Scheduling Issues in Shifts

Question

I have set up my team in Teams Shifts and am trying to create schedules to assign them to but keep getting the message that I am not the team owner. I am listed as the team owner and a member. When my IT administrator tried to make me the Schedule Owner this role has less rights than the Team Owner. How do I get access to create and edit schedules and add shifts.

Answer 1

Hi @Rita Clements,

Thank you for reaching out. I understand how inconvenient it is to be listed as a Team Owner in Microsoft Teams but still be unable to create or edit schedules in Shifts.

Explanation of Team Owner vs. Schedule Owner in Shifts

Team Owner (in Teams): A Team Owner can create the team’s initial Shifts schedule and fully manage it afterward, including creating, editing, and publishing shifts. The Create button in Shifts only appears for teams where the user is recognized as an actual owner.

Schedule Owner (in Shifts): A Schedule Owner is a team member who has been granted elevated Shifts‑specific permissions through policy. They can create, edit, and publish schedules and manage requests, but they cannot perform team‑level actions such as adding or removing members. This role is designed for frontline managers who need scheduling authority without full team administration.

Reference: Use roles to define your frontline managers and workers in Shifts.

 

 

You can start by trying the steps provided above by Q&A Assist. If those don’t resolve the issue, here are some additional advanced checks that often help when standard troubleshooting isn’t enough:

1/ Ask IT to verify your Owner status at the service level

Sometimes Teams displays you as an owner in the client UI, but the backend role assignment hasn’t updated correctly. When this happens, Shifts won’t recognize your permissions.

Your IT admin should verify this in the Teams Admin Center:

• Open the team > Manage team
• Confirm you appear under Owners
• If correct but still not working, have them:
  • Remove you as Owner
  • Wait 1–2 minutes
  • Re‑add you as Owner
  • Allow a few minutes for propagation

This is one of the most reliable fixes because Shifts grants schedule creation only to users recognized as true Team Owners by the service backend.

 

2/ Have IT assign or reassign the Schedule Owner role via TeamsShiftsPolicy

Even if you are already a Team Owner, the most reliable way to guarantee editing rights in Shifts is to have IT explicitly grant Schedule Owner permissions through a Shifts policy.

Your IT admin can do this using the following PowerShell commands:

Create a Shifts policy:

New-CsTeamsShiftsPolicy -Identity ShiftsScheduleOwners -EnableScheduleOwnerPermissions $true -AccessType UnrestrictedAccess_TeamsApp

Assign the policy to you:

Grant-CsTeamsShiftsPolicy -Identity ******@domain.com -PolicyName ShiftsScheduleOwners

Important: If the policy is assigned to a group, all group members become Schedule Owners across all their Shifts schedules.

This also clarifies the comment your admin mentioned - that “Schedule Owner has fewer rights.” It has fewer rights in Teams, but more specific rights for Shifts, and is the correct way to ensure full schedule management without granting broad team-level administrative permissions.

 

3/ If the issue persists, it may be a cached permissions mismatch

A cached client can continue using old role information even after the backend updates. These steps help refresh it:

A/ Try Teams Web

Visit: https://teams.cloud.microsoft/.

If Shifts works in the browser, the desktop client is still reading outdated permissions.

B/ Clear Teams desktop cache

Windows:

• Quit Teams (right‑click the Teams icon on the taskbar > Quit).
• Press Windows + R > enter:

%userprofile%\appdata\local\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams

• Delete all files and folders in that directory.
• Restart Teams.

macOS:

• Quit Teams (right‑click the Teams icon > Quit or press Command + Q).
• Open Terminal and run the following commands: rm -rf ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2
• Restart Teams.

Reference: Clear the Teams client cache - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn.

 

If the problem still continues:

I recommend asking your IT administrator to open a support ticket through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center so Microsoft can review the backend configuration directly.

 

I hope this guidance is helpful. Please go ahead and try the steps outlined above and let me know how things go. If the issue continues, I’ll be happy to work with you to explore the next steps and find a resolution together.

As other users will also search for information in this community, your vote can significantly help those with similar inquiries quickly locate the most relevant resources. 

Thank you for your kindness and for contributing to the forum.   

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Answer 2

To create and edit schedules and add shifts in Shifts, two conditions must be met and verified by your admin:

1. Confirm actual Team Owner status in Teams
   • Only a Team owner can create a new schedule in Shifts for that team.
   • In Shifts, the Create button for a team appears only if the signed-in user is an owner of that team.
   • Ask the admin (or another owner) to:
     • Open the Teams admin center and verify that the account is listed as a Team owner for that specific team (not just shown as owner in the client UI).
     • If needed, remove and re-add the account as an owner, then wait a short time for the change to propagate.
   From the product behavior:
   • In Shifts, each team gets one schedule.
   • “You must be a team owner to create a schedule… The Create button is available only for teams you’re an owner of.”
2. Understand Schedule Owner vs Team Owner
   • Team owner (in Teams):
     • Can create, edit, and publish schedules in Shifts.
     • Can manage Shifts settings and timesheets for that team.
     • Can also add/remove members, edit/delete the team, etc.
   • Schedule owner (in Shifts):
     • Is a team member in Teams who is granted elevated Shifts permissions via a TeamsShiftsPolicy.
     • Can create, edit, and publish schedules and manage shift requests, but cannot perform team-level actions like adding/removing members or deleting the team.
   • Schedule owner is intentionally “less” than Team owner; it is for frontline managers who manage schedules but not Teams administration.
   Admin steps (if using Schedule Owner instead of Team Owner):
   • Create a Shifts policy with schedule owner permissions:

          New-CsTeamsShiftsPolicy -Identity ShiftsScheduleOwners -EnableScheduleOwnerPermissions $true -AccessType UnrestrictedAccess_TeamsApp
     

   • Assign that policy to the user:

          Grant-CsTeamsShiftsPolicy -Identity <userUPN> -PolicyName ShiftsScheduleOwners
     

3. After permissions are correct, create and populate the schedule Once the account is truly a Team owner (or a member with a schedule-owner policy, depending on your organization’s design), Shifts should allow full schedule management:
   • Open Teams (desktop or web) → Shifts.
   • Select Choose or create a schedule → New schedule.
   • In Create a team schedule, select Create next to the team.
   • Set the time zone and confirm.
   • Add schedule groups (for example, by role or department) using Add group, rename them, then Save.
   • Add team members to each group with Add people.
   • Add shifts:
     • To assign a shift to a person: in their row, under a date, choose More options → Add shift (or double-click the empty cell), fill details, Save.
     • To add open shifts: use the Open shifts row in the group, More options → Add open shift, fill details, Save.

If the “not the team owner” message persists after confirming ownership in the Teams admin center and allowing time for replication, the admin should re-check that the correct account is being used and consider re-creating or reassigning ownership for that team.

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References:

• Create a team schedule in Shifts
• Use roles to define your frontline managers and workers in Shifts
• Schedule staff shifts