On-call rotation schedule template (three layouts you can copy)

Most small teams need one of three layouts: a weekly rota, a daily rota, or a primary and secondary pair. Each layout below is a plain table you can paste into a spreadsheet or a wiki page, with the points column that lets you check the rota is fair before you publish it.

The sample dates, names and points on this page were produced by the open-source oncall-rota generator (4 people, 1 point per weekday, 2 per weekend day, 3 per public holiday, a holiday on 25 December). Change the names and dates and the layouts work for any team. To have the rota made for you, use the free on-call schedule generator.

Layout 1: weekly rota (one person on call for a whole week)

Best for teams of 4 to 8 where pages are rare and a handover once a week is enough. Copy the header row and fill one line per week.

Totals over these 8 weeks: Ana, Ben and Chen 18 points each, Dana 20, against a fair share of 18.5. Dana carries the holiday, so the next rota should start by giving the heavier week to someone else. That carry-over is the part a plain list of names cannot show.

Layout 2: daily rota (one person per day)

Best for support desks and duty officers, where a day is the natural unit and weekends are the problem. Weekend days score double, so a name that keeps landing on Saturdays shows up in the points column.

A straight A-B-C-D cycle over a 7-day week gives each person a different weekday every week, which is why the generator, not a fixed cycle, picks the names once weekends and leave are counted. Over the first two weeks of a sample like this, two people end up with 5 points and two with 4, so a one-point gap is normal and is evened out over later weeks.

Layout 3: primary and secondary

Best when one person is first responder and another is the back-up. Offset the two columns by one slot so nobody is primary and secondary in the same period, and so the secondary has seen the previous week's handover.

Secondary is usually a lighter duty, so teams often score it at half the primary points. Decide that number before the first week and write it next to the table. With 4 people and two layers, each person is on call in 2 of every 4 weeks, which is well above the 25 percent of working time that the Google SRE book suggests as a ceiling. Check your own numbers with the team size calculator before you adopt two layers with a small team.

What to add to any template

• Handover time and time zone. Write both at the top, for example "Mondays 09:00 Europe/London". A shift that changes at midnight UTC surprises people in other zones.
• A leave column or a separate leave list, so the person who generates the rota knows who cannot be named for a given week.
• A swap log. When Ben covers Chen, write it down with the dates. A swap changes who worked, and the next rota should account for it; this is the most commonly forgotten step.
• An escalation contact for when the person on call does not answer.
• A handover note, using the handover template.

From template to a rota that stays fair

A template is a good start for a quarter. Past that, the work is keeping the points total per person, adjusting for leave and swaps, and re-checking. You can do that by hand in a spreadsheet using the method in how to make an on-call rota fair, or let Turnkeep keep the ledger: free for one rota of up to 4 people, and $6 a month flat per team beyond that.