How Round Robin works
Round Robin answers one question for your workspace: who is on duty right now? Everything else on this site is a way of setting that up, or a way of getting hold of that person.
A rotation is a pool of people who take turns. At any moment some of them hold the duty (usually one person, more if you say so). A schedule decides when the duty moves on. Round Robin announces every handover in Slack, and keeps a @handle, a channel topic, or a channel’s membership pointing at whoever currently holds it.
That is the whole product. The rest is vocabulary.
The words this documentation uses
Section titled “The words this documentation uses”| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Rotation | A pool of people who take turns on duty, plus the settings that decide how. Create one. |
| Member | Somebody in the pool. Members take turns on duty. |
| Owner | Somebody who can edit the rotation. An owner is not automatically a member. |
| Duty / on duty | Holding the rotation right now. |
| Lane | One person on duty at a time. Most rotations have one lane; two lanes means two people on duty at once, each dealt from a list of their own. One lane in one coverage window is the smallest thing one person is on duty for. Lanes. |
| Handover | The moment duty passes to the next person. |
| Next on duty | Who takes over at the next handover. |
| Schedule | The cadence that fires handovers: daily, weekly, working days, and so on. Set one up. |
| Coverage window | A stretch of hours in one time zone, with its own handover cadence. A window can be covered around the clock, or only at the hours you paint on its week, and outside those hours nobody is on duty from it. Coverage windows. |
| List | The people a lane deals from, in turn order. On a rotation with more than one window, a lane can deal from a different list in each. People. |
| Skipped | Passed over at a handover because you are away. Availability and out-of-office. |
| Code | A short name for a rotation (PAYMENTS, SUPPORT) used in Slack. Letters, numbers and hyphens; stored uppercase, matched case-insensitively. |
| Mention | Reaching the on-duty people by writing @Round Robin PAYMENTS in a channel. They get Ack/Pass buttons. The full flow. |
| On-duty group | A Slack user group like @oncall whose members Round Robin rewrites at every handover. Set one up. |
| Rotation card | The live summary of a rotation the bot posts in Slack. The Slack surface. |
| Rotation notes | Free text the people on a rotation leave each other (a runbook link, a caveat). Anyone who can see the rotation can read them. Who can write them. |
The three modes
Section titled “The three modes”A rotation is always in exactly one of these, and the mode decides who is allowed to move the duty.
| Mode | Duty moves when | Set it by |
|---|---|---|
| Manual | Somebody presses Rotate. | Being the default, or picking the Manual schedule type. |
| Auto | The schedule fires. You can still rotate by hand in between. | Adding a schedule. |
| External | PagerDuty or Jira Service Management says so. Round Robin mirrors their schedule and does not decide anything. | Linking an external schedule. |
What a rotation row tells you
Section titled “What a rotation row tells you”In the dashboard’s rotation list, every column is a fact about the rotation, and each row answers two questions: who is on duty now, and who is on duty next. Each of the two names people, and says underneath when their shift changes.
- On duty is who is reachable right now, whoever they are. Underneath, when that shift ends: until Friday at 18:00, or until handed over where nothing is scheduled to end it. On a rotation with more than one lane it names the lane while one person is on, and the soonest change while several are.
- Next shift is who takes the duty next, one face per lane on a rotation with more than one, and when it begins. Where nobody can be named yet it says why: Not drawn yet on a rotation that picks at random, Not chosen yet on one handed over by a person.
- Members is how many people are in the rotation, and how many channels it posts to.
- Properties is what the rotation is: a crown where you own it, a lock or a globe for who can see it, and a link where PagerDuty or Jira Service Management manages it and it is read-only here.
You are named rather than badged. Wherever you hold the duty or take the next shift, the row says You in place of your name, with your own hours underneath and your own lane. Everybody else is named normally, so a row can perfectly well name you while you are only a member, or say nothing about you at all while it is running fine for somebody else.
The code sits under the name, first on the line with the description, so you can still run your eye down the list for it.
Two tags appear beside a rotation’s name:
- Disabled when the rotation is switched off. Nobody is on duty and nothing hands over, so On duty reads No one and Next shift names nobody. Enabling an automatic rotation puts the next person in order on duty. See Switch a rotation off.
- Not a member on a rotation you are not in, which you only see when you are looking at everyone’s rotations.
When nobody is on duty
Section titled “When nobody is on duty”Paused means cover is shut right now and comes back at the hour named underneath. A rotation covering working hours is paused every night.
A rotation that should have somebody on duty and has nobody shows Nobody on duty in amber. Hover it for the reason: the rotation has no members to put on duty, or a coverage window is open with nobody in it. Open the rotation’s Coverage tab to see which window.
Where things happen
Section titled “Where things happen”Rotations are created and configured in the dashboard. Slack is where the day-to-day happens: handover announcements, rotation cards, /rr, and mentions. You can also do both conversationally through an AI assistant.
Change the time zone or the clock format
Section titled “Change the time zone or the clock format”The dashboard shows every time in one time zone and one time format, and you choose both. The button on the right of the top bar, with a globe, names the time zone you are reading in. It is there on every page.
- Select the time zone button in the top bar.
- Under Time format, choose Automatic, 12-hour or 24-hour. Automatic follows your browser’s language and names the format it gives you: 12-hour for US English, 24-hour for UK English.
- Under Time zone, choose My own clock (your browser’s time zone) or UTC. For any other zone, type a city or a zone name in Search time zones and pick it under Any time zone.
On a rotation’s pages, Time zone also lists the zone of each coverage window, under the window’s name. On a rotation linked to PagerDuty or Jira Service Management, it lists Schedule, the time zone of the linked schedule.
The choice applies at once, everywhere: the rotation tabs (Plan, Coverage, History, Changes, Activity), My shifts, availability, mentions, rotation notes, delivery problems, billing, API keys and webhooks. It changes what you see. A rotation’s hours and handovers stay where they are.
Window hours and handover times are written in the window’s own time zone, and follow your time format: every day at 9:00 AM and 6:30 PM, or Mon-Fri 9:00 AM-6:00 PM (Mon-Fri 09:00-18:00 on a 24-hour clock). A window that ends at midnight ends at 24:00 on a 24-hour clock and 12:00 AM on a 12-hour clock. The time range of an API key’s Call records is always in UTC, in your time format. Dates read day first, as in 20 Oct 2026, 5:55 PM.
Time fields follow your format too. Wherever you set a time (an assignment, a cover request, an absence, a handover, coverage hours), you pick an hour and a minute, written on your clock. Coverage hours go in 15-minute steps.
Both choices are kept in this browser. They stay as you left them across pages and reloads, but another browser or another computer starts again from Automatic and My own clock.
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Install Round Robin, if you have not already.
- Create a rotation: its members, channels and schedule.
- Round Robin in Slack: the map of everything the bot does.