HowTo: Manage the Shifts app in Teams

Overview of Shifts

The Shifts app in Microsoft Teams keeps Firstline Workers connected and in sync. It's built mobile first for fast and effective time management and communication for teams. Shifts lets Firstline Workers and their managers use their mobile devices to manage schedules and keep in touch.

• Managers create, update, and manage shift schedules for teams. They can send messages to one person ("there's a spill on the floor") or the entire team ("the regional GM is arriving in 20 minutes"). They can also send policy documents, news bulletins, and videos.
• Employees view their upcoming shifts, can see who else is scheduled for the day, request to swap or offer a shift, and request time off.

It's important to know that Shifts currently doesn't support guest users. This means that guests on a team can't be added to or use shift schedules when Guest access is turned on in Teams.

Availability of Shifts

Shifts is available in all Enterprise SKUs where Teams is available.

Location of Shifts data

Shifts data is currently stored in Azure in data centers in North America, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific. For more information about where data is stored, see Where is my data?

Set up Shifts

Enable or disable Shifts in your organization

Shifts is enabled by default for all Teams users in your organization. You can turn off or turn on the app at the org level on the Manage apps page in the Microsoft Teams admin center.

1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams apps > Manage apps .

2. In the list of apps, do one of the following:

   • To turn off Shifts for your organization, search for the Shifts app, select it, and then click Block.
   • To turn on Shifts for your organization, search for the Shifts app, select it, and then click Allow.

Enable or disable Shifts for specific users in your organization

To allow or block specific users in your organization from using Shifts, make sure Shifts is turned on for your organization on the Manage apps page, and then create a custom app permission policy and assign it to those users. To learn more, see Manage app permission policies in Teams.

Use the FirstlineWorker app setup policy to pin Shifts to Teams

App setup policies let you customize Teams to highlight the apps that are most important for users in your organization. The apps set in a policy are pinned to the app bar—the bar on the side of the Teams desktop client and at the bottom of the Teams mobile clients—where users can quickly and easily access them.

Teams includes a built-in FirstlineWorker app setup policy that you can assign to Firstline Workers in your organization. By default, the policy includes the Activity, Shifts, Chat, and Calling apps.

To view the FirstlineWorker policy, in the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams app > App setup policies.

Assign the FirstlineWorker policy to users

To assign the FirstlineWorker app setup policy to one user:

1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Users, and then click the user.
2. Select the user by clicking to the left of the user name, and then click Edit settings.
3. Under App setup policy, select FirstlineWorker, and then click Apply.

To assign a policy to multiple users at a time:

1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Users, and then search for the users or filter the view to show the users you want.
2. In the ✓ (check mark) column, select the users. To select all users, click the ✓ (check mark) at the top of the table.
3. Click Edit settings, under App setup policy, select FirstlineWorker, and then click Apply.

Or, you can also do the following:

1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams apps > Setup policies.
2. Select the FirstlineWorker policy by clicking to the left of the policy name.
3. Select Manage users.
4. In the Manage users pane, search for the user by display name or by user name, select the name, and then select Add. Repeat this step for each user that you want to add.
5. After you finish adding users, select Apply.

Assign the FirstlineWorker app setup policy to user members of a group

You can assign the FirstlineWorker app setup policy to user members of a group, such as a security group, by connecting to the Azure Active Directory PowerShell for Graph module and the Skype for Business PowerShell module. For more information about using PowerShell to manage Teams, see Teams PowerShell Overview.

In this example, we assign the FirstlineWorker app setup policy to all user members of the Contoso Firstline Team group.