Tools and Access

Before you go on-call, you need the right tools and permissions. This page covers what you need and how to get it set up.

Core Tools You’ll Need

1. Incident.io (On-Call Platform)

What it is: Our central system for managing on-call schedules, receiving pages, and coordinating incident response.

What to do:

You should already have been invited
Install on your phone (iOS or Android)
Test that pages come through

4. Monitoring Platform Access

Your team uses one or more of these:

Grafana — Dashboards and metrics
Logs — Logs
Sentry — Error Tracking

What to do:

Ask your manager which ones your team uses
Get added to each platform
Bookmark the critical dashboards
Test accessing them during work hours

5. Access to Logs and Observability

What it is: The ability to search logs, traces, and metrics for your services.

What to do:

Ask your team which log system you use

6. Runbooks and Documentation

What to do:

Bookmark the main Runbook and Playbook pages
Familiarize yourself with 3-5 core runbooks

Communication Tools

Slack

You should already have this, but make sure you are in the following Slack channels:

Additionally make sure the following is true:

You’re in incident channels (will be added dynamically)
You have notifications on so you see mentions

Phone Number

Your phone number needs to be:

In Incident.io (for pages)
Current and working
Reachable during your shift

Email

Make sure your work email works and you can receive incident notifications.

Creating a Pre-Shift Checklist

Before going on-call, test:

Incident.io app on phone sends notifications
I can read my team’s documentation
My Slack notifications are working
My phone number is current

Your First Shift — Set up tools before your first shift
Handoffs and Continuity — Use these tools during handoffs
Communication and Culture — Communicate through tools like Slack

Last modified October 19, 2025: drs-add-landing-page-tier2 (6f2cba79)

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