Media & Entertainment

Microsoft launches StaffHub, a new Office 365 app aimed at shift workers

Comment

Image Credits:

Microsoft today unveiled the newest addition to its Office 365 suite with the debut of an application for shift workers and management, called StaffHub. The program is aimed at those who don’t tend to work from desktop computers and have different schedules from week to week, such as in retail, hospitality, restaurants and other industries.

The program was originally introduced in “preview” last fall, with the goal of collecting user feedback ahead of its public launch. Since then, more than 1,000 businesses have signed up for the service, including a large winery in California and a hospitality company that uses it to staff their hotels.

Explains Office 365 General Manager Bryan Goode, Microsoft believes that addressing the needs of shift workers with a software platform like StaffHub is an untapped market.

“There’s half a billion frontline staff workers in the world,” he says. “Most companies, though, haven’t actually provided digital tools for these folks…but companies are starting to recognize the benefits of moving some of these offline processes and taking them online.”

screen-shot-2017-01-12-at-9-51-44-am

However, what StaffHub is really up against is the old way of doing things: paper schedules, bulletin boards, phone calls and other manual processes, Goode notes.

To address the needs of this different kind of work environment, StaffHub takes schedules and puts them online. But it’s more than just another calendaring application.

Managers, who may have access to desktop or laptop computers, may use the web version of StaffHub to create the staff schedules in the program, but employees will likely only use StaffHub from their mobile phones.

staffhub-iphone

When adding shifts, managers can take advantage of a variety of features to differentiate the types of shifts, ranging from custom labels (like “day,” “opening,” “night,” etc.) to color coding, and they can also enter in notes about the work that needs to be done during the shift in question.

The program also makes it simple to update shifts from week to week, by offering a “Copy last schedule” feature that lets managers use the prior week’s shift as a starting point before making changes.

Schedules can be viewed by day, week or month, as needed, and the program has tools for handling common requests, like time off, vacations, sick leave and more.

staffhub-timeoffWhere StaffHub becomes more interesting is on mobile devices.

Here, there are comparisons that can be made with Slack, though Microsoft, when asked, dismissed the idea that Slack was a competitor.

However, there are many overlapping features between the two programs — staff can privately chat, one on one, with one another in the app, and the app can host multiple group chats, too.

For example, managers could use their team chat to make informal announcements or share files. The chats support photo sharing, as well, which could be useful for showing the manager something out on the floor that needs their input.

Plus, the app can be used for sharing internal resources — like an employee handbook hosted on SharePoint, a file uploaded from a computer, a video or a file stored on another cloud service like Dropbox. Files will display inline when clicked, making it easy for staff to view them on their phone.

Plus, Microsoft envisions StaffHub as an app platform of sorts, another similarity with Slack. However, Microsoft’s focus is on connecting with line-of-business apps, like a time-clock application, for example. (So it’s like Slack, but without the GIFs — something that may appeal to the target market.)

staffhub-swap

Staff can swap shifts with other workers in the mobile app and request time off — requests that get routed to a manager for approval. Push notifications are used to alert users of these requests and approvals along with other updates, private notes, chats and more.

The software is available starting now as a part of Office 365 commercial plans. (K1-E5, for those who know the lingo — or entry-level through enterprise, for those who don’t.)

StaffHub is available for web, iOS and Android in Chinese (Simplified), English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, French, Brazilian-Portuguese, German, Korean, Italian, Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, Turkish, Swedish and Danish.

More TechCrunch

The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday.  The trustee is asking…

A US Trustee wants troubled fintech Synapse to be liquidated via Chapter 7 bankruptcy, cites ‘gross mismanagement’

U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The…

Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies

OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said…

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section.

X pushes more users to Communities

For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…

Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?

Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.

Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more

We all fall down sometimes. Astronauts are no exception. You need to be in peak physical condition for space travel, but bulky space suits and lower gravity levels can be…

Astronauts fall over. Robotic limbs can help them back up.

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

What a wild week for transportation news! It was a smorgasbord of news that seemed to touch every sector and theme in transportation.

Tesla keeps cutting jobs and the feds probe Waymo

Sony Music Group has sent letters to more than 700 tech companies and music streaming services to warn them not to use its music to train AI without explicit permission.…

Sony Music warns tech companies over ‘unauthorized’ use of its content to train AI

Winston Chi, Butter’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “most parties, including our investors and us, are making money” from the exit.

GrubMarket buys Butter to give its food distribution tech an AI boost

The investor lawsuit is related to Bolt securing a $30 million personal loan to Ryan Breslow, which was later defaulted on.

Bolt founder Ryan Breslow wants to settle an investor lawsuit by returning $37 million worth of shares

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an enterprise version of the prominent social network in 2015. It always seemed like a stretch for a company built on a consumer…

With the end of Workplace, it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about the enterprise

X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in town, and it’s from Instagram Threads.…

Meta Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, similar to the old TweetDeck

As part of 2024’s Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is showing off some updates to Android that should be useful to folks with mobility or vision impairments. Project Gameface allows gamers…

Google expands hands-free and eyes-free interfaces on Android

A hacker listed the data allegedly breached from Samco on a known cybercrime forum.

Hacker claims theft of India’s Samco account data

A top European privacy watchdog is investigating following the recent breaches of Dell customers’ personal information, TechCrunch has learned.  Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) deputy commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed to…

Ireland privacy watchdog confirms Dell data breach investigation

Ampere and Qualcomm aren’t the most obvious of partners. Both, after all, offer Arm-based chips for running data center servers (though Qualcomm’s largest market remains mobile). But as the two…

Ampere teams up with Qualcomm to launch an Arm-based AI server

At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company made its case to developers — and to some extent, consumers — why its bets on AI are ahead of rivals. At the…

Google I/O was an AI evolution, not a revolution

TechCrunch Disrupt has always been the ultimate convergence point for all things startup and tech. In the bustling world of innovation, it serves as the “big top” tent, where entrepreneurs,…

Meet the Magnificent Six: A tour of the stages at Disrupt 2024

There’s apparently a lot of demand for an on-demand handyperson. Khosla Ventures and Pear VC have just tripled down on their investment in Honey Homes, which offers up a dedicated…

Khosla Ventures, Pear VC triple down on Honey Homes, a smart way to hire a handyman

TikTok is testing the ability for users to upload 60-minute videos, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The feature is available to a limited group of users in select…

TikTok tests 60-minute video uploads as it continues to take on YouTube

Flock Safety is a multibillion-dollar startup that’s got eyes everywhere. As of Wednesday, with the company’s new Solar Condor cameras, those eyes are solar-powered and use wireless 5G networks to…

Flock Safety’s solar-powered cameras could make surveillance more widespread

Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects, from ground-up…

Agora raises $34M Series B to keep building the Carta for real estate

Poshmark, the social commerce site that lets people buy and sell new and used items to each other, launched a paid marketing tool on Thursday, giving sellers the ability to…

Poshmark’s ‘Promoted Closet’ tool lets sellers boost all their listings at once

Google is launching a Gemini add-on for educational institutes through Google Workspace.

Google adds Gemini to its Education suite

More money for the generative AI boom: Y Combinator-backed developer infrastructure startup Recall.ai announced Thursday it has raised a $10 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to over…

YC-backed Recall.ai gets $10M Series A to help companies use virtual meeting data

Engineers Adam Keating and Jeremy Andrews were tired of using spreadsheets and screenshots to collab with teammates — so they launched a startup, CoLab, to build a better way. The…

CoLab’s collaborative tools for engineers line up $21M in new funding

Reddit announced on Wednesday that it is reintroducing its awards system after shutting down the program last year. The company said that most of the mechanisms related to awards will…

Reddit reintroduces its awards system

Sigma Computing, a startup building a range of data analytics and business intelligence tools, has raised $200 million in a fresh VC round.

Sigma is building a suite of collaborative data analytics tools