Slack Home Guide Built for the buttons in the Slack home tab

Use OnCallManager from Slack without guessing where each action lives

This guide follows the same layout your team sees in Slack App Home. Create schedules from the top action row, create a shared Google calendar from each rotation, manage each rotation directly from its action buttons, and turn on AI auto-answering with the same workflow.

Add to Slack Full Docs

Top action row

Create schedules and open this guide from Slack App Home

New Schedule

Open the schedule wizard, choose the rotation cadence, add responders, and publish your first handoff.

Guide

Open this page any time someone on the team needs a quick walkthrough of the Slack workflow.

Per-rotation actions

What each button under a schedule is for

Shared Google Calendar

Open a rotation’s Google Calendar action and choose Create public calendar. OnCallManager owns and updates it; teammates only subscribe. Anyone can view its rotation name, assignments, and shift times. Existing private calendars keep their current access settings.

Edit

Update members, cadence, handoff timing, or notification settings without recreating the rotation.

Override

Handle PTO, shift swaps, or emergency coverage changes while keeping the active owner accurate in Slack.

Manage Knowledge Base

Link Google Docs and keep a rotation-specific runbook that responders can maintain over time. That same knowledge base is what AI auto-answering uses when someone asks the rotation a question in Slack.

AI auto-answering

What it does and how to make it useful

How it gets triggered

After installation, select “Enable Slack auto-answer” and authorize optional message access. In a public channel the app has joined, a teammate mentions the rotation handle with an operational question. OnCallManager answers in the same thread so the conversation stays where the work is happening.

What it uses

Answers are grounded in the rotation's knowledge base: linked Google Docs, prior team conversations, and thread context for the current question.

What to manage

Use Manage Knowledge Base to connect the runbooks, SOPs, and incident notes you want the AI to search before it replies.

Recommended workflow

The sequence most teams use after install

  1. 1

    Create the first schedule

    Start with the rotation your team pages most often so the current owner becomes obvious right away.

  2. 2

    Shared Google Calendar

    Create one public calendar per rotation and share its subscription link. No Google connection is needed. Enable this only for schedules your team can share publicly. Existing ICS subscriptions remain a separate calendar feed.

  3. 3

    Build the knowledge base

    Add the runbooks, SOPs, and incident notes your team actually uses so each rotation has usable context attached to it and AI auto-answering can retrieve the right instructions.

  4. 4

    Use overrides when reality changes

    Temporary ownership changes should go through the override flow so the app home and notifications stay aligned.