Your team spans two or three timezones, and alerts still reach someone who is asleep while a teammate is at a desk. This post explains the follow-the-sun model, gives a three-region and a two-region example, lists the costs, and shows how to set one up. The result is a rota where the awake shift handles the alert and everyone else stays off duty.
What is the follow-the-sun model?
The follow-the-sun model hands work from one region to the next as the working day ends in each, so that someone who is awake and at work always covers it. Over 24 hours the work follows the sun around the globe. It began in global software development and customer support. For on-call, the thing being handed over is who is notified when an alert fires.
The alternative is a single-region rota where one person is on call for 24 hours at a time and takes the night alerts. With follow-the-sun, the person notified is already at a desk.
What does a follow-the-sun support model mean?
In customer support the model passes open tickets between regional teams so customers get an answer at any hour. On-call differs: support hands over a queue of existing tickets, and on-call hands over responsibility for alerts that have not fired yet. An on-call handoff covers who is notified now and what is already known to be at risk.
A follow-the-sun on-call rotation example
Three regions
A common three-region example uses eight-hour shifts per region. Times are UTC. Each region covers its own daytime.
| Region | Example office | On-call hours (UTC) | Local time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asia-Pacific | Sydney | 22:00-06:00 | 08:00-16:00 (UTC+10) |
| Europe | London | 06:00-14:00 | 06:00-14:00 (UTC+0, winter) |
| Americas | San Francisco | 14:00-22:00 | 06:00-14:00 (UTC-8, winter) |
Exact local hours shift with daylight saving. Most teams accept an early start in one region or let shifts overlap by an hour.
Two regions
Two regions also work. London works 08:00-17:00 local time. Los Angeles works 08:00-17:00 local time. Both work Monday to Friday.
Together they cover 08:00 to 01:00 London time. The remaining night hours and weekends still need a primary on-call person. Partial follow-the-sun still removes most night alerts, because evenings in one region are working hours in the other.
Benefits of follow-the-sun on-call
Four things change when the person notified is awake and at work:
- Fewer alerts arrive at night, so people sleep.
- Acknowledgement is faster, because the person notified is already at a desk.
- Responders who are alert make fewer mistakes.
- On-call is easier to staff and sustain.
What it costs
This model requires at least two people per region. One person per region means that individual is on call every working day, with no cover for holidays or sickness.
Every region must be able to handle every system. This takes shared runbooks, access, and training. If one region cannot act on the systems, the model breaks.
Handoffs happen two or three times a day instead of weekly. Context gets lost unless the handoff is written down.
Weekends and public holidays differ by country. A holiday in London is not a holiday in San Francisco.
Daylight saving changes move the overlap twice a year. Teams must adjust the rota to keep the handoff clean.
Follow-the-sun does not fit when everyone is in one timezone or within about three hours of each other. It also fails if one region has people who cannot act on the systems. Then a normal weekly rotation with a secondary is simpler. See how to build an on-call schedule for that approach.
How to set up a follow-the-sun rota
List where your team members are located and their standard working hours in UTC.
Find the gaps: the hours and days when no one is at work.
Decide who covers those gaps. A primary rotation takes the alert only when no regional shift is on.
Decide what happens when the awake shift does not respond: a fixed wait, then the primary.
Decide whether critical alerts skip the awake shift and go straight to the primary.
Write down the handoff. Create a short note for each shift change that lists open incidents, noisy alerts, snoozed items, planned changes, and known risks. Post this note in the channel the next region reads first. Do this during the overlap hour if one exists.
Review after the first month. Count alerts by hour and by region, and adjust the shifts.
How fast do you need to go to follow the sun?
People also ask this about the phrase itself, and the answer is physics. At the equator, the earth turns at about 1,670 km/h (about 1,040 mph), so you would need to travel west at that speed to keep the sun fixed overhead. A rota does it without moving anyone.
Follow-the-sun rosters in OnCallAlerting
In OnCallAlerting, a roster in follow-the-sun mode has a primary rotation plus up to 24 working shifts. Each shift has a name, a timezone, start and end times, working days, and people.
When an alert reaches the roster and the primary is off shift while another shift is on, everyone on the shift that is on now is notified first. If nobody acknowledges within the roster's wait period (1-60 minutes), the primary is notified. Critical alerts can go straight to the primary; that option is on for new rosters. If nobody is on shift, the primary is notified directly.
The Overview page shows each shift on a UTC day and shows who is notified next.
Take a roster with two shifts. The Europe shift is Europe/London 08:00-17:00 Mo-Fr. The Americas shift is America/Los_Angeles 08:00-17:00 Mo-Fr. The wait is 10 minutes. The primary this week is in Europe. A warning alert arrives at 20:00 in London, which is 12:00 in Los Angeles. Both Americas people are notified. If neither acknowledges within 10 minutes, the primary is notified. A critical alert at the same moment goes straight to the primary.
Notifications go to Slack and the in-app inbox only, so the model suits teams whose shifts are at work when the alert arrives. Setup is in the follow-the-sun docs and the rosters docs. To try it, start a 30-day trial.