The On-Call tab

Feature: On-Call enabled by your company (AI coverage and creating schedules also need the company to use scheduling) · Shown to: employees listed as on-call contacts in the portal

12.1 What on-call means

An on-call contact is a supervisor the company has chosen to be paged when something urgent happens in the field — a guard calls out, a relief is late, an incident is filed, a patrol is left incomplete, a guard misses a location verification or verifies from outside the geofence, or a customer's urgent request comes in. On-call contacts are managed in the company portal (Organization > On-Call Contacts), not in the app:

• An admin adds you as a contact, gives you a Role/Title, and sets your availability schedule — the days of the week and the daily time window (in your timezone) during which you may be paged. 24/7 and Business Hours presets are common.
• They assign you to individual sites or to an entire branch, and choose which optional alert types you receive (incident reports, guard requests, verification timeouts, incomplete patrols, geofence violations). Call-outs, lateness reports and patrol issues always reach every assigned contact.
• Everyone assigned to the site who is active and inside their window is paged at the same time — there is no rotation. If several of you are on, agree who is handling it (reply ACK, below).

As soon as you are an on-call contact the app shows an extra On-Call tab, and Import Scan Points appears on the Patrol tab. If you open the tab while you are not one, it reads You are not an on-call contact.

12.2 What you receive

Each page arrives two ways: a text message from your company's number, and a push notification titled On-Call Alert (tap it to open the app). The text tells you what happened:

Replying by text works for call-outs and lateness reports without opening the app:

ACK to an urgent guard request marks the request acknowledged and moves it to In progress for the dispatcher.

12.3 The On-Call Management screen

Open the On-Call tab.

• Header — On-Call Management, Review and manage on-call requests, and a status chip: ON CALL when you are inside your availability window, OFF otherwise. Under it a line explains the schedule: On-call now ({start} - {end}), On-call starts at …, On-call ended (…), Not scheduled for {day} or On-call status inactive (your contact record is switched off in the portal).
• Stat cards — Pending Requests (call-outs and lateness reports awaiting a decision) and Open Incidents at your sites. They double as tabs: tap one to switch the list below.
• AI Recommendations — View all scheduling suggestions; opens the Recommendations screen (section 12.7).
• Call Outs & Tardies (when Pending Requests is selected) — a list with Pending / All filters. Each card is badged Call-Out or Lateness Report and shows the guard, site, date, time and reason. Tap Review & Respond on a call-out or Review Report on a lateness report.
• Incident Reports (when Open Incidents is selected) — a list with Open / All filters. Tap Review Incident to open one.

The screen refreshes each time you return to it and every 30 seconds while open; pull down to refresh manually.

12.4 Handling a call-out

Review & Respond opens Call-Out Details with Guard Information, Shift Details (site, date, start, end) and Reason for Call-Out, followed by your options. Read this part carefully — approving and covering are two different things.

Approve and Deny decide the guard's request only.

• Approve marks the call-out approved and notifies the guard. It does not put anyone else on the shift, cancel it, or notify a replacement. Use it when you have already arranged cover by other means (and then create the replacement schedule, below), or when the post can go uncovered.
• Deny refuses the request and notifies the guard; they are expected to work.
• Either way you can first type a message in Notes (Optional) (Add notes for the guard...) — it is sent with the decision.

Find Coverage with AI (shown when your company uses scheduling) fills the shift for you.

1. Tap Find Replacement. The optimizer looks for the best available guards and, after a moment, reports Analysis Complete — AI found {n} potential replacement(s). Tap View Recommendations (or Later). Each recommendation card on this screen names the suggested guard with its AI Reasoning; View All Recommendations opens the full list instead.
2. Tap Apply & Create Schedule on the card and confirm Apply Recommendation (This will create a schedule for the recommended employee. Continue?). In one step the app:
   • cancels the original guard's shift (it shows as cancelled in the portal and no longer bills or pays);
   • creates a new shift for the replacement at the same site, date and times;
   • notifies the replacement by text and push so it appears in their Schedule tab;
   • approves the call-out with the note Coverage found: {name}, which notifies the original guard.
3. You are done — nothing else to approve.

How the AI ranks candidates. Only active employees other than the caller are considered. Each gets a score for being assigned to the site, for having no conflicting shift at that time, and for fewer hours already worked this week (spreading hours and avoiding overtime). The AI then weighs the shift's required certifications, prior shifts at the site in the last 90 days, and the site's maximum hours and overtime rules before recommending. A candidate is never scheduled automatically without you tapping Apply.

Create Replacement Schedule Manually is for when you know who should cover.

1. The Create Schedule screen opens with the Site filled in. Choose Select Employee, confirm the Shift Date, Start and End (toggle 12h / 24h), then tap Create Schedule and confirm (This will create a shift schedule for the selected employee. Continue?).
2. Schedule Created asks Do you want to approve the call-out as well? — Yes, Approve approves it and notifies the original guard; No leaves it pending.

Creating schedules is only possible when your company uses InstaNotified scheduling; otherwise the screen tells you schedule creation is not available and you should ask a manager to arrange the shift.

12.5 Handling a lateness / relief-delay report

Review Report on a Lateness Report card opens Lateness Report Details with the guard who reported it, the site and Issue Reported (for example Relief guard has not arrived). Two buttons:

• Arrange Replacement Coverage — opens Create Schedule (section 12.4) so you can put someone on the post.
• Mark as Acknowledged — after an Approve Call-Out confirmation, marks the report approved (the same status a call-out gets), which notifies the reporting guard and shows it as handled in the portal's Call Outs & Tardies list.

Lateness reports do not have AI coverage; call the guard on duty from the Guard Directory if you need more information.

12.6 Handling an incident

Review Incident opens Incident Details with the photos, location and the reporting guard. As an on-call contact you can edit it while it is open:

• Title (Editable), Severity Level (Low, Medium, High, Critical), Description, Incident Date & Time (Editable) and any custom fields on the company's incident form. Tap Save Changes.
• Add Note appends a timestamped follow-up (for example what you did on arrival); your own notes can be edited or removed with Delete note.
• Resolve Incident closes it. The Notify site contacts switch (off by default) emails a summary to the site's contacts who are flagged Receive Incident Reports in the portal. A resolved incident can be reopened with Reopen Incident.

Managers can also do all of this in the portal under Operations > Incident Reports.

12.7 AI Recommendations

The Recommendations screen lists everything the scheduling optimizer suggests for your sites, not just call-out coverage.

• Types: Coverage Gaps, Scheduling Needed, Call-Outs, Overtime Risk, Rest Violations, Workload Balance, Overstaffing, Skill Mismatch, Optimization, Guard Availability and Find Coverage.
• Group by: None, Date, Site or Type.
• On each card: Apply carries out the change (for coverage, exactly what Apply & Create Schedule does in section 12.4; for other types it creates, moves or cancels the shifts described on the card) or Dismiss removes it. Coverage cards offer Select Guard to swap the Recommended person for one of the alternative candidates before applying. Cards whose date has passed read This recommendation has expired / Cannot apply - date has passed.
• Tick the checkboxes (or All) to select several, then Apply All / Dismiss All act on the selected ones after a Bulk Apply / Bulk Dismiss confirmation (Apply {n} recommendation(s)?). Clean Up Stale Recommendations permanently deletes pending suggestions whose dates have passed and can no longer be applied (approved and denied ones are untouched).

Recommendations are also visible to admins in the portal under AI Supervisor > AI Optimizer; whoever acts first wins, and the card disappears for everyone.

12.8 Other tools for on-call contacts

• Guard Directory (More > Guard Directory): every colleague's name, phone and sites with one-tap call — for finding cover by phone. Also shown to admins and branch managers.
• Import Scan Points (Patrol tab): register a new NFC tag or QR code as a scan point from the field — see section 6.5. Only on-call contacts can do this.
• Manage Call Out appears as the action on call-out notifications in Notification History (other guards see View Call Out).

12.9 Good practice

• Reply ACK quickly so colleagues know someone has it, then open the app to act.
• Prefer Find Coverage with AI → Apply & Create Schedule: it keeps the schedule, payroll and the customer's invoice correct in one step. If you approve first and arrange cover by phone, remember to Create Replacement Schedule Manually — an approved call-out with no replacement shift leaves the post uncovered and unbilled.
• Check the ON CALL / OFF chip if you stop receiving pages: your availability window may have ended, or your contact record may have been deactivated in the portal.