Carnegie Mellon University

How to Use PagerDuty

On-call hotline services provide centralized, 24/7 on-call management for CMU staff and faculty through a platform called PagerDuty.

If your team maintains an on-call hotline in PagerDuty with Computing Services, use this page to learn how to set up your account, respond to calls, and manage your schedule.

Get Started

  1. Visit cmu.pagerduty.com.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. If you’re logging in for the first time, follow the onscreen prompts, confirm your phone number and set up your account.
  4. Visit My Profile > Notification Rules to edit how you receive notifications. In our current PagerDuty environment, all notifications will be classified as high-urgency.

Note: To provision an account for a new staff or faculty member or de-provision an account for someone leaving the university, email Communication Services at tc-help@andrew.cmu.edu

  1. Download PagerDuty from the Google Play or Apple App Store.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. Follow the onscreen prompts to set up your mobile app.

On this page, we cover how to accomplish basic tasks in a web browser, but we encourage you to practice working from the PagerDuty mobile application as well. Visit PagerDuty University or the PagerDuty Knowledge Base to learn more.

Learn the Basics

PagerDuty offers two account types: responders and managers.

Responders

Responders can receive calls, manage incidents, and create schedule overrides for themself. Most of your team members will be responders.

Managers

Managers have all the capabilities of responders, but they’re also able to create and manage schedules and escalation policies.

  1. The on-call staff member always receives a phone call first, regardless of the notification rules they have set for themself.
  2. If the on-call staff member does not pick up the call within 20 seconds, PagerDuty moves to the next person on the team’s escalation policy.
  3. If no one from the team picks up the call, the caller leaves a voice message. PagerDuty stores the voice message in an incident.
  4. The on-call staff member then begins receiving notifications according to their notification rules. If they acknowledge an incident, they can access the caller’s voice message
  5. If the on-call staff member does not acknowledge the incident via notifications, website, or mobile app within the time allotted by the team’s escalation policy, the next person in the policy begins receiving notifications. 

Manage Your On-Call Schedule

  1. Visit cmu.pagerduty.com.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. Visit People > On-Call Schedules.
  4. Click + New Schedule to create a new schedule.
  5. Complete the required fields and click Save Schedule

For detailed support, watch PagerDuty University’s Schedule and Overrides Tutorial.

  1. Visit cmu.pagerduty.com.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. Visit People > On-Call Schedules.
  4. Open the schedule you wish to edit and click Edit this Schedule.

Note: Managers can currently view all on-call schedules across the division. Edit only the schedules that you are responsible for.

For detailed support, watch PagerDuty University’s Schedule and Overrides Tutorial.

Escalation policies allow you to establish who receives notification next if the on-call staff member does not respond to the call within a predetermined timespan.

  1. Visit cmu.pagerduty.com.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. Visit People > Escalation Policies
  4. Click + New Escalation Policy.
  5. Complete the required fields and click Save. 

For detailed support, watch PagerDuty University’s Escalation Policies tutorial.

Create an override in PagerDuty for yourself to accommodate upcoming PTO or another absence:

  1. Visit cmu.pagerduty.com.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. Visit People > My On-Call Shifts.
  4. Click Create Override.
  5. Complete the required fields and click Create Override.

For detailed support, watch PagerDuty University’s Schedule and Overrides Tutorial.

  1. Visit cmu.pagerduty.com.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. Visit People > Schedules.
  4. Within the schedule, click the name of the staff member for whom you would like to schedule an override.
  5. Complete the required fields and click Create Override.

For detailed support, watch PagerDuty University’s Schedule and Overrides Tutorial.

  1. Visit cmu.pagerduty.com.
  2. Log in with your Andrew userID and password and authenticate with DUO if prompted.
  3. Visit People > Schedules.
  4. Open the schedule you wish to add to your Google Calendar.
  5. Under calendar feed, click Webcal feed. If you are logged in to Google Calendar in your browser, PagerDuty will redirect you automatically.
  6. Click Add to add the schedule to your Google Calendar. 

Google Calendar will update automatically if you or your manager changes your on-call schedule.

If you're working from a Mac and iCal opens by default, you can copy the calendar feed URL and paste it into Google Calendar:

  1. Follow steps 1 through 4 above.
  2. Under calendar feed, right-click Webcal feed and Copy Link Address.
  3. Open Google Calendar.
  4. Click the plus sign next to Other Calendars.
  5. Click From URL.
  6. Paste the calendar feed URL into the URL field
  7. Click Add Calendar.