Better way to view employees' schedules?
Howdy, y'all. I've just been hired into a new office, and as the only member of Gen Z to be employed, I've been summarily appointed to the media committee, which includes thinking through the ways that we communicate with one another effectively. The issue that's driving me up a wall at the moment is our calendar management. We have an Excel sheet saved as a tab within one of our Teams channels that lists every employee's status in the office for every day of the year. This is helpful for a couple of reasons: We work in healthcare and must have one person on-call at all times. There are two on-call shifts per day; one from 8 AM to 8 PM, and one from 8 PM to 8 AM. There must be a minimum number of staff people working during regular weekdays (that is, aside from the on-call staffer, we must also be able to see that there are at least a couple people aside from the on-call person who are in the office during a regular week, so that the office isn't completely empty around Christmas and so on). For this, we usually look at the row for the day of the month and the column for the employee's name, with the intersecting cell being filled in with the time of their shift. In addition to the two on-call shifts per day, one person will be designated as "substitute" for one 24-hour period. If either the AM or PM on-call person call out, the substitute will clock in to replace them. Further, there is a staffer who is designated as the support member for an entire week's time. Should the on-call person have questions or concerns, the support member will be able to answer their call at any time during the week. We typically have it color-coded so we know by taking a glance at the day who is on AM, who is on PM, who is substituting, and who is backup. This is an example: Staff A Staff B Staff C Staff D Staff E Staff F Staff G Friday 8/1 8a-8p 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p 8p-8a 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p Saturday 8/2 OFF 8a-8p 8p-8a OFF OFF OFF OFF Sunday 8/3 8p-8a OFF OFF 8a-8p OFF OFF OFF Monday 8/4 OFF 8p-8a 8a-4:30p OFF 8a-8p 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p Tuesday 8/5 8a-8p OFF OFF 8p-8a 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p Wednesday 8/6 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p 8p-8a OFF 8a-8p 8a-4:30p 8a-4:30p KEY: AM on-call PM on-call Substitute Support Obviously, this way of keeping track of things is archaic and has led to chaos. Is there a better way somewhere in Teams/Outlook/SharePoint calendar, or in some other application that can connect to this workspace? We run basically everything in our department out of Teams
Creating a shortcut from one Teams file folder to another Teams file folder
I'm a project manager. When using MS Windows Explorer and creating project folders, there are many times where I need to create a shortcut within a specific folder to view other files in another folder that's in a different location within Explorer. It's quite easy to create a shortcut to a file/folder then copy that shortcut over to my specific location. But my new company wants all project related files kept in Teams. So there is a Photos and Videos folder that's in the root directory so that all photos for all projects can easily be found. Then, I have a Project Job Number specific folder that has a folder within that is for just my projects. I don't want to replicate the files in two locations for many obvious reasons. Is there a way create a link from my pics folder in the root, to my pics folder in the job specific folder? Thanks.
Distribution list vs file storage
We're having a bit of a disagreement within our company, wanted to get some feedback. On one hand, a higher-up became frustrated when he went looking for a file related to a client, and found 3-4 different Sharepoint sites with the client's name. This was usually the result of different departments creating their own Teams/Sharepoints for the same client. His feeling is every client should only have a single Sharepoint. Also, it should be attached to Teams so that Teams users can easily stay in Teams to access the files. On the other hand, the IT department wants to create Teams (which will inevitably have a Sharepoint) for distribution lists, as it will allow for more modern technology to be used when compared to using traditional distribution lists. But then that causes problems with the above, as it will result in more confusion about where a file might be located. The single email that comes with the Team/Sharepoint isn't really usable because both Creative and Customer Service are storing files there, but Creative doesn't want to get emails intended just for Customer Service and vice-versa. So it would have to be additional Teams/Sharepoints for the client. Nobody thinks we can just procedurally keep people from storing files in the Teams/Sharepoints that were really just intended to be a distribution group, regardless of special naming conventions or whatnot. How do other people handle the distribution list vs file storage issue?
