SharePoint list of lists

The following discusses the key differences between Microsoft lists and SharePoint lists and application fields.

Microsoft sums this up like this:

Track information. Organize work. Get things done.

Microsoft Lists are – as the name suggests – lists, namely SharePoint lists! As already known, these are available via the App Launcher in O365. These lists find their areas of application, e.g. for information exchange, task tracking or joint collaboration.

The setup is based on a SharePoint list and has four possible views: list, table shape similar to Excel, gallery, and calendar. The right display for many application areas.
These can also be further adapted to your wishes.

As already mentioned, the “new” Microsoft lists are simply the already known SP lists, but with some extensions and customizations.

While lists in SP are only assigned to one web at a time, Microsoft lists are organizationally more flexible or should appear detached from them.
Basically, however, these are assigned to a web to be selected when creating and also appear in it.

Admittedly, it is also possible to create your own “organization web” with various lists for different areas and applications. But in terms of collaboration and customizing, Microsoft lists go one step further.

While standard SharePoint lists are designed more for data, the new Microsoft lists also include a certain social interaction aspect.
For example, integration with Teams, and the ability to leave comments on an item. The interface also offers more collaboration possibilities.
The missing link, which does not exist in the standard SharePoint list integration in Teams.

• Starting at the end of June, the Microsoft Lists feature will be rolled out on a trial basis in Europe.
• The official launch date is given in August.
• The lists are integrated as a standalone app in O365 and in both Teams and SharePoint.
• In addition, there are also new connectors in Power Automate.

For more information, see the more detailed information about Microsoft Lists. In addition, Microsoft provides a Youtube product demo. Browse through our posts and find out how we use lists internally!

SharePoint lists just got a whole lot smarter thanks to the introduction of a new Microsoft 365 service, Microsoft Lists. In this article we explain the impact of this news, and highlight how the SharePoint lists you know and love are evolving.

SharePoint is a staple technology found in most organisations. One of the core features of SharePoint that has been most successful is SharePoint lists. These lists allow organisations to maintain a record in SharePoint in a simple and easy to use way.

Lists can also include tasks that you can use as a focal point for team collaboration or in a business solution. In many cases, lists can provide quick, effective solutions with little or no modifications.

Organisations typically use many types of lists, for example, you can use:

• Tasks – include tracking of ownership and progress as well as an in-page timeline for an attractive visual presentation of the list content.
• Issue tracking – includes versioning and version-history storage, for deeper analysis of workgroup projects and common work tasks.
• Database for Power Apps – one of the most relevant use cases at the moment is the ability to store and edit data in lists for use in the Power Platform.
• Document libraries – storing files in a clear structured list for teams to access and collaborate on.

SharePoint Lists

You’re probably already familiar with these, the list building capability that has been part of SharePoint for the last 20 years.

In SharePoint, any web part that holds content can actually be considered a SharePoint list. If you ever interacted with the Contact details, Calendar, Announcements, or Task list web parts [back in the classic SharePoint experience], then you’ve worked with lists in SharePoint. Even the Document Library is a special kind of list, one that’s exclusively used to store documents.

In 2016, Microsoft released the “modern” SharePoint experience—a new, more user-friendly SharePoint experience that moved away from subsites and InfoPath in favour of a flattened site structure and better integration with Power Apps. The modern experience also introduces improvements to the SharePoint list experience.

New Microsoft Lists apps

Building on the success of SharePoint lists, Microsoft has split out and expanded on the existing capability with a new Microsoft Lists app. Microsoft lists came out in the Summer of 2020 and is part of the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suite.

Microsoft Lists is a unified place to see and manage all your lists—whether you’re at home, on the go, or collaborating with colleagues in Teams. It’s also an evolution of SharePoint’s long time list making capabilities.

A list in Microsoft 365 lists, is a collection of data that gives you and your co-workers a flexible way to organise information. You can create lists in Microsoft SharePoint, the Lists app in Microsoft 365, or Teams.

What happens to existing SharePoint Lists?

If you currently have classic SharePoint lists in Microsoft 365, they will continue to be supported into the foreseeable future, whether they were built for legacy applications or have custom-built extensions. Whenever you decide to move them from classic to modern in SharePoint, they’ll not only “get modern”, they’ll also get all of the value and innovation Microsoft Lists brings.

If you’re already using the modern experience in SharePoint Online, then these lists will automatically get the added value and extended capabilities of Microsoft Lists.

It is no surprise with the success of SharePoint lists that Microsoft is looking to extend and improve on this core capability. Microsoft lists does not replace these but does in fact build on the capability and make it more accessible across the Microsoft 365 range.

To find out more about SharePoint contact our team of experts of download our complete guide to SharePoint below.

SharePoint Online released a new feature a while ago, to Create SharePoint Lists from other lists

With every new release there’s always a curiosity of discovering what is in the offering.

I feel one can’t undermine the benefits of being able to recreate from an existing list structure. No matter what the scenario one may begin with, they all converge at the same reason of saving time invested in recreation of a list structure. Amongst many others, I enumerate a few scenarios where I’ve spent a lot of time:

Working on different subsites with standard structure

This could be a case when you are managing a myriad of projects with a specified structure and you have some standard list and library templates.

Reusing Microsoft Flow

While Flow gives creators the ability to export and import it for reuse, you are still left with the tedious task of recreating the base list or library if your Flow happens to use any of them. The biggest pain in maintaining exact field/column names that the Flow references so that you further do not spend time in pointing to correct field names to custom fit the Flow on the new destination.

What to expect with this feature?

Microsoft introduced the two ways to Create a list:

• From Excel
• From an existing list

However, for now, only the latter method is released, enough for enthusiasts lying in ambush to explore.

But in this case, my mind drifted into thinking what would be different in this feature as compared to its older sibling – Creating from a list [or library] template.

The link that I referenced above is instructive enough to guide one in using this feature, so I proceed a level deep to provide a quick insight of what the feature offers based on my tests and discoveries, drawing a comparison between the existing method and this new feature.

One of the main differences I know is – list creation from template also gives the option to copy content on the destination, which clearly the new feature doesn’t support. This may already dissuade some users from exploring the new release.

However, still curious to compare on a few major factors that most of us commonly use in the course of setting up a list, a tabulated comparison is provided below.

*Site Column is setup as a simple list column if destination list is in a different site collection. However, if used within the same site collection a Site Column recreated in the destination list references the original Site Column.

Which Create List feature is better?

The above comparison might suggest a few obvious considerations for a penchant towards still using the create list from template method. Or even better phrased, the comparisons might not show strong indications of switching from the existing method of creating from list template.

However, I’ve some interesting revelations that one might consider while making a choice between the two available out of the box methods.

• If the destination site is different from the source site [from which the list template was copied], working with the template method seems to throw some error in using Lookup Column referring to document libraries on the source site

On the other hand, with the new feature, not only does Look Up column work well without any error, but in addition, if the destination site is different than the source, the referenced lists or document libraries are created on the destination, such that the Look Up column functionality is setup exactly as on the source list.

• One major drawback with using the creation from a template feature is that this method requires permissions at different levels, namely –
  • At source list/library level to save it as template
  • At the top-level site of source list to create/save the template
  • At the top-level site of the destination list to upload the downloaded template from the above step

Hence mandating that either user has appropriate permissions to perform all the above or is assisted with another user account that has access for all. I find this a major limiting factor owing to dependencies.

On the contrary, with the new release, if one has permissions to create a list on a site, to be able to reference a source list, user should at the least be able to access the source site content, and in addition access the source list.
Even though I may argue this reduces dependency at different levels compared to creating from a template, this also limits the scope of reference to only sites and thereafter content lists where user may have access.

Hence, there is no preference per se. My comparisons are based on my personal use and I do not even contest having covered all aspects. However, it was interesting to research for a humble release like this to discover on quite a few aspects.

What are future expectations?

With the ability to export and import Microsoft Flows crossing SharePoint Online tenant barriers, SPO has already set my expectations by introducing the name of the upcoming feature Create a list From Excel. I expect it to be support recreating list structures across SharePoint Online tenants, considering the obvious cross-domain constraints.

Also, at the moment, allegedly this feature claims to be restricted to creating only list structure, I’ve still found my way around of creating a document library structure which I’ll be parking for my next blog to keep my research on going.

See you soon in my next blog!