies, escalate notifications for a group, and determine the current contact for an escalation.

    You can access your shifts and schedules within Service Operations Workspace using Schedules options.

    Managers can also use the Teams menu to perform all the administrative tasks.

    See On-Call Scheduling in Service Operations Workspace for more details.

    On-Call Scheduling in Service Operations Workspace workflow

    The various members of an organisation use On-Call Scheduling to work together. See a sample end-to-end workflow:On-call scheduling workflow
    1. Shift admin creates shift and group templates.
    2. Shift admin assigns role and configures escalation trigger rules. See Roles in Service Operations Workspace for ITSM and Assigning On-Call Scheduling roles
    3. The shift manager creates a shift and add or delete members to the shift.
    4. Shift manager designs the entire escalation process for the new shift.
    5. Roster member views their on-call schedules and find out who the other members on their shift are.
    6. Roster member can specify their availability and preferred contact methods from the methods set up by Shift admin.
    7. Roster members can submit a time-off request and refer another member of the group to cover the shift.
    8. Roster members views the roster and escalation details for a shift.
    9. Roster members view on-call reports and receive reminders.
    10. The shift manager approves or rejects the time-off requests.
    11. Shift manager reviews the on-call schedules for their groups for any gaps and time-off requests.
    12. Shift manager provides, replace, or delete coverage and time-off requests.
    13. Roster members receive on-call escalation notifications to acknowledge tasks or conference requests.
    14. Shift manager views escalation, group, and performance reports of their on-call teams.
    Note:
    To view version compatibility matrix, view the latest release notes.

    On-Call Scheduling benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Create a new shift, assign members to the shift, set the shift preferences like rotations and responder levels. Create and edit shift in Service Operations Workspace itil, rota_manager (Shift Manager)

    Manage your shift by accepting or rejecting time-off requests. Resolve gaps and conflicts by providing coverage. Assign extra-time to the members to the shift.

    Manage shifts in service operation workspace itil, rota_manager (Shift Manager), rota_admin

    Create your own escalation policies and path. On-Call Scheduling allows you to create an escalation trigger rule using the templates available, based on your requirement.

    Escalation triggers and policies itil, rota_manager (Shift Manager), rota_admin, admin
    Create and edit Notification preferences for an entire team. Edit On-call team preference using Teams menu itil, rota_manager (Shift Manager), rota_admin

    Use any one of the multiple channels such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, mobile push messages, SMS, and voice messages to set as the preferred contact method for receiving notifications.

    Manage delivery channel
    To configure delivery channels, see:
    rota_admin, admin
    Note:
    For more details on user roles, see Assigning On-Call Scheduling roles.