Open Settings → Business Info → On-Call Calendar. The feature must be enabled for the team, and your role needs the dedicated View On-Call Calendar permission.
Members whose permissions have not been resaved since this permission was introduced keep their prior Scheduling-based access. When an administrator next updates the member’s permissions, confirm View On-Call Calendar is selected so access is not removed unintentionally.
Understand the tabs
- Recipients: departments and Employee Contacts eligible for on-call work
- Schedule: manual shifts and supported ServiceTitan shift sync
- Emergency Hours: designated emergency windows when that behavior is enabled
- Broadcasted Messages: sent notifications and confirmation state
- Configuration: routing, delivery channels, notification triggers, backup timing, and message behavior
1. Prepare recipients
Start on Recipients:
- Create or review the departments used for emergency routing.
- Open Employee Contacts and verify each on-call employee’s phone, email, department, active status, and delivery preferences.
- Add a Home ZIP if your team uses distance-based routing.
The page warns when a scheduled employee has no department. Fix that warning before relying on department-based routing.
2. Build the schedule
Use Schedule to assign eligible Employee Contacts to the appropriate on-call coverage periods and departments. Check for gaps and overlaps, and confirm that the intended person is active before saving.
Schedules depend on Employee Contacts, not dashboard Team Members. Adding a user to Avoca does not put them on the on-call schedule.
For an on-call recipient, confirm the employee’s on-call notification preference is enabled. Phone-call delivery also requires the employee’s Receive Call preference.
Assign roles deliberately
- Technician: receives the emergency job notification during the scheduled shift and can confirm receipt; assignment behavior depends on the team’s CRM configuration
- Manager: receives emergency-call notifications for oversight during the manager’s scheduled coverage
- Backup: receives an escalation when the primary technician does not confirm within the configured delay
The notification-hours filter is evaluated when each alert is sent for managers, technicians, and backups. Technician matching and assignment can still depend on the appointment time and assignment mode. Use a controlled test to validate both decisions.
Prepare the ServPro customer-to-technician handoff
For ServPro teams using the Cotality DASH booking workflow, Avoca can enable an opt-in two-way group text after a confirmed booking. The thread introduces the customer to the one eligible technician active on the on-call schedule at that moment so they can coordinate next steps directly. It runs at any hour and does not replace the internal post-job notification thread.
Before Avoca enables this rollout for a team:
- Maintain continuous technician coverage with no gaps or overlaps in the applicable on-call department.
- Give each eligible technician a name and a valid US or Canadian mobile number. On legacy calendar configurations, also enable the technician’s Receive Text preference.
- Confirm that the customer and technician are allowed to see each other’s phone numbers in the group thread.
- Provide an approved HTTPS self-help resource for each applicable ServPro Division when the introduction should include one.
- Run a controlled DASH booking and confirm the intended technician, introduction, and optional resource link.
The introduction is suppressed when no eligible technician is active, when more than one eligible technician is active in the configured scope, or when the customer phone number is not a valid US or Canadian number. A missing Division resource does not suppress the introduction; Avoca sends it without the resource paragraph. Delivery is best-effort and a text failure does not reverse or block the DASH booking.
This group thread exposes the customer’s and technician’s phone numbers to each other. Use an approved business mobile number for the technician, verify the team’s communication policy, and correct coverage gaps or overlaps before relying on the handoff. Replies are direct coordination between the participants and should not be expected to appear in Avoca.
Sync ServiceTitan on-call shifts
When ServiceTitan sync is available:
- Open Schedule and choose Sync from ServiceTitan.
- Select all eligible technicians or a reviewed subset.
- Set the lookahead window from 1 to 60 days; the default is 7.
- Choose whether shifts should sync periodically.
- Run Sync now and review the created schedules.
Avoca pulls supported ServiceTitan OnCall technician shifts. Manual Avoca schedules are left in place. Changes and deletions in the synced ServiceTitan range are reflected by later syncs.
Syncing is not a substitute for reviewing coverage. Confirm departments, roles, dates, and timezones after every material ServiceTitan schedule change.
3. Define Emergency Hours
Emergency Hours appears when designated emergency windows or the emergency-hours notification filter is enabled.
Enable the applicable days, set one start and end time for each, and save. An overnight period is supported when the end time is earlier than the start time. Do not use identical start and end times; the page treats that row as invalid.
4. Review Broadcasted Messages
Use Broadcasted Messages to audit emergency broadcasts, recipients, and confirmation state. This is a history view: new entries appear when on-call notification fires for an emergency call.
If a person did not receive a message, verify their Employee Contact details, department, schedule, delivery preferences, and the active configuration before sending another notification.
Use Configuration for the options enabled for your team, such as:
- Whether on-call notifications are enabled
- Business-hours, after-hours, or emergency-hours notification filtering
- Text and phone-call delivery by role
- Which job situations notify technicians, managers, and backups
- Backup escalation timing
- Emergency message templates and recording-link behavior
- Technician assignment strategy
- Override and distance-based routing behavior
Available controls vary by rollout. Follow the descriptions in the dashboard and change one behavior at a time.
For Notify on-call recipients during, choose No filter, Business hours only, After hours only, or Emergency hours only when those options are available. Every recipient is checked against the current moment when the alert is sent, not the appointment start time. Delayed technician or backup attempts are checked again when their alert is due, so an escalation can be skipped if the configured hours boundary has passed.
For a new configuration, manager text notifications for emergency bookings, emergency calls without a booking, regular booked and unbooked jobs, non-service calls, and same-day dispatch start enabled. Manager phone delivery starts off. Technician text delivery starts enabled, but the emergency without a booking event starts off while the emergency-booked event starts on. Existing teams keep their saved settings.
Review every role, channel, and event toggle before the first save. Defaults are a starting point for a new team, not evidence that recipients, schedules, or escalation ownership are ready.
Limit manager escalation by department
Under On-Call Escalation (Multi-Cycle), Escalate to manager when unconfirmed can notify an on-call manager after the configured primary and backup attempts go unconfirmed. Turn on Filter manager escalation by department only when on-call departments are enabled and every relevant manager is attached to the departments they cover.
With the filter on, Avoca notifies only on-call managers attached to the call’s department. If the call has no department, or no scheduled manager matches it, Avoca skips the manager escalation instead of notifying an unrelated manager. Leave the filter off when the team uses a shared manager pool across departments.
Choose how multiple on-call technicians are assigned
When Use On-Call Calendar returns more than one eligible technician for the same department, choose one tie-breaking method under Tech Assignment:
- Round-robin assign among on-call techs: rotates new jobs through the matching technicians for that department. When departments are not used, Avoca rotates through the team’s matching on-call pool.
- Route to nearest on-call tech by ZIP: assigns the matching technician whose Home ZIP is closest to the customer’s ZIP. Keep every eligible technician’s Home ZIP current under Employee Contacts.
The two controls are mutually exclusive. Turning on one turns off the other. Round-robin applies to the On-Call Calendar strategy; it does not change the Use Capacity strategy.
New configurations default to round-robin. Existing teams retain their saved behavior until an administrator enables it. When neither method is enabled, or the selected method cannot resolve a technician, Avoca falls back to the first eligible technician in alphabetical order.
On-call changes can affect live emergency routing immediately. Verify the team’s timezone, departments, schedule, and message template, then run an approved test before the next on-call period.
Test the complete escalation
- Create a short approved test shift with a technician and backup.
- Confirm the employee phone and notification preferences.
- Place an after-hours call that meets the emergency criteria.
- Confirm the intended text or phone call arrives.
- Open the confirmation link when testing acknowledgement.
- Verify the primary assignment or CRM result.
- When safe, test the backup delay with the primary test recipient not confirming.
- Review the event under Broadcasted Messages.
Remove temporary shifts and test CRM records after validation. 
