Employee Portal: shifts, time tracking & more

The Employee Portal is a dedicated, mobile view for your staff — separate from the admin area. Anyone with Crew access signs in with their own login; everyone else enters through a portal link without an account. Both see their shifts, log time, and handle tasks related to their assignments there. The bottom bar on mobile has four entries: Home, Shifts, Time tracking and Me.

Everything else sits under Me (in the sidebar on desktop), grouped into Work, Profile, Inbox and Documents. Work holds the tasks plus Events, Run-of-show, Kitchen, Packing list and Deliveries — exactly the areas that run across all events. Inbox holds Messages, your direct line to the office (see Messages). Each entry only appears when there is something there for that person: no packing item, no "Packing list" entry. On top of that, every shift links through to its event's page, which brings together everything about that one assignment.

Your business can switch off individual areas here — the settings page is called Portals. A switched-off area then disappears from your navigation, and the page itself is locked for you: even with a saved link you won't get in. Home and Me cannot be switched off.

The video shows what your crew sees in the portal: events and shifts at a glance, open shifts to sign up for, time tracking, tasks and the details for each event.

Play video3:05

You’ll find the individual steps written out below as well.

Getting into the portal

There are two ways in:

1. Crew with their own 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.
2. People without an account of their own 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. Both groups see the same feature set — including Pay, Vacation and Files. The one exception is the time balance under Me, which only crew with their own login can see.

If a link has expired or been revoked, the page shows "This link is no longer valid" — the only fix is a new link from the team.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 / Applied / Open — Applied only appears while you have an open application. 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 the admin team about missing skills.

Who am I working with? Where one of your shifts lists who else is on it, you see it right in the list: the colleagues on the same event on the same day, each with their first name and an abbreviated last name, plus the role and time of their shift. The same information sits on the shift detail page. Anyone assigned to another day or another event is not listed — and neither is anyone who declined or cancelled.

Everything about an event in one place

Open a shift and you'll find Go to event. That page pulls together everything about the job, in the order you need it on the road:

• Location with the address and a button that opens the route in your maps app.
• Contact with a phone number — tap to call.
• My shift with its status and the way back to the shift detail, where you check in.
• Schedule & documents with the run sheet entries and the function sheet.
• My tasks for this event — tick them off right there.
• Kitchen, packing list and delivery whenever something is waiting for you, each with a jump to the full list.
• Messages about the event (see below), and at the very bottom, collapsed, the description.

Sections without content drop out. Where that would be misleading, a sentence takes their place — for example “No packing list has been released for this event yet,” so nobody mistakes “no list” for “nothing to pack.”

An event is visible to anyone with a shift on it, anyone with a task of their own on it, anyone cleared for its documents by tag, and anyone listed as the supplier on a delivery note. Cancelled events do not appear in the portal — not on this page, not in the list, not in the schedule.

Messages about the event

The Messages about the event section on the event page is the comment thread for exactly that job. You see the whole thread there, earlier posts included — the event page is there for everyone assigned to it.

You may write if you have a shift on this event that is still waiting for your confirmation, or already confirmed. If you are connected to the event only through a task, a delivery or documents shared with you, you do not see the thread.

In the thread you can use @ to address someone directly — people from the office and colleagues also assigned to this event. The person mentioned gets a notification.

This is how the names appear:

• Colleagues show as “First name N.” — first name plus the initial of the last name.
• People from the office show with their name. If no name is stored, it reads Team. An email address never appears.

You can edit your own posts with the pencil icon and remove them with the bin, as long as you have access to the event. Other people's you cannot.

New posts from others appear the next time you reload the page — there is no live update here.

The office reads along. Everything in this thread is visible to management too. For a note meant only for the crew, there is the comment on the task or on the document.

Under Me → Work → Events you also get the overview of all upcoming dates: Your events are clickable and lead to this page, while Other dates in the team are listed without details so you can plan your availability. This list deliberately includes events you have no shift on (yet) — which is why no event page can lead you there.

Messages (direct messages)

Under Me → Inbox → Messages (on a phone via Me) you write to the office directly — no detour through a comment on a task. A conversation always runs between exactly two people and is private: management does not read other people's conversations either, everyone only sees their own.

Your conversations sit on the left, the open thread on the right (on a phone you get the thread instead, with Back to list). An Unread dot on a conversation disappears as soon as you open it.

Via New message you pick the person:

• The office is always reachable — everyone who uses the admin area.
• Colleagues only appear when you are scheduled on the same job. Anyone you cannot see, you cannot write to.
• Customers and partners never show up there. They have the customer channels on the event.

If the person has installed the portal as an app, your message arrives as a push notification on their phone. On a computer it shows up in the bell.

Your business can switch this area off under Portals — the menu entry then disappears. Writing in an event's thread is unaffected (see the section above): direct messages are for everything that does not belong to one particular event.

Accepting, confirming, or declining a shift

The available buttons change with the shift status:

Whether the button reads Sign up or Apply is set per shift by the office. With Apply you are not scheduled yet: you see the status Applied, and only once it is accepted is the shift really yours. Until then others can apply too — and you can Withdraw at any time. You get a message as soon as it is decided.

Applied and Pending are two different things: "Pending" means the office scheduled you and is waiting for your confirmation. "Applied" is the other way round — you put your hand up and are waiting for the office. That is why the list has a separate filter for it.

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.

What a shift shows

The shift detail page is the page somebody opens twenty minutes before their shift, on the move. So it carries everything that matters for getting there and for the first few minutes:

• Location with directions. If the shift itself has no address, the event's address applies — street and town, not just the name of the venue. If the shift carries its own address or its own venue, that one wins: setup at the warehouse stays setup at the warehouse. A button opens the route in the maps app.
• Getting there. Whatever you keep on the venue as a description — goods entrance, parking, reporting to reception — sits right under the address. Internal notes on the venue never appear there.
• Venue phone and floor plan, when set.
• Role from the shift plan and the event's guest count.
• Shift note — the note you write when creating the shift.
• Lead (internal) and On-site contact as two separate cards, each with a call button. The on-site contact is the person on the customer's side that you keep on the event.

Both contacts are only shown to someone actually assigned to the shift. Anyone who merely applied sees neither names nor phone numbers — not the customer's either. The same goes for the colleagues on the shift.

Anything that isn't filled in is left out entirely. If no address exists anywhere, there is no empty location box and no route button leading nowhere.

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, Task or Shift, Start, End, break in minutes, Notes, Save) — this manual path is available both to crew with their own login and to anyone 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.

Working through tasks and asking questions

The Tasks area lists every task assigned to you — split into Overdue, Open, and Done. Clicking the box ticks a task off; clicking it again undoes that.

Below each task you will find a Comments area. Expand it to ask a question or leave a progress note — right on the task, instead of over WhatsApp and past the office.

• Your team reads along. What you write here appears in the admin area in the same thread on the same task, with your name in front. Customers and partners never see these comments.
• Everyone responsible is notified. If the task is assigned to several people, all of the others get a notification — plus a push notification if they installed the portal as an app. You do not get one yourself.
• You edit and delete your own. The pencil and bin icons only appear on your own comments. If you correct one afterwards it is marked as “edited”.

The area is available to crew with their own login just as much as to anyone using a portal link without sign-in.

AI assistant for questions about your documents

If you share documents in the knowledge base with the crew, the portal also shows an AI assistant entry — in the sidebar on a computer, in the More menu on a phone. Your people ask there about the meeting point, dress code, or schedule and get the answer with its source instead of calling you. The assistant only reads the shared documents: no quotes, no shifts, no customer data. If it finds nothing, it tells you so — ask your contact person directly then. This applies to both ways into the portal — with a login and via the portal link. Setup, costs, and the emergency stop are covered in AI assistant in the staff portal and the customer portal.

Vacation, pay, and documents

Pay & hours and Files only appear under Me when there is actually something there for you. Anyone who never receives a payslip won't see the entry at all.

These three areas are only available to crew with their own 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.

Checking off and loading the packing list

Once the office has created the packing list for an event, the Packing list area appears in the portal — with your own login as well as through a portal link without sign-in. You see it if you have a shift at the event or if the office has assigned you a sub-list. The header shows the event with its delivery time, the time remaining and the progress.

All items sit in one list, grouped by product category. If at least two different storage locations are filled in on the products, the storage location takes over the grouping — your route through the store. A switch in the header flips between the two views. Every row shows the photo, the name, the pack size (“9 crates of 20 · 180 pieces”) and the note.

• One tap on the tick means packed in full; a second tap undoes it.
• If something is missing, tap the target quantity next to it and enter the quantity you actually packed (“3 of 6”). The row then counts as a shortage and moves to the top of the event lead's view.
• Once the truck is loaded, also tick loaded. That only works after “packed” — and at the truck for a whole group at once, e.g. “Cold room 2 — load 8 items”.

The status is kept after a reload, so the whole team sees the same state. If a tap doesn't get through on a poor signal, the tick stays put and the change is sent as soon as the connection is back.

Who packed it? Behind every packed row you see the person’s initials and the time, for example “MK · 14:32”. You see that on your colleagues’ rows, and they see it on yours: name and time are visible to everyone who sees the row on the packing list. The portal points this out once the first time you open it.

My sub-lists. If the office has split the packing list into sub-lists and assigned you to one, you see your sub-list first when you open it — under Mine if you have several. If you have a shift at the event, Whole list shows everything and you can still tick off any row, for example when you cover for a colleague. If you have no shift there, you only see the positions of your sub-lists and tick off exactly those; only colleagues with a shift can change a position’s storage location then. If you are not assigned to a sub-list, you see the whole list as before. The details for the office are in Packing list: packing, shortages and loading.

The same packing list is also available in the back office: on the event's bookings tab you'll find it below the line items and can check items off yourself there – in the kitchen area also "produced", so the event lead can see the state at any time and keep it up to date.

Produced and packed are two separate steps. For kitchen items, the production status is shown on the right: "Produced" or "Not produced yet". A kitchen item can only be checked off once the kitchen has marked it produced — until then the row is locked (greyed out). That way nothing that isn't ready yet can be marked as packed. Logistics items have no production step and can be checked off at any time.

The printed production list stays available unchanged — the digital screen replaces the paper sheet but doesn't abolish it. Everything else — updating with a preview, finalising, shortages and loading — is covered in Packing list: packing, shortages and loading.

Kitchen planning: for the kitchen only

The Kitchen entry shows production planning across all events — the way a kitchen actually plans its day. It carries quantities, recipes and production status, i.e. the basis of your costing.

Who gets to see it is decided per person: the staff record has a Portal: kitchen planning switch. With it off, that person sees neither the menu entry nor the kitchen section on an event's page; opening the address directly shows a note instead of the list. This switch does not control the packing list — that stays open to logistics.

Anyone already using the kitchen keeps their access: when switching this on we set the flag for everyone who could see kitchen planning before. For new kitchen staff you set it yourself.

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 — with your own login as well as through a portal link without sign-in. 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 Install as app card shows you how to add the portal to your device's home screen as its own app icon ("Get shift and message notifications straight to your phone."):

• Android / Chrome: Tap Install — 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 Notifications in the portal and enable Enable notifications. Your browser then asks for permission — once you allow it, the card switches to Notifications active ("This device gets notified about new shifts, changes and messages."). If you previously declined the browser permission, it instead shows Notifications blocked, 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
• a mention in a comment, for example on an event or on a task
• 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 the admin team 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 don't see a task I'm working on. The portal only lists tasks assigned to you directly. If one is missing, ask your team to add you — it will then appear together with its comments area.

I can't find Pay, Vacation, or Files in the menu. These areas only exist with a login of your own, so from the Crew level up. Entering through a portal link without sign-in, you only see the operational areas.

My link stopped working. Portal links without sign-in 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 Notifications area to see whether it shows Notifications blocked — 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.