Different On-Call Team From Team Owning Component

Stephen Clark_e48zm1

We have two smaller teams that own different parts of the system but the combined team is on-call in both JSM and Compass.

How can we use the combined team for the on call rotation while having the individual teams listed as owners without creating two new on call rotations?

Seems like this ticket in the Compass JAC is describing what I'd like to do: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/COMPASS-86 

I've tried taking the link of the team from the operations page and that didn't seem to work but just shows as an external link.

The combined team was migrated from OpsGenie so it's not a new team nor is the schedule.

Dave Mathijs

Hi @Stephen Clark 

In Compass, a team's on-call schedule is attached to that specific team. You cannot have a single on-call schedule that's owned by two different teams.

Rotations can include "participant" teams. That means in principle, you might have a rotation where more than one team is a “participant” in that shift — but: that’s on the schedule of one team.

Component ownership is separate from the on-call schedule. The “owners” of a component in Compass (in your system catalog) are metadata on the component. That’s not the same thing as defining who is on-call. Compass expects a schedule link, not a generic team page.

The “two smaller teams that own different parts of the system” are set as owners of components in Compass, but that doesn’t tie them into the on-call schedule unless they are explicitly made participants in the schedule.

Trying to “link” the smaller teams in the component’s on-call UI isn’t sufficient: you need to attach a schedule (i.e., the on-call schedule from the combined team) to the components, not just list the owner teams.

Here are some potential workarounds:

 

Use the API to add both owner teams as participant teams in the combined schedule

• Via the Compass REST API, modify your existing “combined team” schedule: in its rotation(s), add both of your smaller teams as team participants.

• Pros: You keep a single real on-call schedule; no need to manage two rotations.

• Cons: Requires API work; non-trivial; riskier maintenance; not fully supported in the UI for component ownership semantics.

Create a “dummy” or “meta on-call” team

• Create a new team in Compass solely for on-call purposes (“On-call Team” or similar).

• Setup the schedule on that team.

• In the schedule, define rotations that reference (as participants) the two smaller “owner” teams.

• For component ownership: keep the owner teams as they are, but for alert linking, use the “On-call Team” in the component’s on-call schedule.

• Pros: Clean separation of on-call responsibility vs ownership; doesn’t break existing ownership model.

• Cons: Another additional team to manage; might be confusing to people (“who is the owner vs who is on call”).