Microsoft has brought several organization apps so far. These apps mainly aim at productivity and team building. One such app was StaffHub, which helped managers and companies manage the shifts of their employees. However, StaffHub was discontinued by Microsoft. In place of StaffHub, Microsoft introduced a new feature called Shifts in Microsoft Teams – an extremely efficient and productivity-boosting feature.
Shifts in Microsoft Teams is a schedule management tool that helps you create, update, and manage schedules for your team. Just like StaffHub, this feature too helps companies schedule and manage shifts of their employees. Apart from this basic function, Shifts also lets users create Groups, open Shifts, time clocks, review requests for time-offs, share the changes in the shifts, and so on.
How to use Shifts in Microsoft Teams?
As Microsoft describes, Shifts is a schedule management tool for first-line workers. The feature helps not only the managers but also the subordinates to manage their shifts. As a manager, you can put together a schedule for your team. As an employee, you can swap shifts with a teammate to manage your work. You can plan for the upcoming day, week, or month and then respond to changing needs as they arise.
How to get Shifts on Microsoft Teams
As the name suggests, the Shifts feature is available on Teams for managing the shifts and working hours of employees of a company. Hence, this feature is available in all Enterprise SKUs where Teams is available. It is not available for a personal user.
What functions you can perform with Shifts in Microsoft Teams?
Following are the functions you can perform (based on the access you have been given) in Shifts:
- Schedules
- Groups
- Shifts
- Open shifts
- Time Clock
- Requests
- Share
These functions described in more detail.
1] Schedules
You can create, edit, and manage a schedule with Shifts in Microsoft Teams. A shift schedule displays days at the top, team members appear on the left, and the assigned shifts appear in the calendar.
2] Groups
If you are a manager, you can create a group and give a name like a job type or location to keep these groups organized.
3] Shifts
As an organizer, you can choose where to add a shift. You can create it from scratch, or copy an existing one.
4] Open shifts
Each schedule has an open shift row. Add open shifts to your schedule that anyone can request.
5] Time Clock
Time Clock lets your team clock in and out of a shift with a mobile device.
6] Requests
Your subordinates can make requests for change in shifts, time off, shift swaps, or offers. You can review these in the Requests tab and approve them as well.
7] Share
Once you’re finished with a schedule, you can share it with your team so everyone is up to date.
Your company might have installed the Shifts feature on Microsoft Teams or it might have come along with the Office 365 setup. In both cases, the Shifts tab appears on the left side of Teams with the other apps. Just click it to start working on your schedule. If you don’t see it there, click More apps and the three dots (…) in the right top corner and find it in the list.
How to create a schedule using Shifts in Teams?
In Shifts, each Teams team gets one schedule to work with, and you can create a schedule for any team you’re an owner of.
- First, go to the top left of the app and click the team name.
- Now, select Create team and choose the team you want to create a schedule for.
- You need to make sure that the time zone is correct for the shifts you’ll be scheduling
- Now click Create.
Now that you’ve created a schedule, the next step is to fill in various details of the shift.
How to organize the shifts by group in Teams?
In the newly created schedule, you can start with one unnamed group. Now name it and then add people and shifts to it.
You can add additional groups as needed and name them all. Group names help to organize your team members by role or department on the schedule. It is advisable to create groups before you start adding people to the schedule.
Please note that the people and their shifts can’t be moved from one group to another.
Follow the next steps to add a group:
- Click Add group.
- Type a name for the group.
Follow the next steps to name or rename a group:
- Click Enter group name or the name of an existing group.
- Type a new name.
Once you’ve created your groups, you’re ready to add people to them.
How to add people to a schedule?
Shifts in Microsoft Teams lets you organize your schedules with the help of different groups. This way, you can add people to the default group.
Follow the next steps to add people to a group and a schedule:
- Locate the group you want to add someone to and click Add people to group.
- Now type their name or email and select them in the list.
- Click on Add.
- Add more people as per your requirement. Now click on Close when you’re done.
Now you can add a shift to the schedule.
How to add a shift?
You can either create a shift from scratch or copy a shift from the existing ones.
Follow the next steps to add a shift from scratch:
- In the row of the person you’re assigning the shift to, under the date you want, click the three dots and then on Add shift.
- Fill out the information for the shift. You can also pick a theme color to organize things.
- Give the shift a name to recognize it from other shifts. By default, the shift name is its start and end time.
- You can now add notes for the shift, such as “tasks to be done”.
- Now add breaks or lunch in the Activities
- Click on Save to save without sharing, or Share if you’re ready to save and share the shift with the team.
Follow the next steps to add a shift from the existing one:
- In the row of the person you’re assigning the shift to, under the date you want, click the three dots. Now, instead of clicking on Add shift, search for an existing shift.
- Copy this shift to another place in the schedule by clicking on three dots and then on Copy.
- Now, go to the place you want to paste the shift and click three dots and click Paste.
Once you are ready with the shift, you can share it with your team.
This way, you can easily use Shifts in Microsoft Teams.
Is the Shifts feature a part of Microsoft Teams?
Shifts in Microsoft Teams is a schedule management tool that helps you create, update, and manage schedules for your team. Schedules – Create, edit, and manage a schedule with Shifts in Microsoft Teams.
How to enable the Shifts feature in Microsoft Teams?
You can turn off or turn on the app at the org level on the Manage apps page in the Microsoft Teams admin center. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams apps > Manage apps. In the list of apps, search for the Shifts app, select it, and then switch the Status toggle to Blocked or Allowed.