Forum Discussion
MS Shift Reporting Capabilities
- You can most likely create a nice Excel template that you can use and keep on importing the information from Shifts export Excel file to it. That would make it easier.
Shifts is intended for managing shifts and employees - so it may not be ideal to other use cases (but it can fit many - like office presence and reserving seats there in back to the office). It is not also a HRM system, that keeps track of those how many days your have left or used.
However there are somethings you can do.
Graph API is a program interface that allows you to access Shifts information from an application or script. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/teams-api-overview?view=graph-rest-1.0
You can use it pull off data and store it in a storage and then create your own reports. But it requires more understand and expertise in programming or you need someone to help you to create it. It will take some time, depending on your needs, but then you get all the information out and you could create some - for example - PowerBI reports out of it.
The other alternative is to use Power Automate. It is a bit easier, but still requires time and some citizen developer level expertise. You could use it to pull off information from Shifts and write them to SharePoint lists (for example) and again create your own reports.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shifts/
Out of all these - creating your Excel template to repeatedly process Shifts export Excel is the most easiest and quickest. Using APIs or Power Automate can help automate, collect and reorganize these so if the process is repeated lots of times it makes fully sense to do a more automatic solution.
Thanks for your reply.
I did use the Export but the export gives you an excel file and you have to do the job yourself. So, this is the workaround I am using now but not a long term solution.
The whole point would be to have these functionalities already embedded into the app so the teams could actually now how many days off they have requested for instance or how many days left they have.
Not sure what Graph API is to be honest.
Shifts is intended for managing shifts and employees - so it may not be ideal to other use cases (but it can fit many - like office presence and reserving seats there in back to the office). It is not also a HRM system, that keeps track of those how many days your have left or used.
However there are somethings you can do.
Graph API is a program interface that allows you to access Shifts information from an application or script. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/teams-api-overview?view=graph-rest-1.0
You can use it pull off data and store it in a storage and then create your own reports. But it requires more understand and expertise in programming or you need someone to help you to create it. It will take some time, depending on your needs, but then you get all the information out and you could create some - for example - PowerBI reports out of it.
The other alternative is to use Power Automate. It is a bit easier, but still requires time and some citizen developer level expertise. You could use it to pull off information from Shifts and write them to SharePoint lists (for example) and again create your own reports.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shifts/
Out of all these - creating your Excel template to repeatedly process Shifts export Excel is the most easiest and quickest. Using APIs or Power Automate can help automate, collect and reorganize these so if the process is repeated lots of times it makes fully sense to do a more automatic solution.
Thanks again for your answers,
The excel template is clearly not appropriate for this as the entire team should be able to generate quickly simple reports on working hours, days off...
We are not asking for an HRM here but MS Shift is intended for managing shifts and employees. We cannot manage shift without basics information on how many hours the staff can work, how many days off they can plan until the rest of the year for instance.
There are really basic features that would be nice to have in Shift. It will make this tool very useful for operations managers to plan their operations and for the team to better control their schedule and days off.
I really hope these small improvments could be brought to Shift.
I will have a look at the Automate part in the meantime.
Thanks again.
- In that case you described Power Automate or custom code might be the best option.
Meanwhile don't forget to add your request to Teams User Voice and share the word to get support to it. Teams product group is listening to User Voice very actively so it is a great place to raise ideas and tell them about show stoppers.
There is also a direct category to Shifts:
https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public?category_id=357367