After nearly 30 years of developing productivity tools for business users, Microsoft Corp. is expanding its focus to the rest of the workforce.

The technology giant today added a service called StaffHub to Office 365 that aims to improve the productivity of retail representatives, factory personnel and other professionals who don’t rely on a desktop to perform their work. At its core is a sleek scheduling interface that allows managers to assign shifts in a way that makes the most out of their companies’ manpower.

StaffHub provides the ability to plan out a work week in a spreadsheet-like interface that is best described as a cross between Excel and Google Calendar. Managers can split up every day into tables representing shifts and assign each time slot to the worker who is most readily available. Moreover, they can attach instructions to an entry in case there’s some special task on the agenda that falls outside an employee’s’ normal routine.

The head organizer at a conference venue, for instance, could tell their team to make extra preparations if a big gathering is expected. They could even share a copy of the reservation to make sure that the venue personnel covers every detail. On the administrative level, StaffHub enables managers to consult with one another via a built-in chat if an assignment requires special attention.

Workers receive the finalized shift schedule through a sleek, mobile-friendly front-end that comes with its own chat interface for communicating with peers. A user can also ask to swap shifts with a colleague through a built-in rescheduling feature that sends such requests directly to the manager in charge.

Microsoft also plans to add integrations with complementary services from its partner ecosystem. The first third-party tool that will be supported is Kronos Inc.’s workforce management platform, which will allow managers to import their existing team and schedule information into Office 365.

Microsoft sees a big market for StaffHub. It estimates that there are more than 500 million so-called “frontline staff workers” around the world. The company will sell the service as part of its existing Office 365 subscription plans as well a specialized tier called K1 that is priced at $4 per user per month and doesn’t include access to its productivity apps.

Image courtesy of Microsoft