Upgrades Announced to Shifts App in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft has revealed updates to its Shifts app in Microsoft Teams for frontline workers and managers.

Frontline workers can benefit from the added option to share their availability by a specific date, while frontline managers can import schedules from Excel into Shifts.

Microsoft Shifts is a schedule management tool in Teams that allows users to create, manage, and update team schedules.

Frontline workers let their managers know which days and times they are available to help managers create shift schedules and thereby reduce the number of adjustments required.

Workers were already able to set their availability as recurring days, such as every Tuesday from 9am to 5pm. Now, frontline workers are able to share the specific dates that they are available as well.

Inês Gil, a Microsoft employee in the Microsoft Tech Community, explains how this new feature can help both frontline workers and frontline managers:

This new functionality empowers frontline workers to tailor their availability preferences for specific dates, offering them enhanced flexibility to manage unique scheduling requirements.”

“This additional feature seamlessly integrates with existing options for recurring availability.”

Frontline managers can use an Excel workbook to transfer schedules into Shifts to help set up teams more quickly, particularly when managing large teams.

The next update allows frontline managers to use Excel to create schedules and import them into Shifts via the Shifts Web or Desktop app.

Excel imports allow managers to automatically perform various actions that would otherwise need to be done manually, including assigning shifts and time off, adding open shifts, organising shifts by group, adding group members, and creating notes for the day.

Previously, users had to stay in the Shifts app while their files were processing so that they could monitor for import errors. They would therefore not be able to initiate chats in Teams while these files are processing, for example.

With this latest update, all frontline managers can check on team import statuses for potential errors instead of being forced to wait. Managers can also view the last ten schedule creation actions via Excel import, making collaboration easier between managers on a team.

A single Excel file can support up to 30,000 schedule entities, consisting of 10,000 shifts, open shifts, and time off entities. To add more items, you will need to create another file.

To import your schedule to the Shift app, simply click on ‘More options’ in the upper-right-hand corner of the Shift Web or Desktop app and select “Import schedule”.

Next, select “Upload file” and choose the relevant Excel workbook. After clicking “Open”, you can view its upload status and details in the Import history table.

If successful, the status will display as “Imported”. The status will say “Error” if any errors are detected.

These updates add to a string of developments released in December last year that included a people count feature, updates to the user experience, additional controls for managers, day notes, as well as the ability to import and export time off and open shifts.

The month before, November 2023, also saw the release of various new updates to Shifts at Microsoft Ignite, which included greater information visibility, marketplace controls, and deploying shifts at scale. It also mentioned the same capability of transferring time offs and open shifts via Excel.