‘Excellence starts from doing the basics well….’

This is how one of our valued customers described their experience of using our Whereabouts feature to help manage their hybrid working.  

Whereabouts is a core feature of Team Today. Essentially, it enables you to manage where your teams are working and provides a crucial tool in implementing your hybrid work policy. It facilitates management of multiple locations across multiple teams, and lets teams see at-a-glance where their colleagues are, and managers see where their teams are.  

In this guide we’re taking you deep into the depths of Whereabouts, to give you some tips on how to roll out this feature for your teams. As with all our features, we have a bustling library full of support ready for you and you can always contact us too.  

First things first

Team Today is fully integrated with Microsoft Teams, so once you’ve set up your account with Team Today, you will need to install the MS Teams app.

It’s a good idea to consider who will be responsible for administering Team Today for your organisation. We recommend that an IT administrator installs the app – we have full guidance here. Or users can install directly themselves. Either way, we recommend all calendar permissions are accepted so that bookings are synched to Outlook.  

Getting Set Up

To ensure Whereabouts works best for your company, you need to configure the settings to your requirements. In your Management tab, you will find Offices, Desk Booking and Car Parking. This will take you into Office Management, where you can set up any offices required.

Once you have done this, contact us at support@team-today.com to unlock your free Premium Plan trial, which will let you add up to 32 custom whereabouts and also add day notes. If you don’t require notes or that many custom whereabouts our Professional Plan will be suitable.

We’ve also included the facility to split offices into areas, for example when you might wish to monitor numbers of people driving to the office and those who cycle, simply split your office in two.

Adding Users

Your next step is to add users.  

Team Today supports provisioning users directly from Active Directory, which means teams, departments and work groups can all be managed in Active Directory rather than in Team Today. Larger organisations tend to prefer this option as it is part of their standard onboarding and off boarding process. We have a guide about this here.

Or users can be added manually. We can help you with this or if you are a smaller organisation, you may prefer to handle this in-house.

In your trusty Management tab, you will find Manage Current Users and Manage Teams. These sections will enable you to add your people and populate your teams. Your first 10 users are always free, and after 10 users you will need to create a paid account. You can do this on a monthly or annual basis; simply go to Settings/Billing/Plan (not in the MS Teams app).

If you have more than 10 users, to save you time, you can take advantage of Team Today’s onboarding service. All you need to do is request a template from us and we will import your users for you. This has the benefit of getting everyone in and giving you chance to configure their entries before allowing them access.

User Roles and Responsibilities

Now that you have offices and users setup, your next step is to identify permission levels for your teams. They can have standard permissions or be assigned as team admin, office admin, department admin or company admin. To set permissions, in your Management tab, select Manage Current Users and you can then choose the user you wish to edit.  

Next up is setting up key role management. To ensure you meet health and safety standards and other applicable regulatory requirements, you can assign to individual users their responsibilities such as Fire Wardens and First Aiders. This will then show in Whereabouts whenever they are booked into a location and will help you as managers to identify any gaps. Roles can be selected when you open a user’s profile to edit.  

You can also assign line managers by enabling the setting in Company Settings and then editing in the appropriate user profile to select their line reports.

Custom Whereabouts

As a default position, we include three entries in your Whereabouts list – Holiday, Working from Home, and Non-Working Day. The rest is up to you. You can set up custom whereabouts, so that they fit your business and how you work. And you can even customise types of leave.  

Head over to Management and jump into Custom Whereabouts. In here you can create new locations, assign them an icon, set how you wish their availability to appear in calendars, choose whether the entry is a leave option, and choose whether the entry has day notes (more about that below).

And it’s a good idea to decide if users should be locked to prevent editing their past whereabouts; this is something we recommend if you are tracking leave.

Day Notes

We have now created the option to add notes to days for custom whereabouts. This is ideal for companies that have many customers, shops or construction sites, for example. It means users can use the free text field to add more detail. It can also help if you need to add contact details to a remote site - particularly handy for lone workers - or to add any special instructions. And managers can use it as a scheduling tool to show where team members should work from.

To enable this option, go to Custom Whereabouts, select the location or add a new location, and select Enable Day Notes.

Desk Booking

Team Today has many features, and we’ve built it to be customisable to your organisation, so that it serves your business needs. One of these features is desk booking, which you can use if you wish, or if you prefer, keep it simple to just booking directly into a space. We have a handy guide here to help you roll out Desk Booking to your teams.

Now you’re all set, what next?

Once all the behind-the-scenes plans are in place and users are added, we suggest a review to ensure everything is configured as you wish and a staggered roll-out, with an initial test cohort of between 5-20 individuals.  

Using Whereabouts from the front-end of Team Today is very simple. Users will be presented with four tabs underneath Whereabouts – Team View, Work Planner, Floor Plan, Office View.  Users’ whereabouts can be set in Team View and will populate into all other tabs so you can see who is where, plan work with your teams, have a view of who is in the office on a given day, and, if you have enabled floor plans, users can use this function to select their seating.

Line Managers can view everyone in their team using Team View and users can follow their own team but also other teams using the drop-down menu.

Management Information

You will find reports on office usage in your management information tab – Management/Reports and Data - which can help with space optimisation, planning and reviewing how your hybrid working policy is working in practice.

Communication

Companies should have clear HR policies in place to support hybrid working. Within this should be consideration to the hybrid working model your company adopts. Whereabouts can help manage your chosen model, e.g. where you have a set number of days in the office and the remaining remote working.

It’s also helpful to have an internal SharePoint site where you can store support links and information.

And to aid communication and understanding with your teams, you could have an email prepared that explains why your company is using Team Today and includes all relevant policies and procedures. We have drafted an example for you below.

Example roll-out email – Whereabouts

Planning for hybrid work can be tricky, especially when it comes to figuring out who’s working from home, who’s in the office, and who’s on leave. With our limited office space, we need an easy way to make sure there’s room for everyone every day.

To help with this, we’re using a simple tool called “Team Today,” which integrates with Microsoft Teams. This platform lets you plan and share your work schedule for the week.

Here’s how to get started with TeamToday:

1. Open Microsoft Teams.
2. Click the “Plus Icon” at the bottom left of the toolbar to add apps.
3. In the top left search bar (not the main one), type “Team Today.”
4. Click “Add” to install the app.
5. You’ll be automatically logged into the correct team.

After installation, set your Whereabouts for the week by tapping each day and selecting an option.

All bookings made in Team Today will sync automatically with your Outlook and Teams calendars. If you prefer, you can also make bookings using the MS Teams app on your phone or by visiting team-today.com online (tap the login button at the top).

Use the work planner for a monthly view or the office view for a breakdown of who is in the office on a given day. You can favourite desks and set repeat work schedules.

Any questions please contact your line manager, reference our SharePoint page or review the guides at team-today.com/support-home.

Ready?

Once you are ready, let us know and we can unlock access for everyone once the email has been sent out.

If you need any help adding users or with any of the above, just send us a message at support@team-today.com.

For more insights and articles about hybrid working from Team Today, visit our blog here.