Android app that reminds me I'm on-call and won't let me forget it

December 4, 2023 8:15 PM

In my job, I am sometimes on first-line, meaning a case comes in via phone or email and I need to respond in a timely fashion. Also, I have ADHD. A few times over the past six months, I haven't realized I was on first line until getting a call from an angry manager asking why I hadn't responded to a new case. Is there an Android app that I can schedule to make it glaringly obvious when I'm on call? Like...maybe an always-on red border around the screen, or a different email notification sound on my on-call days, or anything else you might think of? Phone calls are less of a issue, because calls automatically route to me when I'm on call. Case emails come to me regardless of whether I'm on call or not. Any ideas? .
posted by SampleSize to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

What about something literal and physical, like a red phone case?
posted by 4th number at 8:21 PM on December 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

We use PagerDuty with a scheduled on-call rotation, so if the on-call person is supposed to respond to something, they automatically get an email/text/call/whatever you set up. The on-call person also gets a reminder that they're going on-call so they can't forget.

Looks like it's free if you have 5 users or fewer.
posted by erst at 9:53 PM on December 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Tasker should be able to change alert tones, possibly flash the notification LED, things like that, under conditions you can set, but it has a bit of a steep learning curve.
posted by quinndexter at 12:18 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

We use OpsGenie. It's free for 5 users as well: https://www.atlassian.com/software/opsgenie/pricing
Is it better than PagerDuty mentioned above? In some ways. In others it's worse. If you just want a reminder that you're oncall, either will work.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 4:15 AM on December 5, 2023

For unrelated reasons I one time had a pink fuzzy phone case that I would occasionally swap onto, it was annoying and completely impossible to forget. Hard second on the physical phone case idea, get one that feels different to hold than your usual or otherwise draws your attention.
posted by itsatextfile at 5:33 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Phone case won't really serve the purpose for me because I'll have to remember to put it on. I want to put in the dates when the schedule is made, then be reminded.
posted by SampleSize at 6:23 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

A few months ago my mom had some major surgery and I wanted to keep it uppermost in my mind as she recovered, not just to remember to call her, but just to remember that was going on for her.... past experience has shown that I can be so involved in my own life that I can forget to ask, "Hey! how are you doing at recovering from that extremely major life and health event?"

So I created a google calendar event at 5pm that said "Remember about Mom's surgery!" and gave it five reminders (the max) to go off at 2 hour intervals and made it a daily repeating event. I didn't actually hear every reminder, but pretty much every time I picked up my phone (often) there was a pop up "Remember about Mom's surgery!" and that was about enough to keep it in my mind. Probably a lot of people would not need quite so many recalls but I did. Probably some people would need more and for some things I have, and I have just created the same daily repeating event twice on a day giving me TEN reminders popping up.

Maybe as soon as you know when you on-call is you can create scheduled events like that?
posted by Jenny'sCricket at 7:44 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I use google calendar; it reminds me 90-, 45- and 15- minutes before an appointment starts - on the notification screen. I use few notifications, so it's obvious. You can use a sound if that helps. When I have an important event, I set a notification 10 hours ahead, all in gcal.

With ADHD, part of it is self-training, so decide on a process, then reward yourself for following the process. Look at your calendar at least daily, set up an appt. on Sunday evening to review the week ahead and organize your life around work and life events.
posted by theora55 at 8:41 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]