On-call overrides and shift swaps

A rotation is a plan. People get ill, go on holiday and have evenings they cannot be reached. The schedule has to keep matching who can actually answer, without breaking the rotation for everyone else. There are three ways to change who is on call: an override, a swap, or an edit to the rotation itself. This guide covers when to use each, how common tools model them, and a worked example. For rotation patterns, see on-call rotation patterns.

Override, swap or edit the rotation

Change	What it does	Use it when
Override	Puts a named person on call for a set time range. The rotation underneath is unchanged.	One person cannot cover part of their shift: a sick day, a holiday, an appointment
Swap	Two people trade shifts, or a volunteer takes someone's shift. Most tools record it as overrides; some have a swap request.	Both people agree and the workload stays even
Edit the rotation	Changes the members, their order or the handover time for every future shift	Someone joins or leaves the team, or the team changes its pattern

The sensible default is to use an override for changes affecting a single date range. Editing the rotation for a one-off change shifts the order for everyone after it. The rotation never returns to where it was.

PagerDuty describes overrides as manual one-time adjustments to on-call schedules, most commonly used when a person is sick, goes on vacation or wants to swap on-call shifts (PagerDuty, Edit Schedules). For shift-based schedules it adds a test: ask whether you want to replace or add a responder. Replace means an override. Add means a custom shift, for example a second responder during a high-risk deployment. If removing the override would leave the right person on call, it should stay an override. If removing it would leave a gap, you need a custom shift (PagerDuty, Edit Shift-Based Schedules).

How common tools model it

PagerDuty

Creating an override adds a layer to the schedule. The tool shows this layer beneath the schedule layers, as the lowest layer before the Final Schedule. The override form asks for the person who should take the shift, and a start and end date and time.

You can delete an override for a present or future time. Deleting an override in the middle of its shift brings back the regular schedule immediately. You cannot delete past overrides. Removing a person from a schedule does not delete their future overrides.

All roles except Restricted Access, Observers, Limited Stakeholders and Full Stakeholders can create overrides. The Multi-Overrides tool on the "My On-Call Shifts" page covers a range of dates at once, up to three months ahead (PagerDuty, My On-Call Shifts).

Opsgenie

An override makes the chosen user replace the on-call user of one or more named rotations, or of all rotations in the schedule. Users can create overrides for themselves. Admins can create them on behalf of other users (Opsgenie, Override an on-call schedule).

The user can be set to No-One. Nobody is then on call for the selected rotations during that time range, so use it only on purpose.

Atlassian ends support for Opsgenie on April 5, 2027 and is moving its features to Jira Service Management (Atlassian, Opsgenie migration).

Grafana IRM

Grafana IRM, which combines the former Grafana OnCall and Incident apps in Grafana Cloud, has both features (Grafana, Shift swaps and overrides):

• Shift swaps fit when you need cover but do not know who is free. You create a request, eligible teammates are notified, and one of them takes it. The schedule then replaces every occurrence of the requester with the taker in that time window. If you cancel a swap that someone already took, it reverts; if the swap has already started, only the remaining period reverts.
• Overrides fit when you have already agreed cover with a specific colleague. An override always takes precedence over the regular rotation. Overlapping overrides are ranked by priority levels L0-L9; an override with no level set gets the default, highest priority. Only future overrides can be deleted.
• A swap requested by the original rotation owner has no effect on an active override for that shift.
• Web overrides work on web schedules, and on Terraform schedules only when enable_web_overrides is enabled, which is off by default. They do not work on iCal-imported schedules.

The open source Grafana OnCall went into maintenance mode on 2025-03-11, with archiving announced for 2026-03-24 (Grafana, OnCall OSS maintenance mode). Its GitHub repository is now archived.

Holidays, sick days and partial shifts

• Holidays. Create the override when the holiday is booked, not the week before. The PagerDuty incident response guide asks people to know their upcoming on-call time and arrange swaps around travel, vacations and appointments, and to tell others about schedule changes, because many people plan around the schedule well in advance (PagerDuty, Being On-Call).
• Sick days. The person who is ill should not have to fix the schedule. Anyone with permission creates a same-day override for the person covering. Until the override exists, the next level of the escalation policy is the safety net.
• Partial shifts. Override only the hours that need cover, such as an evening, and leave the rest of the shift alone. The PagerDuty guide asks people to consider covering an hour or so of someone else's on-call time when asked.
• Taking the pager. If you are about to do something that will cause pages, such as a test, the PagerDuty guide calls it courteous to tell the person on call and schedule an override to yourself for the duration.

Who approves

On-call tools rarely enforce approval. In PagerDuty most roles can create overrides. In Opsgenie users can create their own. In Grafana IRM, with role-based access control enabled, the SCHEDULES_WRITE permission covers creating, taking and deleting swaps and overrides.

A workable rule:

• A swap or override between two people who both agree needs no further approval. The person covering confirms it in the tool, or creates it themselves.
• Post the change in the team channel so the rest of the rotation knows.
• Bring in the team lead when nobody volunteers, when the change leaves a gap, or when it affects on-call pay or time off.

Keeping it fair

• Trade like for like. A weekend for a weekend, nights for nights.
• Review cover, not only shifts. Overrides are recorded in the schedule. Once a quarter, look at who covered how many hours for others, and how many pages they took while covering.
• Pay cover the same as a scheduled shift. Whatever the team agreed for on-call pay or time off in lieu applies to the person who actually held the pager.

A worked example

This is an illustration. Four people share a weekly rotation. The handover happens Monday at 10:00 Europe/London. The order is Alex, Sam, Priya, Jo.

Week starting	Scheduled
Mon 2026-12-07 10:00	Alex
Mon 2026-12-14 10:00	Sam
Mon 2026-12-21 10:00	Priya
Mon 2026-12-28 10:00	Jo
Mon 2027-01-04 10:00	Alex

Two changes occur.

1. Alex has a family event on Thursday 2026-12-10 and asks for the evening. Sam agrees to cover. One override: Sam, Thu 2026-12-10 18:00 to Fri 2026-12-11 08:00 Europe/London. Alex keeps the rest of the week.
2. Priya is on holiday the week starting 2026-12-21. Alex agrees to swap weeks. Two overrides: Alex, Mon 2026-12-21 10:00 to Mon 2026-12-28 10:00; Priya, Mon 2027-01-04 10:00 to Mon 2027-01-11 10:00.

After 2027-01-11 10:00 the rotation continues with Sam, exactly as planned, because nothing in it was edited. Had someone moved Priya to the end of the rotation order instead, every later week would have shifted for all four people.

Tools that support overrides and swaps are in the on-call directory.