ShiftBeta

Getting started · Integrations · API

Getting started

From an invite to your first page in about ten minutes.

  1. Accept your invite. Shift is invite-only. Open the link in your invite email and set up a passkey or password (or use Google, Microsoft, GitHub or Apple where the sign-in page offers them). Anyone else on your team is invited fromSettings → Members.
  2. Create a service. On Services, add one per thing that can break (for example "API" or "Database"). Each service gets an integration key, and you can add more keys or revoke one at any time.
  3. Point a tool at it. Copy the key and follow the recipe for your tool inIntegrations. Tools that already speak PagerDuty's Events API or Opsgenie's Alert API only need the host changed to shift.nightroll.app and the Shift key pasted in.
  4. Decide who gets paged. Build a rotation on Schedules (layers, time zone, restrictions, overrides), then an escalation policy on Policies that pages the schedule first and someone else if nobody acknowledges. Choose that policy on the service.
  5. Set up how you're reached. On Me:
    • On iPhone or iPad, first add Shift to your Home Screen (Share → Add to Home Screen) and open it from there; iOS only allows web push for Home Screen apps. Then choose "Enable push on this device". Do this on each device.
    • Add SMS or voice numbers if your org has a phone provider connected.
    • Set your rules: which contact methods are used for high and low urgency, after how many minutes, and how many hours before a shift you get a handoff notice.
    • Press "Send me a test page". Keep a second contact method.
  6. Chat and phone (admins). On each service, add chat webhooks (Slack, Teams, Discord, Mattermost, Telegram, ntfy) to post alerts to a channel. For SMS and voice, connect your own Twilio or Telnyx account onPhone; calls and texts are billed by them to you.

Acknowledging

Push notifications carry Acknowledge and Resolve buttons. Email and chat carry signed links that work for 24 hours and act only after you confirm, so mail scanners cannot acknowledge for you. On a voice call, press 1. Everything is also on Alerts, or ask your agent over MCP.

Limits worth knowing

  • Each integration key accepts about 120 events a minute; past that, senders get 429 and should retry.
  • Request bodies are capped at 512 KB.
  • Alerts opened over the API or MCP are capped at 5 an hour per org.
  • Resolved alerts stay in Shift for 30 days. Then each day's are archived as one gzipped JSON-lines file, each alert with its timeline: in your bucket if you connected one in Settings → Storage, otherwise kept by us for 400 days in total and then deleted. Lists, search, the API and MCP cover only what is still in Shift; admins download archived days from Alerts.