Shifts: Don't display reason for absence
Desired Outcome:
When employees request time off, give Managers the option to not display the reason given to the rest of the team. I.e. Make the reason (= color and icon) for the absence visible to Managers only.
Reason:
Right now even personal reasons such as sickness are publicly accessible to anyone. E.g. another employee could therefore track why a colleague is not in the office that day and draw conclusions about personal matters such as their Health from it. This would require consent from every employee; this consent is freely withdrawable under GDPR. One employee alone could therefore block the use of Shifts in Teams even after rollout. To comply with GDPR-requirements, please make the aforementioned change.

8 comments
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John commented
Agreed, managers need the ability to track the type of absence (vacation, sick day, personal day, etc.) but it should not show up other employees to see. It is a huge invasion of privacy.
ALSO having a reporting feature to track how much vacation time, sick days, etc. each employee has taken YTD would be very helpful.
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Dom commented
Same, was keen to implement Shifts across my Team and use this to keep track of Sick Leave balances for the year. But not having the ability to hide notes is problematic
Workaround is to use a Shift Allocation rather than Time Off, this way you can change Shift Name to Time off and add a Note which cant be seen unless you click into the shift. So not visible at a glance
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Marko commented
Yea agree with it, same problem
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Anonymous commented
We have the same issue. The managers want to know by viewing the whole schedule if a person is absent due to sick, leave, doctor etc. We could have 1 category "Absent" and change the colour of the shift, but then the shift colour also transfers to the app. Any employee will be able to work out quickly why the person is absent. This shows when you are swapping shifts, so if a person is absent for whatever reason, then it shouldn't give the option to swap that shift.
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James Morris commented
I support this
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Linda commented
The manager/owner can edit the request options for time off. You can set to only have one option for all time off requests and put the details in the notes of the request. That is what we do. You could use Appt, Out of Office, Vacation, or Personal with as much or as little detail as you would like and put personal notes such as "Doctor appt for child" in the request notes. Notes in the request do not show on schedule unless the manager adds it after approving the requested time off. Does this do what you want?
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Anonymous commented
Disclosing the reason might also contravene privacy laws in many provinces in Canada.
There are privacy implications here that Microsoft is not recognizing or respecting. -
Anonymous commented
Perhaps should not be just manager's option; there should be ability to set an organisation-wide rule? Plus maybe just do this anyway with the default being that only managers can see reasons, unless there is an override by a specific manager (with individual user's active consent required before information shown)