How do I create a Remote Working Location Dashboard for Teams to see WFH Schedules

[Dale451]

Hi there, 

My team is currently at the stage where we tend to WFH 1-2 days per week, and each of us decides our own schedule. However, something we are struggling with is trying to find a way for us to all easily monitor team wide locations when people choose to go to the office or WFH. Ideally I would like to be able to find a solution that can extrapolate each team member's "Work hours and locations" settings from Outlook/Teams and display them in an easy format so we can get a simple overview of when most people will be in the office. I'm thinking something as simple as a dashboard with some kind of heatmap, or even just a straight table in spreadsheet. 

Does anybody have any thoughts as to how that might be achieved? Is there some kind of 365 service that I am missing? 

I have tried to look at ways to automate this and use the Power Apps platform to streamline a system (i.e. Power BI or Power Automate) but have not had much luck with it. I couldn't see an obvious system in place for this. I also don't want to have to create a system that is too complicated, in order to encourage adoption across the company. I have even looked into changing calendar visibility settings across the company, but it still doesn't seem to work well as solution to this issues.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, I'm open to suggestions. 

[trice602]

Hi @Dale451 ,

If this fell in my wheelhouse, I would use a SharePoint List hands down without considering another solution.  There are a lot of templates to view and see what may work for you but here's the best part:

1) this is EASY to build to scope;

2) this is EASY to maintain;

3) this is EASY for team members to view a dashboard and understand it;

4) this is EASY to automate after your version 1.0 

If SharePoint isn't your favorite tool, you can also consider the lighter-weight cousin Planner which is essentially the same thing with less options (card views, lists, grids, calendar views, etc, assignments, buckets, dates, etc).

Please mark as a solution ✅ and/or give me a thumbs up 👍🏽 for replying and volunteering my time! 🎗️  Always glad to help! Tom ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Dale451]

Hi @trice602 

Thanks for the suggestion. I am looking into it now. 

From what I can tell from SharePoint Lists each user will have to manually input their information for each day of the week. Is that correct? If so, I'm not sure if that is going to be the right solution here, especially when it comes to scaling up. I'm also quite familiar with Planner and use it for organising events and travel calendars etc. but I can't see how it would be useful in this situation. 

Ideally the most I would want to ask from users is to complete their "Work hours and location" settings within Outlook and have the data updated automatically from there. Or even, when they decide to change their status within Teams on an ad-hoc basis. 

[RickMussi]

We have done this with a SharePoint list.   My solution was a list item for each person on the team.   I have a Status (Choice) column with several choices, but 2 are Home and Office (I also track other things like PTO).   I used list view formatting to make that column setting a toggle by a button press to simplify for each user.  Each card (I use gallery view) has background color for location.   I also added a comments field.   Each night the daily entries are stored in another list (Master) and then the daily status is cleared.  I can report off of the Master List each week to note where people were.   You will not need the master if you only want a snapshot of current status.

[misterted]

" Ideally I would like to be able to find a solution that can extrapolate each team member's "Work hours and locations" settings from Outlook/Teams and display them in an easy format so we can get a simple overview of when most people will be in the office. I'm thinking something as simple as a dashboard with some kind of heatmap, or even just a straight table in spreadsheet. "

Have you had any luck with this?   it sounds like all the responses rely on people entering their data in a system outside of outlook.  I just want to get their free/busy and WFH info out in a way I can use it to pick people to staff certain shifts using their actual availability and location.