Your First Schedule

On-call schedules ensure that the right person is notified when an incident occurs. This guide walks you through creating your first schedule in Batida.

What Is a Schedule?

A schedule defines who is on-call and when. It is the foundation of incident assignment -- when an incident is created, Batida looks at the active schedules to determine which responder should be notified.

Each schedule belongs to a team and operates in a specific timezone.

Creating a Schedule

1. Navigate to Schedules in the sidebar.

2. Click New Schedule.

3. Fill in the required fields:

   Name:     Backend On-Call
   Team:     Platform
   Timezone: America/Sao_Paulo

4. Click Create to save the schedule.

At this point, the schedule exists but has no rotation assigned. You need to add at least one rotation for the schedule to be active.

Adding a Rotation

A rotation is a repeating cycle that determines which team members take on-call shifts.

1. Open your schedule and click Add Rotation.

2. Configure the rotation:

   Rotation Name:  Weekly Primary
   Period:         Weekly (every 7 days)
   Start Time:     09:00
   Handoff Day:    Monday

3. Select the members who will participate in this rotation. Drag to reorder -- the first person in the list takes the first shift.

4. Click Save Rotation.

TIP

If your team has multiple layers of on-call (e.g., primary and secondary), create separate rotations within the same schedule. When an incident is assigned, the primary on-call is notified first, and the secondary is notified if the primary doesn't acknowledge within the escalation timeout.

Rotation Periods

Batida supports several rotation periods:

Period	Description	Best For
Daily	Shift changes every 24 hours	Teams with follow-the-sun coverage
Weekly	Shift changes every 7 days	Small teams with one on-call per week
Custom	Define any number of days	Teams with non-standard rotation patterns
Monthly	Shift changes on a specific day each month	Teams with monthly rotation cycles

Timezone Handling

Each schedule uses a single timezone. When you set a rotation to start at 09:00 in America/Sao_Paulo, that means 09:00 BRT regardless of where the on-call responder is located.

If your team spans multiple timezones, choose the timezone of the service being covered, not the individuals. This keeps the schedule consistent and avoids confusion during daylight saving transitions.

INFO

Team members see their assigned shifts in their local timezone on their personal calendar, but the schedule itself always references the configured timezone.

Overrides and Swaps

On-call schedules should be predictable, but life happens. Batida supports:

• Temporary overrides -- an admin or the on-call member can set a specific person to cover a date range (e.g., vacation coverage).
• Swap requests -- a responder can request to swap a shift with another team member. Both parties must confirm before the swap takes effect.

To create an override, open the schedule, click on the date, and select Add Override.

Testing Your Schedule

After setting up your schedule, verify it works correctly:

1. Enable Mock Incidents in Settings > Organization.
2. Create a test incident and confirm it is assigned to the correct on-call responder.
3. Check that notifications are delivered through the expected channels (Slack, email, push).

WARNING

Always test with mock incidents enabled. Creating real incidents for testing purposes will trigger actual notifications and may cause unnecessary alerts.

Next Steps

• Connect your schedule to an escalation policy so unacknowledged incidents are automatically reassigned.
• Set up Slack integration to see on-call changes in your team channel.