Coming soon to Shifts: Create open shifts across locations

We’re excited to announce that open shifts across locations in Shifts for Microsoft Teams will soon be available in public preview. This feature enhances flexibility and efficiency for frontline managers and workers, helping businesses manage staffing better while giving employees more control over their schedules.

Benefits of using Open shifts across locations

For frontline managers

With Open shifts across locations, managers can offer open shifts across multiple teams and locations, helping to balance workforce needs, fill last-minute gaps, and improve customer satisfaction.

By turning on the Open shift across locations toggle in the Settings tab, managers can post open shifts that employees from other locations can request, ensuring their store or site is always fully staffed.

Managers will be notified when employees from other locations request shifts and can easily approve or decline requests. Once approved, workers from other locations will appear in your schedule as external employees, making it seamless to track staff across locations.

For frontline workers

The Open shifts across locations feature provides more flexibility for employees, allowing them to pick up open shifts at different locations that suit their schedules. Workers can view open shifts at other sites and submit a request to pick up the shift. Once approved by the manager at that location, the shift will appear in their schedule.

How to get early access to this feature

Option 1: Sign up to try this feature before its official release

If you’re not part of the Microsoft Teams public preview program, you can sign up below, and we’ll enable the Open shifts across Locations feature in your Microsoft Teams tenant.

Option 2: Join the Microsoft Teams public preview program

You can join our public preview program to get early access to this and other unreleased Teams features.

Follow the steps on this page: Public preview in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn