What is Microsoft Lists?

Last week Microsoft released Microsoft Lists to New and existing Office 365/Microsoft 365 business customers. What is this new product from Microsoft?

Calling Microsoft Lists a new Product isn’t exactly right it’s more of a re branding or a new feature to the tried and true SharePoint Lists. Microsoft Lists are currently only available through Microsoft Teams. What Microsoft has done is that created preconfigured popular templates and formatting options to make SharePoint Lists easier to use within Microsoft Teams.

Current Rollout

Currently, Microsoft Lists is only available through the Teams App. This is because the Microsoft List is a SharePoint List that is stored in the underlying Microsoft Teams Team SharePoint Site. A list is a Tab in within a Microsoft Teams Team channel.

After you add the Lists Tab you select a Template to deploy.

You can create and modify a template from the 11 available options or you can convert an existing list or import from excel. By clicking on a template you can see a preview of the template.

If you choose the wrong template you can select a different one from the left side. When you find the correct one, click on Use Template to give it a name.

Click on Create to finish the deployment.

After the template is deployed you can customize the columns by editing the properties of the individual columns.

Positives

On the plus side, since Microsoft Lists, is really just a SharePoint list all automation and notifications options through PowerAutomate are available and ready to go. Furthermore, for the same reasons you can make Power BI reports/Dashboards from the Microsoft Lists as well.

The Microsoft Lists Templates have some of the SharePoint JSON formatting preconfigured. So you don’t need to be a JSON expert to color code an list.

Limitations

As of Today (9/8/2020) The new Microsoft Lists features have to be created in Microsoft Teams. If you go to the underlying SharePoint Site for the Microsoft Teams Team, and create a new list. You will be presented with the traditional list creation wizard.

If you create the Microsoft List in Teams first, then go to SharePoint Online then you’ll be able to use the new templates in a web browsers.

Conclusion

When in doubt Use Teams first. Microsoft is pushing it’s collaboration platform as the first/primary entry point for all new Microsoft Services. Microsoft Lists really isn’t a new product, it’s new functionality and entry point to an existing product that makes it easier to use.

-Terry Sheridan