On-Call Override Requests

The cover-me-Friday workflow. Request coverage from any teammate with one click. They accept or decline by clicking a link in email or SMS.

What this solves

You’re on-call this Friday. You have a doctor’s appointment. You don’t want to swap the whole rotation. You just need someone to cover Friday afternoon.

Without override requests, this conversation happens manually:

Slack: “Hey, anyone free to cover my on-call shift Friday 2-6pm?” 5 hours later, three people respond, two contradict each other, you forget to update the schedule, and at 3pm Friday the page goes to you anyway.

Override requests automate the workflow: you submit a request, eligible teammates get notified, the first one to accept gets the shift, and the schedule updates automatically.

How it works end to end

  1. You request coverage for a specific date (or date range)
  2. Signalog identifies eligible team members (anyone in the same on-call schedule)
  3. Each candidate gets an email + SMS with one-click Accept / Decline links
  4. The first person to accept gets the shift
  5. The schedule updates, the requester is notified, and pages route to the new person

The accept/decline links are token-signed and expire after first use, so there’s no race condition or “I clicked but it didn’t work” ambiguity.

Step 1: Request coverage

From On-Call → My Schedule, click Request coverage: fill in:

  • Date: single day or a date range
  • Schedule: pre-filled with whichever schedule you’re on, change if you want coverage on a different one
  • Optional message: context for the recipient (“doctor’s appointment”, “wedding”, “burnout”)
  • Recipients: defaults to “everyone in this schedule’s pool” but you can narrow to specific users

Submit. Signalog fans out the request.

Step 2: Recipients respond

Each eligible teammate gets:

  • Email with a button to accept or decline
  • SMS (if they have a phone number configured) with the same accept/decline links
  • Inbox notification in their Signalog app

The links look like:

https://your-domain/or/abc123def456...

The token uniquely identifies the request and the recipient. Accepting from one device updates the state for everyone. The other recipients see “this request was already accepted” if they click their link later.

Step 3: First accept wins

The moment someone clicks Accept:

  • The on-call schedule is patched. That day (or range) reroutes to them
  • The requester gets a confirmation email + push notification
  • Other recipients’ links become inactive (they see a “this was already covered” message)
  • Optionally: a “swap-back” date is recorded. When the swap reverts (if the request was a temp swap)

If everyone declines (or no one responds), the request expires after 48 hours and the requester is notified to try again or escalate manually.

Step 4: View pending requests

From On-Call → Override requests you can see:

  • Outgoing: requests you’ve submitted, with status (pending, accepted, declined, expired)
  • Incoming: requests where you’re a recipient
  • All (admin). Every override request in the team

The Inbox sidebar item also shows a badge count for pending incoming requests.

Step 5: Cancel a request

If your situation changes (you’re free after all), open the request and click Cancel: recipients get a notification that they no longer need to respond.

Common gotchas

“Everyone declined and now I’m stuck.” Override requests are best-effort. They don’t force coverage. If no one accepts, you’re still on-call. For unavoidable absences, escalate to your manager or use a hard schedule swap (which reassigns regardless of consent).

“The new person didn’t get paged.” Verify they actually accepted (check the request status). Override requests update the schedule but inherit the existing escalation policy. If their notification settings are off, they won’t get paged. They should test their channels before accepting future requests.

“I want everyone in the team to see the request, not just my schedule.” Use the recipient picker to broaden the audience. By default, requests only go to people in the same schedule pool to avoid spamming everyone.

Plan availability

Override requests are a Pro/Business feature. Free-tier teams can do manual swaps (admin reassigns) but don’t get the automated workflow.

Next steps