Microsoft has released new Shift features to improve the productivity and user experience of frontline workers.
The latest enhancements include a people count, updates to UX, additional controls for managers, day notes, and importing and exporting time offs and open shifts into and from Excel.
Microsoft Shifts is a schedule management tool that allows you to create, manage, and update team schedules.
These updates come on top of developments announced at Microsoft Ignite last month, which included greater information visibility, marketplace controls, and deploying shifts at scale. It also made mention of the same capability of transferring time offs and open shifts via Excel.
People Count
Frontline managers can make better decisions with the help of a people count displayed within the Shifts calendar.
The feature gives a clear view of staffing levels to make sure the correct workforce has been scheduled for each day, week, and month. The scheduled people count can also be viewed at both the team and group levels.
Updates to UX
The user experience has been bolstered through the addition of a full name display for each team member in the team schedule, automatically saving the last filter used, and displaying the shift notes inline using ‘day view’.
Additional Controls for Managers
Further controls have been added for managers on team-level settings to make changes to Shifts marketplace and visibility capabilities.
From a visibility perspective, frontline workers have a restricted view of their co-workers’ past views, view colleagues’ time off without access to the reasons and notes, and reduce shift details to exclude sensitive information.
Within the Shift marketplace, managers can now choose which capabilities are added and when. For example, managers can decide whether workers are able to request to swap shifts with other workers, subject to approval by the manager. Other such requests include workers offering their shifts to other workers and asking for time off.
Day Notes
Day notes can now be added using the Graph API, as well as the Shifts app. This allows customers to integrate day notes from third-party or line-of-business applications.
Import and Export Time Offs and Open Shifts
Using Shifts web or desktop applications, managers can now import and export assigned shifts and open shifts and time offs using Excel. Managers will simply need to click on the ‘Share with team button’ within the schedule view and select either ‘Export schedule’ or ‘Import schedule’ from the drop-down menu.
Future Updates
Microsoft also revealed that it will soon add a function for frontline workers to set their availability on specific dates, as well as show their availability.
The tech giant has appealed for further input, following this batch of updates, which it says were the result of listening to user feedback.
Another planning-related application came out of Ignite last month in the form of ‘Planner’. Planner is a single unified collaborative experience that brings together Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner, and Microsoft Project for the web into a single product.
The Planner app in Microsoft Teams will be updated with these newly merged features in the spring of 2024, with web functionality scheduled to be added later in 2024.
It will reportedly include AI-powered capabilities, such as the ability to find tasks quickly so that users can focus on the most critical tasks and functionality to help users work in the way they want.
