Cover holidays with rotation overrides
An override is a hard “user X is on call from time A to time B” entry that beats every layer in the schedule. It’s the right tool for:
- Vacation cover — “Carol is covering Alice’s week while she’s at a wedding.”
- One-off swaps — “I’ll take your Tuesday if you take my Thursday.”
- Filling layer gaps — if a layer’s effective window leaves a hole, override the gap.
Overrides do not modify the underlying rotation. Once the override expires, the rotation continues as if it never happened — Alice will still be next-up the week she’d normally have rotated to.
Add an override
Section titled “Add an override”-
Open the schedule, click Overrides → Add override.
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Pick the user to put on call, the start and end timestamps.
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Save.
curl -X POST https://api.siteqwality.com/on_call_schedule/$SCHEDULE_ID/override \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "user_id": "33333333-aaaa-4bbb-9ccc-ffffffffffff", "start_at": "2026-12-22T09:00:00Z", "end_at": "2027-01-02T09:00:00Z" }'Times are RFC 3339 with timezone. The schedule’s own timezone doesn’t apply to override timestamps — they’re absolute.
Common patterns
Section titled “Common patterns”Whole-week vacation cover
Section titled “Whole-week vacation cover”Single override covering the entire week. Carol takes over from Alice 09:00 Monday through 09:00 the following Monday. Both start_at and end_at must be set.
Daily swap
Section titled “Daily swap”Two overrides: each engineer takes the other’s day. Each override is one calendar day, both saved with explicit start/end.
Patch a gap in a layer
Section titled “Patch a gap in a layer”If your weekly rotation has effective_from: 2026-06-01 and you have an incident before then, the layer doesn’t apply. Add an override covering the period until the layer kicks in.
Overlapping overrides
Section titled “Overlapping overrides”If two overrides cover the same time, first-defined wins. Don’t rely on this — instead, delete or shorten the earlier one before adding a conflicting one.
Removing an override
Section titled “Removing an override”curl -X DELETE https://api.siteqwality.com/on_call_schedule/$SCHEDULE_ID/override/$OVERRIDE_ID \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY"The dashboard’s per-schedule Overrides list has a delete button per row.