Top 10 hidden gems: Microsoft Lists

hello and welcome to the top 10 hidden gems when using microsoft lists we are going to cover 10 gems starting with gem number one favoriting gem number two create from a template gem number three list from a list gem number four the value of the lists app for ios gem number five add a list in teams gem number six at mention in comments and chat gem number seven calendar view gem number eight edit in grid view gem number nine using rules for notifications gem number ten using conditional formatting i am your presenter today your host mark cashman and i am a senior product manager here at microsoft i of course focus on microsoft lists as one of the products that i help manage and get the word out about but i also have historically been on the sharepoint team so i also focus on a lot of what we do with sharepoint administration sharepoint migration and everything that we do with sharepoint powering microsoft teams experiences and all of that of course within the context of the microsoft cloud specifically microsoft 365. so without further ado you know what we're covering you know who i am let's get started gem number one favoriting a list for easy access this is one of the easier but sometimes less discovered features and you can see it front and center here once you've favorited a list it'll appear here at the top of your lists home page which is if i go into the app launcher and i click on lists that takes me to this list home page anytime i want to get back to a list in the most quickest fashion or to see it most easily i would favorite it and when i'm done using that i would unfavor it so i have four that are favorited here and i can do uh the favoriting action by hovering over another list seeing that the star appears and if i were to click it you'll see it now appears here on the top so i've favorited the devices list when i'm done i can unfavorite it and if i need to i can take this same action when i'm in the list itself so here is the devices list and if you look in the upper left here's that same star you get a nice tool tip that says favorite this list i click it nothing happens here except for i do get a little toast notification in the upper right now when i go back to my main microsoft list home page there it is it's favorited again it appears here at the top and it's the easiest quickest way for me to find my list and if i have multiple favorited lists i can jump from list to list to list gem number two create a list from a template what this means and we are back now at the lists homepage at the top you'll see new list if i go in and i can create from blank from excel from an existing list we'll talk about this in a second you'll see that we have the out of box or what we call the ready-made templates i can view one if i've used it before i can get to it pretty quickly if i haven't used it before we have a helpful fairly large tool tip in the context of a preview of what each template brings title little description but then what's really helpful is as you scroll left to right you can see the columns that will actually be there when you use this template so if i use the event itinerary i can see that i'll get a session name column a session code column a session type that actually has pre-populated choice fields all of which i can change i can remove columns i can add columns i can adjust what the choice fields are and of course i can add my own logic of what i want to do with this list i'll show you a few others if you're onboarding employees you can see that this list would be helpful to assign and be aware of what all the different steps are the different work activities the tasks that you or the new employee might have and again left to right you can see all the pre-populated columns that take into consideration this scenario of onboarding employees last just to show you another one this is the issue tracker is a great template if you have things imagine people on site tracking issues to completion assigning them to various people or maybe things on site are out for repair and then when they're fixed they're back so you can imagine inputting different issues their description the priority the status again pre-populated choice field but you can of course update what they say what the colors are and on through you can get a template to very easily jump start the creation of your list so create use template give it a unique name we'll call this one issue tracking choose a color choose an icon and then you choose where you want to publish it to your personal list we call that my list or to a team space that you have access to like this one the freelance team site i can add it to the navigation or not when i click create it's going to use the smarts of the template to quickly start me into tracking new information but with all of that context and formatting in in place already and i'll show you that really quickly without filling out this entire uh new item so if i go into of course inputting whatever i want you can see that we already have pre-populated in this choice field critical high normal low with a light bit of formatting using some of our icons and then you can also see the status we have it as a default is new you can set that as a default is completed in progress whatever it might be to help you get started more quickly and of course you can go in and make changes to these choice fields you can adjust what the titles say you can add columns remove columns but if you look at i now have a really quick start with a bunch of columns that have been already thought out for this scenario and it's a really great way to start tracking information quickly gem number three is create a new list using the format and structure of an existing list for this one i'm going to show you the existing list that i'm going to essentially copy the structure of if i go into the remote work you can see here i've got specific row kind of every other row has a you know the green white green white if anything's marked as critical it gets this treatment where you got a thumbs down and the orange and you can kind of take a glance across and there's a lot of choices that i made to take essentially what was a content schedule or template to then go in and make it my own for what i needed to manage remote work so if i go back to our home and i will leverage the value of this but not the content so i'll go into create a new list click from existing list and i'm going to choose in the freelance team the remote work list click next and i'll put in just remote workers to make it a little bit different green and we'll track this as something like inventory of what we're doing to get ready for remote workers i'm going to publish this back to that same recent site freelance and i do not need it in the site navigation when i click create it's going to create a new list on the back end with all the columns and structure in place and of course as you would expect as i would go to add a new item if i go in and set the priority you can see here even critical is coming through i'll just set that so you can see i can assign this to a person and just like any other list i can fill this out and the more that i put in here the more that the formatting that was already there will take place i won't fill out everything but when i click save you can see that this particular item already has that formatting in place and as i add more and more items whether they are critical or not it will then add here to the structure of that previous list so a great way to get started treating an existing list like an ad hoc template knowing what it is that it has in it as far as structure and schema copying that over and applying it to my new list great great way to get started very quickly especially if you're doing the same scenario over and over again gem number four take lists with you on the go this is the lists app for ios which works on both iphone and ipad you get the full power of microsoft lists in your pocket this is that home experience that you saw on the web creating from a template leveraging the template getting a preview and a look ahead of what's possible and then once you commit to using this template you are creating a new microsoft list directly from your mobile device clicking use template you can see that this looks very familiar with what we were just walking through you can create a name a title choose an icon click create and then start loading in information you can take your list offline you can leverage dark mode this is already available for ios and later this year in 2021 we will be bringing it to the android platform so there's a lot that you can do taking your list with you looking at lists that exist creating new lists looking up list items and sharing directly from your mobile device this is a great way to have your list information with you and a great way to unblock when you have that little moment of clarity pull out your phone do what you need to do and then get right back to it gem number five add a list to a microsoft teams channel here i am in my microsoft teams desktop application and i'm in a team that i've created to manage our podcast the intro zone and i've got a number of tabs that i use here on a daily basis working with the team this is one in particular it's kind of fun i created this with sharepoint spaces and it just gives me a place to point to people who are going to be guests on our show so they can learn more about the show but specific to microsoft lists we track everything we do previous episodes and future episodes that we're planning and i've built out a list that we use to track each episode in one single list if i go in and add a tab using the lists app this is how you can bring an existing list into as a tab in microsoft teams we'll go into add an existing list and then from the list of all of the different lists that we track and manage for the intro zone i'm going to go and grab this one called the inter zone tracker and you'll see that it automatically pre-populates the tab to say intrazone tracker as i named it in lists and as i scroll down you can see these are all the different episodes that we've published in the past and if you've got a lot of information that tracks left to right it's really nice in teams to be able to expand it to see all the list information if i see something that catches my eye or i needed to check on as you can imagine you can click into each individual list item if you have any formatting on the list form that comes through here is a custom header and a custom footer to link out to the intro zone the public page all the while i can navigate back to the list and if i see something that i have a specific question maybe about this episode with simon i can go in and i can start a conversation side by side more on that later when we talk about at mentions as one of the other hidden gems but this is a really easy way that you can see that i can bring in an existing list as a tab in teams the other thing i wanted to show you since we already talked about creating a list is if i were to create a list from a template a net new list directly from within teams so in this instance i'm going to instead of using and adding an existing list i'm going to create a list this should look familiar when we talked about templates and i'll choose a different one i'll choose the asset manager if i click into that i get a preview same as we did before i go in to use the template i can give it a different name maybe it's asset management different color maybe this one is is all about uh devices so we'll give it our our robot devices the difference here is because i'm creating this list inside teams already it's already going to store it into the connected team site where we ultimately store lists on the back end so i don't have a choice here of where i want to put it it's going to go right where it's already intended to go which is the intro zone team site connected to the intro zone team that i'm in click create and as you would expect we're creating a new list in sharepoint on the back end but all the while my experience is solely and always within teams here's this new list i can click into the other list as another tab and manage back and forth through all the tabs of information that i have to track and manage the work that i need to get done so there's a lot that you can do with lists in teams and it's very important to know that you can bring in existing lists even ones that have existed in sharepoint for years if they're connected to a teams instance for that team you can then bring in the content lists of course is one of the content types that we have as a first party where you can use the lists app to bring in an existing list or to create new gem number six at mention colleagues in a list item and to the team chat so here we are in the devices list and we got a lot going on in this list and the important thing to know is if i go into an individual list item you'll see that there is now and has been for a while the ability to add comments to individual list items but now when you add a comment you can at mention somebody so we will at mention patty and we'll ask her does this look right send that down and now associated to this list patty's going to get an email notification with a link directly back to this individual list item so she will be able to see my question the list item details and of course being able to continue the conversation this is something that you can also do in microsoft teams the difference here is if i go and use the conversation mechanism i can go in and at mention my friend chris mcnulty and do that same thing does this look right and in this instance instead of getting a email he's going to get a notification in teams and it will be associated to this particular team's channel so we're in the general channel of the intro zone and if i ask chris this question he'll get a notification that will take him right to the posts this particular chat thread now that's associated to this list item so the difference is if i post a comment and use that mentions within the list itself it stays with the list whether i'm in teams or not this will be the conversation or the chat thread that's ongoing in the posts for the entire team anybody who has access to this team would be able to then see that chat thread and participate no matter who i at mention of course they'll get notified but there are a couple of ways whether you're working within teams or outside of teams where you can have a collaborative discussion and raise questions and pull people in so that they're able to then see what it is you're asking review the item and reply or make changes gem number seven visualize item milestones with calendar view for this one i want to go back into the content schedule list that i maintain and we've set this list to have a default gallery view so we can see a sense of what different articles and blogs and social maybe tweets or posts that we're working on and you can see the status you can see a lot of different things about what the content is who is writing it and then generally speaking when it's due because we have a published date so this is gallery view and just to give a quick review we've set up a bunch of different views so you can see things that maybe are in a published state and if you want to see items that are unpublished a lot of different ways to switch around to view the data however you want and in gallery view it gives us a pretty good sense of what's due and when it's due but what i want to show you if you either have any view created or you're establishing a new view and you want to have a calendar view where it actually looks like a calendar so let's look at all items in list view and you can see we have this draft due by date or published by date you also have things like when was this item created when was it last modified all of those are date driven so if i want to create a new view i'm going to go into create new view give it a name we'll call it calendar with a little calendar icon and actually show it as a calendar and then this is where you can choose what date do i want to go off of to show that item on a specific date do i want it to be when the draft is due when it's published by i'll choose published by and then i want to make this a public view for sure and there are more options based on what i want it to appear because we'll only see a single line of text on a calendar item when in calendar view so i can go in and of any column i can have it put there most likely for a content schedule you'd want to have the title of the blog or the post so we'll leave it at that but you can choose anything to appear as the title that shows up on the calendar item that'll make more sense when you see it so we'll click create and you'll see it puts it all into a calendar view and it is just that it is a calendar view a way to differentiate how you visualize your data and here i can see all the things that we've planned this one's for july 1st this one's for july 20th if i go back in time you'll see the different items that we have in the different dates and anything into the future to come i would see that anytime you want to see an item you just click into it and you'll see all the details same form just coming off of calendar view add comments do everything that we've been talking about but now you have a great new way to visualize what's happening in a calendar gem number eight make quick updates with grid view including bulk actions so here we are in the content schedule list it's got a lot going on and the thing that i want to show you is when you go into edit in grid view this gives you a lot of capabilities to work quickly especially when you have things that maybe you want to change to the same status or the same byline so if i go in here and i want to change the next two items as approved i can go in and click the one that is already listed as sorry as published when i drag it down you'll see that now everything will re read as published there's a lot of ways where i can navigate so i can use the tab and then when i'm ready to click in i can hit the return key make a choice and change and update pretty quickly and as i move off of it you'll see that it'll save that information and working within the content schedule from an edit perspective it gives me a canvas to be able to edit things much more quickly give another example if i wanted to attribute both of these articles to lucas cole i can drag down it'll update the information and it's very quick and easy for me to copy an item down especially if i wanted to do it where if i click in and i want to do multiple things and grab three items across three columns and bulk edit everything down below so now they match and it's very easy for me to go in to edit in grid view and then of course exit and see that all my changes have taken place and we'll highlight what's happening here with the row formatting in just a second gem number nine get notified when information changes this is all about using rules in lists for this one we are going to jump into the devices and we'll look at this as a list so you can get a sense of the different information that we're tracking on this entire list i want to add a rule where when the status changes to something that's critical whether that's retired or other i want to be notified because maybe i'm the one who then needs to get the device maybe remove a hard drive remove a battery so that i can retire it properly from a recycling perspective so let me set up that rule i'll go into automate and click create a rule and we're going to do a column value changes you can see that there are a couple of rule templates but it's very easy to then go set it up and walking through that example of when the status is equal to and we said retired then me i want to get an email and it knows who i am because i'm logged into the system i could type in whoever i wanted or if there was another column that was tracking the owner or the one who last checked it out whatever it might be you can even enter somebody's direct email so if i wanted to when the status is met retire is set to retired then patty will get an email but for now we'll set it as me and when i create this rule anytime that anybody goes in and adjusts something we'll make this one from available that's this row here we'll change it from available to retired so it changes a few things it changes the row formatting that's our next section our next gem but it also changes uh the behavior because now our friend patty just got an email notifying her that this has now been marked retired it'll take her directly here so she can review the list item or the device in question and then properly dispose or do whatever it is that her task is so adding rules to notify people is very easy and then once you have a number of rules going you can go in and manage the rules it might be that you just need to turn some off for a few months if it gets really busy or noisy for certain things that you don't really need to track for a while you can turn a rule off you can easily turn it back on and if need be you can go into the rule itself make adjustments at any time maybe alex moved to a different team so now you need to adjust when it's retired it needs to get sent to somebody else and if you don't need the rule anymore you can delete the rule but rules within microsoft lists are a great quick and easy way to make sure that based on some criteria somebody gets notified and that's based on as the information changes those notifications will go out gem number 10 add conditional formatting to programmatically change how your lists and list items appear so for this one we're going to go back into that devices list and we'll see it and view it as a list as rows and columns and you can see again there's a lot going on here and i want to kind of back up and show you what's happening so if you go into any column and with this status column i'll show you how i've formatted this column i've got a couple of rules and i've got a couple of ways that the information shows up so you can format it with some of our new formatting that's pretty basic and easy going into the choice pills but i can also click over into the format of the view and see that there's conditional formatting on the individual rows the simplest easiest thing you can do is use the alternating row styles that's just visually going to help disseminate one row from the other but if you go into managed rules you'll see how i've set this one up if the status is equal to retired like we did before and now our our friend patty is getting those emails but also have it when you set something to retired the entire row turns yellow and that's just because i formatted it here if you click into the formatting you can see i just chose yellow i can change it so you can see it in real time if i change it to orange now those are orange if i change it to something like blue now they're blue anything that's listed as retired that entire row is going to change a color we'll leave it as yellow if i like that we'll click save just to show you one other example if the status is equal to available not retired we're going to have that turned green and we'll add another rule so you can see how it works again working off the status column if the status is equal to and for this one we will choose reserved then we're going to make this kind of a lighter orange click save and then on our list if i go in and i adjust this one that's retired to now reserved it should appear that entire row just turned orange and again for me who's using this list i can very easily at a glance once i'm aware of what the colors mean maybe i programmed it or somebody introduced me to the list and i got a hang of it now i can see that there's a reserved one there i know we've got a couple of four that are available and i've got a bunch of them that are retired so i need to work on bringing maybe more available devices because we have a number of them retired the other thing i want to show you is how you can affect just one individual field and i'll just draw your attention here under model how it's crossed out that's the second thing that we're doing based on the status of retired but we're doing it based on this model column so if i go into format this column you can see that i have that rule running managing the rules and i can see that this rule is already set if status is equal to retired i want the text to be read i want it to be crossed out and i want the icon to appear like this again i'll show you a little bit more clearly what it looks like but also some of the choices that i can make so maybe red is a little extreme we'll make it kind of a lighter orange so it's not as contrasty we'll set this to be gray and maybe we'll put a little border on the left if i like how this looks now anytime anything's marked as retired you'll see here that the bluetooth word is crossed out changed colors and then we've got that gray cancel icon click save now i'm just building out the formatting that helps me for either entire rows or individual columns tell me what's going on with my information help me define at a visual glance what's going on based on different choices and criteria that i set and as it changes of course the list is vibrant and alive with giving me that visual cue or that formatting that's built in so conditional formatting really easy to do and pretty much out of the box will help you get oriented around what's going on with your information and that brings us to the end of all ten gems i hope there was one two maybe all ten of them that helped you find something new that you can do with microsoft list that you maybe hadn't come yet across there's a lot of ways to help your information be organized be easier to track to notify people to work where people are working like within microsoft teams or if people are on the go with their iphone and ipad and later this year on android devices all the while you can make sure that you're tracking and organizing your list information to the best of your ability and with some gems at your fingertips you'll be able to make these lists work for you thank you for your time and i look forward to hearing all the wonderful gems that you're using in microsoft lists

Channel: Microsoft 365 Community

Views: 16,416

Keywords: SharePoint, community, Microsoft, Teams, Microsoft Lists, Lists, Information tracking, Microsoft 365, Office 365

Id: gTkrZEIHEWg

Length: 28min 36sec (1716 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021