We announced several exciting updates at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference this week: you can now scale Teams pilots to your broader frontline organization faster, fill open shifts automatically with smart scheduling, deliver official operational updates with the new Communicator App, and conduct site walkthroughs handsfree in Frontline Agent.
Scale your frontline pilot with a guided deployment wizard
Deploy and manage a consistent Microsoft Teams experience to your frontline workforce from the Teams Admin Center. Within the Frontline section, admins can start a new deployment or expand an existing frontline pilot to your broader organization through a guided deployment wizard. Use the wizard to select capabilities, add frontline users, organize them into static teams, and apply a standardized pinned app configuration across your frontline environment.
Use this feature to:
- Extend a frontline pilot to additional users. If you have already validated a frontline pilot, you can use this experience to extend to additional frontline users across the organization. The capability configurations carry forward automatically so you can build on what you have already tested.
- Create and manage a pinned app configuration. Define one standardized pinned app configuration that can be applied to frontline workers across teams and groups in your deployment. Updates to pinned apps are applied for frontline users automatically.
- Organize your frontline workforce into teams. Create static frontline teams organized by location or business unit by uploading a CSV file with workforce data or by adding teams individually.
- Manage your deployment from a central location. After deployment, admins can use the Manage organization section under Frontline in the Teams admin center to add more teams or groups, update pinned apps organization-wide and manage team membership.
- Track adoption. Visit the Usage insights section under Frontline in the Teams admin center to measure activity across all your frontline users and teams.
To learn more about this feature, please read the documentation here that describes the end-to-end experience.
If you are interested in joining private preview for additional solutions that accelerate your Microsoft Teams frontline deployment, please sign up here.
Automatically assign open shifts with Smart Scheduling in Shifts
Automatically assign open shifts using past schedules, employee availability, and scheduling rules.
The Assign open shifts feature in Shifts helps managers distribute open shifts using available scheduling information—such as employee availability, scheduled time off, constraints like maximum weekly or daily hours— and historical data about what shifts people usually work to quickly build a fair schedule. Start by creating open shifts for the required number of positions, then select "Assign open shifts" to begin the process of assigning them to available workers. If all constraints cannot be met, some shifts may remain unassigned and can be reviewed and assigned manually by the manager. Learn more about auto-assign open shifts here.
Send operational updates with Communicator in Teams
The Communicator app in Microsoft Teams allows operations teams to publish structured, action‑oriented messages to frontline workers within the Teams Channels they use. It provides a centralized way to share day-to-day operational updates—such as safety alerts, training reminders, or system outages— and track message delivery and engagement without requiring recipients to install an additional app or change how they work. Sign up for the limited public preview here.
Run hands-free inspections with voice-driven Site Walkthrough in Frontline Agent
Site walkthrough in Frontline Agent allows frontline workers to conduct inspections, document issues, and complete compliance checklists through natural speech. Voice inputs are captured and organized into structured digital records within the workflow. This experience supports hands‑free data entry during site walkthroughs to help reduce manual paperwork, improve reporting efficiency, and ensure critical operational insights from the field are consistently recorded. Sign up for the limited public preview here.
Explore our learn docs for more information on all of our Teams for frontline solutions.
Microsoft