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After-hours on-call text routing that follows the clock

After-hours on-call text routing chooses the phones for each alert by hour and weekday, so the manager stops getting texts at 2 a.m. Daytime alarms reach the crew on site, and nights and weekends go to whoever has the on-call phone. You set the time windows once, in your own time zone.

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  • Windows by hour and weekday
  • Set in your own time zone
  • No per-user fees

Works by email with

  • Generator & power
  • Pump & lift stations
  • Nagios
  • After-hours voicemail

On-call routing

Try it: turn it off and on.

3

The manager's phone, no routing: every alarm, day and night

1

The same phone with routing: daytime alarms only

On. The phone gets 1 text.

With On-call routing off, the phone gets 3 texts: Welco: [East Warehouse] Generator 1 run status in alarm at 10:35 AM. Reply STOP to opt out. Welco: [East Warehouse] ATS transfer to emergency power at 2:22 AM. Reply STOP to opt out. Welco: [East Warehouse] Generator 1 low fuel warning at 3:10 AM. Reply STOP to opt out. With it on, it gets 1: Welco: [East Warehouse] Generator 1 run status in alarm at 10:35 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.
Animation: On-call routing switched off and on. The manager's phone, no routing: every alarm, day and night. The same phone with routing: daytime alarms only.

What after-hours routing changes for your crew

  • The day crew gets to sleep

    People who aren't on call stop getting night texts, so they stop muting their phones.

  • The on-call phone always hears it

    Nights and weekends land on the phone of whoever is on standby that week.

  • Urgent alarms ignore the clock

    A rule for CRITICAL or LOW LOW can text at any hour, while routine alarms wait for morning.

  • Weekends get their own crew

    Saturday and Sunday can go to a different list from weeknights.

Who gets the 2 a.m. alarm, before and after routing

Before routing

  • Every alarm texts everyone on the list, day or night.
  • The manager wakes up, then phones the person who is actually on call.
  • Day staff start muting alarm texts, and miss the one that matters.
  • On long weekends, someone forwards the alarm email by hand.

With time windows

  • The rule whose window matches the hour picks the phones.
  • The night phone gets the text first, with the site and the fault.
  • Day staff only hear about alarms during the working day.
  • A long weekend takes one edit to the weekday rule, not a forwarding chore.

How to set up after-hours text routing in 3 steps

Routing is a time window on an alert rule. It sits alongside every other Welco feature and uses the alert email you already send.

  1. Add a time window to a rule

    One rule can hold several windows, such as weekdays from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. plus all of Saturday and Sunday. Times follow your account's time zone, so 2 a.m. means 2 a.m. where your crew sleeps.

  2. Pick the phones for each window

    Choose from staff who joined and replied YES. A common setup feeds one alarm email into three rules.

    • Weekdays, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.: text the day shift lead and the maintenance desk.
    • Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 7 a.m.: text the night on-call phone.
    • Saturday and Sunday, all day: text the weekend on-call phone.

  3. Split urgent alarms from the ones that can wait

    Give the urgent rule no time window and match words like CRITICAL, FAIL or LOW LOW. A second rule catches the rest and texts only during the working day.

A worked example: a hydro outage in the middle of the night

A warehouse's generator panel emails every event. When hydro drops in the night, the facilities manager should sleep and the on-call tech should know.

Alert email from genset@facilities.example.ca, subject “GEN.RUN-S Alarm 14”. Welco trims it to one text of 92 characters: “Welco: [East Warehouse] ATS transfer to emergency power at 2:22 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Text received: Welco: [East Warehouse] ATS transfer to emergency power at 2:22 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

Characters212921 credit

Animation: the alert email "GEN.RUN-S Alarm 14" is trimmed into one text: "Welco: [East Warehouse] ATS transfer to emergency power at 2:22 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

At 2:22 a.m. on a Tuesday, the night window matched, so only the on-call tech's phone buzzed. The manager saw the alarm in the feed the next morning.

Send night alarms to the night phone

Sign up, invite your night crew and set your first time window.

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One generator panel, a day shift and a night shift

The same panel sends both emails. The clock decides whose phone buzzes.

  1. Daytime: the shift lead on site gets it

    Welco: [East Warehouse] Generator 1 run status in alarm at 10:35 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

  2. The night window opens

    From now until 7 a.m., the night rule is the one that sends.

  3. Night: only the on-call tech is woken

    Welco: [East Warehouse] ATS transfer to emergency power at 2:22 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

  4. The tech answers from bed

    Heading over now, 25 min

  5. The reply reaches the facilities mailbox

    Welco emails replies to the alert's sender. It does not acknowledge the alarm at the panel.

    Reply from the on-call phone: Heading over now, 25 min

Times are an example. Text delivery depends on mobile networks.

Where after-hours routing matters most

How do I change who is on call each week?

Welco doesn't keep a rotation calendar. When the on-call person changes, you edit the phones in the night rule. The new phone must already have confirmed with a YES reply.

Some teams hand one shared on-call phone from person to person instead, so the rule never has to change. The on-call basics guide compares both ways, and the on-call contact sheet helps you plan the list.

Features to use with routing

Frequently asked questions

Can I text the on-call tech and a backup overnight?

Yes. A night rule can text as many techs as have joined and replied YES. Many teams text the on-call tech and a backup for critical alarms. That way a dead battery or a phone left in the truck doesn't leave the alarm unseen.

Do I need a separate Welco address for each shift?

No. One Welco address can feed many rules, and each rule has its own time window. The time the email arrives decides which rule sends the text. Separate addresses only help when you want to keep sources apart.

Does the on-call person need to install an app?

No. The on-call person gets a normal text on any cellphone, whether it's with Rogers, Bell, Telus, Freedom, Vidéotron or SaskTel. There's nothing to install and no account to sign in to. They join from your invite, reply YES once, and alerts start arriving.

How do I handle a stat holiday with after-hours routing?

Time windows follow weekdays, not dates, so Welco has no holiday calendar. The day before Canada Day or Victoria Day, edit the weekday rule so that day's alarms go to the weekend phone. Change it back the morning after. Test mode lets you check the edit without waking anyone.

Which time zone do the routing windows use?

Your account's time zone. A window of 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. means those hours where your crew works, not where a server sits. A crew in Halifax on Atlantic Time keeps its own hours even if the SCADA server is in Toronto. The window follows the time the email reaches Welco.

Does my monitoring system need to know who is on call?

No. Your system keeps sending the same alert email to the same Welco address. The routing happens in Welco, so you never touch the system's contact list when the shift changes.

Can Welco replace a PagerDuty on-call schedule?

Welco routes by time windows, not by a rotation calendar, and it doesn't escalate. If you need those, an incident tool is a better fit. The PagerDuty alternative page compares the two honestly.

Put your overnight alarms on the night phone

Set one time window and the day crew stops getting texts at 2 a.m.

Route my after-hours alarmsBook a demo

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing