Team Manager
Team Manager is an app for Helm WMS that turns the work your warehouse has already generated into a live board of who is doing what, and records how long each job took. This article covers installing it, assigning work from the task pool, running a shift at the Employee Station, and exporting the hours.
What Team Manager Does
Helm always knows what work is outstanding: picks, deliveries waiting to be booked in, movements, sorting and inventory checks. What it does not track is who is on what, and how long it took them. Team Manager adds that layer: one column per person, the job they are on with a running clock, the jobs queued behind it, and a pool of everything nobody has picked up yet.
Assignment here is the same assignment the rest of Helm uses. Dragging a pick onto someone's column assigns it to them exactly as assigning it from Pick Management would, so it reaches their handheld and their progress feeds back into the card.
Example scenario: two pickers are in early, and there are nine picks, a delivery to book in and an inventory check outstanding. Rather than calling it out across the floor, you drag the delivery onto one column and the picks onto the other, in the order you want them done. Both people work down their own list from the station.
Before You Start
Install the app first. Team Manager is an app rather than a standing part of the sidebar. Go to Apps, find Team Manager under All Apps and choose Install. The card then moves to My Apps, and clicking it there opens Team Manager.
Apps is hidden on basic stock control. The Apps item only appears while your warehouse's Stock Control Type is Full. Until the app is installed and switched on, Helm reports that it is not installed or enabled.
Managers and operatives get different screens. Anyone without permission to see the team overview is sent to the Employee Station rather than shown an access error. The Owner, Administrator, Accounts and Supervisor roles get the board; Warehouse Operative and Packing Operative get the station only.
Everyone active appears on the board. Team Manager lists every active user in your company, not just your floor team. Narrow it with Customize View in the header and keep the layout with Save View.
The five automatic job types are already there. Helm creates them the first time the app loads, one per kind of work it generates. You cannot add to that set, but you can add job types of your own alongside it.
Job Types & Colours
A job type is the name and colour a task carries everywhere in Team Manager: the badge on the card, the stripe down its left edge, and the category it sits under in the pool. On a busy board the colour is what you actually read, so set them up before you start assigning. Open the list with Edit Job Types above the board.
Those five are locked: a padlock replaces the row's actions, and neither the name nor the colour can be changed. Job types of your own cover work Helm does not generate for itself, such as tidying a zone or covering a packing station.
In Edit Job Types, choose the plus button.
Type a Job name, short enough to read on a card.
Pick a Colour. The list only offers colours nobody is using.
Choose Create.
Two job types cannot share a colour. There are 15 in all and the automatic types hold five, so you can have up to 10 of your own. Renaming or recolouring one takes effect on Save Changes; deleting one happens the moment you choose the bin, with no confirmation, so treat it as final.
The Board & the Task Pool
Each person on the board gets a column: their name and role, then Active Task if they are on shift, then Remaining, then a footer counting the tasks they have finished today. That footer is a link, and opens Work Entries filtered to that person.
The Task Pool down the right-hand side holds everything unfinished and assigned to nobody, grouped into the five automatic job types. Job types of your own sit at the bottom under Quick Tasks rather than having a category, because they have no outstanding work of Helm's to list.
How to Assign Work
Open Team Manager from My Apps.
Trim the board to the people you are supervising with Customize View, then choose Save View.
Open a category in the Task Pool and drag a card onto that person's Remaining list.
Drag cards up and down within the list to set the order the work will be done in. The station serves them from the top.
To take a task back, drag it into its own category in the Task Pool. A card only drops into the category matching its job type.
To hand a task to somebody else, drag it straight from one column to the other.
Once work has been recorded against a task it can no longer be moved between people: Helm refuses the drop and reports Task in progress. Let the person finish it, or release it at the station, and then reassign.
Tasks You Create Yourself
Not everything worth tracking starts life as a pick. The plus button on the Task Pool opens Create New Task: choose a Job type and an Assignee, type a Task name, add Notes if the job needs explaining, then choose Create Task. An assignee is required, so it goes straight to somebody.
Dragging one of your Quick Tasks onto a column does the same in one movement: Helm creates a task named after that job type followed by the next free number and assigns it there.
Edit Task changes the Notes and nothing else, and it works on automatic tasks too, which is the tidiest way to tell a picker something about one specific pick. Only tasks created by hand can be removed: Delete Task asks you to confirm, and cannot be undone.
The Employee Station
The station is the floor-facing side of Team Manager: one task at a time, large buttons, no sidebar. Open it with Employee Station in the header; it opens in a new tab, so it can be left up on a shared terminal.
The person signs in on the station's own Login screen, either by scanning their badge or typing their Quick Access Code on the keypad, or with Login with E-Mail. The close button hands the station back to the login screen for the next person.
My Tasks shows the day so far: finished tasks ticked at the top, the current one marked Now, and the one after it marked Next. Only the buttons that apply are shown.
Finish Task and Next Task release an automatic task that is not actually complete. If a pick is half done, pressing either sends it back to the Task Pool for you to give to somebody else, and the work already recorded stays on the pick. End Shift behaves differently: an unfinished task stays with that person and starts again by itself the next time they choose Start Shift.
If the underlying job is completed somewhere else, on a handheld for instance, Helm stops the station clock by itself and tells the person Active task stopped. Nothing is lost: the work entry closes at the point the record was completed.
Work Entries & Export
A work entry is one finished stretch of work: who did it, which task, when it started and when it stopped. Helm writes them as the shift runs. Open the list with the briefcase button in the header, or from the link at the foot of a column.
Only finished entries appear. A task still running, or one parked when a shift ended, stays out of the list until it has an end time, so today's figures fill in as the shift goes on.
Filters narrows the list by Task Type, for the five automatic job types, plus Employee and Start Date, and the search box matches the task reference. A combination you use often can be kept with Save as New under Saved Filters, and Clear All Filters puts the list back.
Export takes whatever is filtered and queues a spreadsheet holding Employee Name, Task Name, Job Type, Task Reference, Task Start, Task End, the duration in seconds and Total Hours, with times converted to your own timezone. It arrives by email at the address on your Helm account, with a Download Export link. Only one can be queued at a time: start a second while the first is waiting and Helm answers Export Already Started.
Employee Station Settings
The station carries one setting of its own: the logo on its login screen and profile card, worth setting so a shared terminal looks like your business rather than like Helm.
Choose the gear button on the station.
Helm asks for Supervisor Login Required. Sign in with an Owner or Administrator account, by code or by E-Mail Address and Password.
In Employee Station Settings, use Upload under Company Logo.
Choose Save Changes. Closing the dialog hands the station back to whoever was signed in on it.
Best Practices & Notes
Assign in the Order You Want the Work Done
The station has no task picker: it serves the next task down the list and starts its clock. The order you drag cards into is the order the shift happens in, so prioritise on the board rather than relying on somebody to spot the urgent pick.
Watch the Pool, Not Only the Columns
The Task Pool is the honest measure of what is outstanding, because a task only leaves it when a named person holds it. A pool that grows through the morning is the signal to bring somebody across, and a task that reappears usually means an automatic job was released part-finished.
Retire Job Types Carefully
Deleting a job type does not touch the work entries recorded against it, but those entries lose their name and colour, and the Job Type cell in the export comes out empty. If you have been reporting on a job type, rename it rather than replacing it, and keep the list short enough that each colour still means something.
FAQ
Why Can't I See Team Manager in the Sidebar?
Because it is an app, not a standing section. It lives behind Apps and is installed once for your company; Apps itself only appears on Full stock control.
Why Does the Board Show People Who Never Touch the Warehouse?
Team Manager lists every active user in your company rather than guessing at a floor team. Use Customize View to choose the columns you want, then Save View.
Why Is a Column Missing Its Active Task?
That person has not started a shift today. Assigned work sits under Remaining beforehand, and the top task only moves up to Active Task once they choose Start Shift.
Why Has a Task Gone Back Into the Task Pool?
Somebody pressed Finish Task or Next Task on an automatic task whose underlying record was not complete. Helm releases it so the rest of the work can go to somebody else; the units already picked, moved or counted stay recorded.
Can I Correct a Work Entry?
No. Entries are written by the station and are read-only, so if work was logged against the wrong person, account for it in your own reporting.
If a task is not where you expect it, check the Task Pool first: more often than not it has been released back there. If it is in neither the pool nor a column, contact support with its reference.
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