M365 Changelog: (Updated) Microsoft Teams: New Cross-location shifts in the Shifts app – Aug 22, 2024

MC800503 – Updated August 21, 2024. Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Note: If you are not using frontline worker functionality, you can ignore this message.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: Cross-location Shifts is a new feature in the Microsoft Shifts app for Teams that enables frontline managers to offer open shifts across multiple locations in a region so managers can share the labor pool and workers can select available shifts across different locations. This message applies to Microsoft Teams for Desktop, web, Mac and Mobile.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 394351.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: Microsoft will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously mid-September) and expects to complete by mid-October 2024 (previously late September).

General Availability (Worldwide): Microsoft will begin rolling out mid-October 2024 (previously late September) and expects to complete by late October 2024 (previously early October). 

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout, frontline managers are not able to not able to offer open shifts across multiple locations in a region.

After the rollout

Benefits of cross-location shifts:

• Optimize the manager’s workforce by balancing the supply and demand of labor across locations in a region.
• Empower your frontline workers by giving them the flexibility to select open shifts at a location that is convenient for them.
• Improve customer satisfaction by ensuring that you have enough staff to serve them.

The cross-location shifts feature requires the following conditions:

• An operational hierarchy must be established for the organization.
• The team should have sister locations.
• Team should have at least one matching schedule group code with other teams

Admins or frontline managers can enable these prerequisites through:

• Defining the operational hierarchy in the Teams admin center, as described in Deploy your frontline operational hierarchy – Microsoft 365 for frontline workers | Microsoft Learn
• Creating schedule group codes via the Graph API, detailed in Create scheduling Group – Microsoft Graph beta | Microsoft Learn

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

For reference: Manage the Shifts app for your organization – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn