Microsoft Lists is the new Microsoft 365 application that allows us to quickly track information and organize work in lists, so that we can control the entire process flow between Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online and Outlook.
The operation of Microsoft Lists is simple, as it allows you to create ready-to-use tables of records from scratch or by templates, and easily share them with anyone and from any device. The lists are intelligent, since they allow to keep all the users involved synchronized and informed through alerts and thanks to their collaborative features. Lists is also very flexible, since it allows us to customize lists to our liking and according to the needs of our work and our organization.
The application is designed to track incidents, track assets, routines, contacts, inventories, events and much more.
The functionalities that we highlight are:
- Microsoft Lists home (web) and mobile application: which offers the ability to create new lists, share, access recent and favorite lists in one place to manage all your lists.
- Microsoft Teams & Microsoft Lists: allows you to create a new list or add an existing list directly in a Teams channel, you can combine the lists with parallel conversations.
- Predefined list templates: Lists offers various templates tailored to start common scenarios with preconfigured structure, forms, views and formats.
- Customizable views, smart rules and sharing: organizing your lists is everything, for this reason Lists will make it easier for us to view your information, build rules and share them with confidence.
Let’s dive into each functionality in detail.
Microsoft Lists home (web) and mobile app
To get to the main page of Microsoft Lists we will click on the Lists icon found in the Microsoft 365 application launcher. In this section you will be able to see and manage all your lists. In addition, you will be able to create new lists from existing lists, import data from Excel tables, and the most striking and innovative thing is that you will be able to use various list templates that Lists brings by default, adapted to specific use cases.
Beyond creation, you can manage all your lists, select your favorites, see the most recent and even shared lists.
Lists Home puts all your lists at your fingertips in the web browser, and by the end of 2020 the Microsoft Lists mobile application will arrive.
Microsoft Teams & Microsoft Lists
Thanks to the perfect integration between Microsoft Team and Microsoft Lists, you will be able to collaborate with your entire organization in lists, using flexible views such as grids, cards and calendars. The agile display and quick organization of the information will improve the user experience to make it clearer and more concise. You will be able to add existing lists to channels, groups and individual conversations.
The predefined list templates
Microsoft Lists incorporates a series of templates that will help you save time creating new lists or serve as inspiration. It has a preview so you can say which template best suits your requirements, anyway, you can modify them to your liking and needs. Also to save time you can create a list from an existing list, inheriting the structure and format. You can even create a list from Microsoft Excel, importing the data from a table.
Customizable views, smart rules, and sharing keeps everyone in sync
From Microsoft Lists we can improve the visualization of the data to make it simple and intuitive. Thanks to this, your organization can get the most out of it and maximize your productivity.
There are four main views with which we can configure our lists. The List, Grid, Gallery, and Calendar view formats. Each default view has its advantages; we can decide which is the most convenient. For example, the Gallery view could be used when you want to highlight images or the calendar view when the information to be displayed includes dates. Also for a better organization you can customize by adding filters or ordering to have a more attractive display.
Smart rules are similar to the filters we already have in Outlook, with the same philosophy “If this happens, do that.” Thanks to this, we can configure some actions and warnings when certain events occur in our lists. Also, the possibilities increase when we talk about the integration with Power Apps and Power Automate.
Finally, you can share lists with edit or read-only permissions. You can also share individual items, enable or disable editing capabilities, set an expiration date, or require a password before accessing the data. This will make working with your colleagues efficient and fast. People with access will be able to add comments to the list or item to increase team productivity and communication.
We remember that Microsoft 365 has made the deployment of Microsoft Lists during the month of September. The integration of all the functionalities shown and the publication of the mobile application for Android and iOS is also planned for the next few weeks.