Organize shifts by group

In your new schedule, you’ll see one unnamed group where you add people and shifts, but you can add additional groups as needed and give them all names. Named groups help organize your team members by role or department on the schedule. For example, a hotel might have the following groups: "Front Desk", "Room Service", and "Valet".

It’s best to create groups before you start adding people to the schedule because you can’t move a person and all their shifts from one group to another. 

To add a group

  • Click Add group and type a name for the group.

To name or rename a group

  • Click Enter group name or the name of an existing group and type a name.

Once you’ve created your groups, you’re ready to add people to them.

Add people to the schedule

If you haven't created groups for organizing your team members and want to, now's the time to take care of that. Otherwise, you can stick with the one default group and add people to it.

  1. Locate the group you want to add someone to and click Add people to group Add people to schedule button .

  2. Type their name or email and find them in the Suggested people list.

  3. Make them an owner if you want them to be able to update the schedule.

  4. Click Save.

Note: You can add people in your organization to the schedule even if they’re not already on the Teams team. Adding them to the schedule will also add them to the team. And if you make them a schedule owner, they’ll also be a team owner.

Add a shift

To add a shift from scratch

  1. In the row of the person you’re assigning the shift to under the date you want, click More options button > Add shift, or just double-click the empty shift.

  2. Fill out the information for the shift and consider picking a theme color to organize things.

  3. Give the shift a name so it’s easy to tell apart from other shifts. By default, the shift name is the start and end time.

  4. Add notes for the shift, such as tasks to be done.

  5. Add breaks or lunch in the Activities section.

  6. Choose Save to save without sharing or Share if you’re ready to save and share the shift with the team.

To base a new shift on an existing one

Go to the row of the person you’re assigning the shift to under the date you want, click More options button , and then choose the shift from the list. If the list is long, you can search for the one you want.

To copy a shift to another place in the schedule

On an existing shift, click More options button > Copy, and then go to the place you want to put the shift and click More options button > Paste.

Add an open shift

Add an open shift now and assign it to someone later as part of your schedule planning or share it with the team so people can request it.

  1. In the Open shifts row under the date you’re creating the shift for, click More options button , then select Add open shiftto start from scratch, or select an existing shift from the list to base the new one on.

  2. Fill out the information for the shift including the number of slots you want to make available.

  3. Give the shift a name so it’s easy to tell apart from other shifts. By default, the shift name is the start and end time.

  4. Add activities such as breaks or lunch.

  5. Choose Save to save without sharing or Share if you’re ready to save and share the open shift with the team.

    Notes: If you want to edit the shift after you’ve shared it with the team, there are a couple of things to remember:

    • If you change the number of slots available, you’ll need to choose Share. You can’t save your changes and share it later.

    • If you change the start or end time of the shift, all pending requests for that shift will be declined automatically when you share it again with the team.

Share a schedule with your team

When you make changes to the schedule, you get to choose when you share those changes with the team. That lets you get in there and move things around until you’ve got everything just right. Any changes you make will be noted with an asterisk (*), and we put one on the Share with team button, too, just to remind you to share the updates.

To share the schedule

  1. Click Share with team.

  2. Make sure the time frame that’s selected is what you want to share.

  3. Decide whether you want to notify the whole team or only the people who are affected by the changes.

  4. Click Share.

Open a different schedule

Here’s how to open a different schedule if you’re on more than one team.

  1. At the top left of Shifts, select the team name.

  2. Choose the team you want.

Now you’ll be working on the other schedule.


Source: Microsoft