If you have more than one thing to do in a day the odds are, you’ll be writing a list at some point. The world runs on lists; to-do lists, issue lists for tracking, invite lists, shopping lists … the list of lists is endless.
Microsoft announced in July this year that latest Microsoft 365 app Microsoft Lists will be dropping onto the Teams platform from September through to October. With its widespread arrival imminent, Silicon Reef have been exploring the practical application of this much anticipated app.
Simple, intuitive, and very welcome to the Teams landscape, Microsoft Lists helps you track information and organise your work – as well as your people, your thoughts, and your life. With Lists pre-installed for every Teams user – and available directly in the tab gallery of every team and channel – we predict that Lists will fast become a highly valued Teams app.
The Top Five Features of Microsoft Lists:
1 – Dive straight in to Lists
Find the Lists icon on the Microsoft 365 app launcher and you are ready to get started.
From the offset ready-made templates can help you set up common scenarios using pre-defined structure, forms and formatting, and shortcut to your first set of lists – or use the preloaded templates to inspire your first customised list. Everything about Lists is geared towards making your working life easier to manage hence – as with Teams – the app is intuitive and straightforward and needs no training to start bringing immediate benefit to you and your employees.
Head to Lists Home at any time and see all the lists that you have created or have been shared with you – and whether you’re in the office or on the go you will see the same complete view through the web or on the mobile app – enabling you to keep up to date and connected wherever you are.
2 – Make your Lists your own
Microsoft recognises that everyone likes to work in their own way, so Lists allows you to customise your views and arrange your personal lists any way you want using the calendar, grid, gallery, or a custom view. Add new columns, define the choices in drop-down menus, create ‘view or edit’ share links, and customise filters to make sure that your Lists reflect the way that you and your teams work.
You can also set up smart rules to send notifications or update values on a list – these are as easy as writing a sentence and will be very familiar to anyone used to building simple formulas in Excel. Use these smart rules to keep everyone consistently informed with minimal risk and overheads.
3 – Integration brings out the best in Lists
From direct and easy migration of Excel data into Lists, to instant access from anywhere in Teams, Lists continues the principle of bringing content and conversation together in one integrated experience. You can communicate and share across your business by adding an existing list to a Teams channel or collaborate across Teams to build a new list.
SharePoint list users will be familiar with many of the core functions and will be pleased to discover that Lists app lists and SharePoint lists are identical, Microsoft Lists builds on the trusted SharePoint platform with new user experiences and capabilities that all lists – past and present – can benefit from.
4 – Share your Lists
Your lists may be long and low priority, or short and strategic, they may be simple or complex but whatever the purpose of a list it’s always important to making working with others on shared lists both efficient and manageable. When sharing your lists, you can choose to share all or part, you can choose to give edit or read-only permissions, you can share individual items, set expirations dates or require a password for access. Invitees to a shared list can comment either on the full list, or against individual list items.
5 – Secure and compliant
Let’s face it, there are loads of list management tools out there. But it’s only Microsoft Lists that works across your Microsoft Teams platform, and benefits – as part of the Microsoft 365 suite – from enterprise-grade security and compliance. Teams admins are able to manage access and permissions using the app permission policies, giving you the confidence of control and tracking.
At Silicon Reef we already use Lists in two core ways; to store data for custom components like tools, for personalised options that we connect to web parts, and to hold information like requests, or contacts, in a way that allows us to manage versions and add custom metadata.
Whatever ways you and your teams choose to use it, Microsoft Lists feels like the natural next step in the evolution of Teams, bringing an everyday, multi-use tool to the heart of Microsoft’s most collaborative and effective platform.
