Employee Portal: shifts, time tracking & more
After reading this you'll know how the Employee Portal works — from getting access to accepting or declining shifts, installing the app and enabling push notifications, to logging time and requesting vacation.
The Employee Portal is a dedicated, mobile view for your staff — separate from the admin area. Full team members log in with their own account, while external temp staff enter through a link without needing an account. Both see their shifts, log time, and handle tasks related to their assignments there.
Getting into the portal
There are two ways in:
- Full team members with a login sign in to Univents as usual (email address + 6-digit code) and land automatically in their workspace's portal. For how to set this access up, see Set up & configure staff.
- External temp staff without their own account get a personal link by email the first time they're assigned a shift. One click opens the portal directly — no login required. Their header shows a "Temp staff" label. This group only sees the operational areas: Shifts, Calendar, Tasks, Time tracking, Availability, Schedule, and Kitchen. Pay, Vacation, Files, and Messages remain reserved for full team members with a login.
If a link has expired or been revoked, the page shows "This link is no longer valid" — the only fix is a new link from the team.
Keeping track of shifts
The Shifts tab lists every assignment with date, time, role/event, hours, pay, and status. Filter the list with All / Confirmed / Pending / Open. The Calendar tab shows the same shifts as a month or week view with a color-coded status legend and back/forward navigation.
Open shifts that don't match your skill profile aren't shown at all — if you see "No matching shifts," ask your manager about missing skills.
Accepting, confirming, or declining a shift
The available buttons change with the shift status:
| Status | Available action |
|---|---|
| Open | Sign up — you apply for the open shift |
| Pending | Confirm or Decline (decline only if your workspace allows it) |
| Confirmed | only Call in sick — declining is no longer possible after confirming |
Tapping a shift opens its detail page with the event, your contact person, colleagues on the same shift ("Working with you"), a directions link, and — if shared — the event's schedule.
Logging time and checking your balance
From the shift detail page you can check in directly: Check in now is only active within the check-in window; afterward you'll see Check out.
The Time tracking tab offers two ways to log time: the stopwatch (Start/Pause) or a manual entry (Event, Aufgabe/Schicht, Start, Ende, break in minutes, Notizen, Speichern) — this manual path is available both to full team members with a login and to temp staff using a portal link without one. Legal break rules are applied automatically and shown to you. Right below it, Time balance shows Worked, Target, Balance, and Carried over for the selected month, with month navigation. For details on how your team approves entries, see Time tracking & vacation management.
Vacation, pay, and documents
These three areas are only available to full team members with a login:
- Vacation shows your yearly budget (Taken / Planned / Remaining). Use New request to choose a type (Vacation, Leave, Sick), a date range, and an optional reason. Requests start as "Pending" until your team confirms or declines them — if declined, you'll see the reason right on the request.
- Pay & hours shows the current month, your hours year-to-date, and a table per month with a PDF download of your payslip.
- Files lists documents shared with the team as well as private files — both downloadable.
Driving deliveries and getting them signed
Once the office assigns you as the delivery driver on a delivery note, a Deliveries section appears in the portal — for team members with a login as well as for helpers on a portal link. The list is split into Upcoming and Done; deliveries without a recorded time stay under "Upcoming" so they don't get lost.
Tap a delivery and you get:
- Customer and phone number — tap to call. If no number is on file, it says so.
- Delivery address — tap to open your device's maps app.
- Delivery time — the time only shows if the office recorded one.
- What goes with it — quantity and name of each position. You never see prices here.
Use Get signature to have the customer sign right on your device: hand over the phone, they draw, enter their name and confirm the consent. The delivery note is then recorded as signed, and the signature appears with name and timestamp in the detail view. If the delivery note has no customer on file, signing is not possible — check with the office in that case.
Setting your availability
The Availability tab (visible to both groups) lets you set a weekly pattern — tap a weekday, choose a type (Available, Unavailable, Preferred) and an optional time window. For individual days, add a date-specific one-off exception. Your team uses this when planning shifts — see Staff planning board.
Installing the app and enabling notifications
On the portal's home screen, the Als App installieren ("install as app") card shows you how to add the portal to your device's home screen as its own app icon ("Notifications about shifts and messages, straight to your phone."):
- Android / Chrome: Tap Installieren — your browser prompts you directly to install the app.
- iPhone (Safari): There's no one-tap install here. Instead, open the Share menu and choose Add to Home Screen. Notifications only work on iPhone from iOS 16.4 onward, and only inside the app installed this way — not in a regular Safari tab.
The card disappears automatically once you've already installed the app, or after you dismiss it (for 30 days).
Push notifications are a separate toggle: open Benachrichtigungen ("Notifications") in the portal and enable Benachrichtigungen aktivieren. Your browser then asks for permission — once you allow it, the card switches to Benachrichtigungen aktiv ("This device gets notified about new shifts, changes, and messages."). If you previously declined the browser permission, it instead shows Benachrichtigungen blockiert, with a hint to allow it again in your browser settings. If a colleague uses the same device with their own account, the card shows "This device receives notifications for: [name]" so it's clear whose notifications are currently arriving.
Enabled push notifications inform you about:
- a newly assigned shift (immediately)
- changes or the cancellation of a shift (batched, if several changes happen in quick succession)
- a daily reminder about upcoming shifts
- new messages in team chat
- the decision on a vacation request
Frequently asked questions
I don't see an open shift even though I have time. Shifts with a skill requirement only show up for staff whose skills match. Ask your manager if a skill is missing from your profile.
The "Decline" button disappeared. Once you've confirmed a shift, only "Call in sick" remains — declining is intentionally no longer possible. Some workspaces also disable declining shifts entirely.
I can't find Pay, Vacation, or Files in the menu. These areas only exist for full team members with their own login. As external temp staff entering through a link, you only see the operational areas.
My link stopped working. Links for temp staff can expire or be revoked by the team. Ask your contact person for a new one.
I enabled push notifications but I'm not getting any. Check the Benachrichtigungen area to see whether it shows Benachrichtigungen blockiert — that means you previously declined the browser permission and need to allow it manually in your browser settings for this site. On iPhone, push notifications additionally only work if you've installed the portal via Add to Home Screen and open it from there, not in a regular Safari tab.