The scope of our Excel oncall-rotation solution has grown so
that it is now hard to envision a successful replacement with a single tool. We have a SharePoint expert that is hoping to
take a stab at it, but he hasn’t made any progress.
One of the problems with an automated oncall rotation is that it
isn’t very static. People take vacations or have unexpected life issues
that require the oncall duties be adjusted. Personal contact information can
also be volatile. Because of these fluid requirements we've opened up the
Excel so that everyone has update rights. If a person needs to make an
adjustment, they are expected to do it themselves. (I provide support when
they accidentally harm the Excel application.)
Each
team has its own sheet that displays everyone on that team, identifes who is currently oncall, and displays their personal contact information. Staff maintain
their personal contact information on a master sheet because some staff belong to multiple support teams. There is
also an exceptions sheet where you can document short-term duty overrides. (i.e.
program “x” was recently modified so contact Pete if anything goes wrong for
the first 30 days.)
When
an automatic rotation takes place (Monday mornings) it notifies staff of their
responsibilities via an email. This
solution is popular with our IT support teams that don’t support batch
processing as well, so the entire division (about 110 people) uses it.
I'm still considering your suggestion though. For instance I could have each sheet be a separate CSV file that the staff continue to maintain themselves, and then apply UC4 automation to perform the weekly rotation process of those CSV files.