Multistage schedules

Using stages to create hierarchy in schedules.

Teams commonly create "layers" of on-call wherein the first person (or persons) is paged, and if they do not answer, the page is escalated to the next layer. This is called a multistage schedule.

Stages

A stage represents the hierarchy of on-call. Notifying an on-call always begins at the first stage and progresses according to the schedule escalation settings.

Primary, Secondary, etc.

Hotpot's scheduler allows arbitrary stages, but the most common setup is to have a primary and a secondary, which are merely the first and second stages!

Adding a stage

Stages can be added to a schedule by clicking "Manage stages" on the schedule page.

When viewing the stages and users therein, you can click "Add stage" to add a new stage to the schedule. Users can be managed for each stage, allowing you to customize who is primary, secondary, and other common patterns.

Removing a stage

If you remove a stage, any "later" stages will take its place. For example, if you have three stages: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary, removing the Secondary stage will cause the Tertiary to become the Secondary!

To remove a stage, locate its header and click the triple-dot menu at the top right. Select "Remove this stage" and confirm your choice.

Note that you cannot remove a stage if it is the only stage in the schedule!