Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams is now generally available
Published Sep 03 2020 08:00 AM 220K Views
Microsoft

Today, we are proud to announce the general availability of the Lists app in Teams for all our commercial and GCC customers. As you might already know, Microsoft Lists, which we announced at Build 2020 is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work. Lists are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team. Track patients, loans, issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync. With ready-made templates, you can quickly create lists from directly within Teams and access them on the Teams mobile app by accessing the Lists tab you added as a channel.

 

Introducing the Lists app in Teams

The vision of the Lists app in Teams is to bring all the collaboration and communication modalities to lists and list items, so it is easy to get work done.

The new Lists app experience in Microsoft Teams, for mobile on the left and for Web and desktop on the right.The new Lists app experience in Microsoft Teams, for mobile on the left and for Web and desktop on the right.

 

Lists in Teams is supported as a team based tab app built on top of the Microsoft Teams platform and supports the following features:

  1. New list creation from scratch, from templates (8 standard templates and 3 industry specific ones: Patients, Loans, and Incidents), from Excel table data and from an existing list.
  2. Importing existing team lists as new tabs.
  3. All standard list features that you can access in SharePoint web: column types, view formatting, Quick Edit, exporting to Excel, sorting, filtering, etc.
  4. The ability to have a channel conversation about a list item (see below for more details).
  5. All user actions on the list are audited and available in the Security and compliance center audit logging.

 

How do I get started?
To get started, simply go to any channel where you would like to start tracking a list and hit the “+” button to explore the tab gallery and select the Lists app. Once the tab is added you can either create a new list or bring in an existing list (from another team or an older SharePoint site, but not a personal list from Lists home) into the channel as a new tab.

Create a new list inside Teams with conversations side-by-side. The above shows using the Asset manager template.Create a new list inside Teams with conversations side-by-side. The above shows using the Asset manager template.

 

The Lists app in Teams includes 3 new industry-specific templates – Patients, Loans and Incidents. Team members start managing and tracking these key entities. Here are some examples of how these templates can be leveraged.

Create a new list from within Microsoft Teams and choose from numerous ready-made templates, including the new industry-specific ones.Create a new list from within Microsoft Teams and choose from numerous ready-made templates, including the new industry-specific ones.

 

  1. Healthcare organizations can use the Lists app in Teams to support patient rounding, multi-discplinary huddles and discharge planning. The Patients template is an easy way for all health teams to track patient progress and keep in touch with their peers. If you have questions about storage of PHI in Teams, Lists, or Office 365, please see more documentation here.
  2. Government agencies can use the Lists app in Teams to track incidents and coordinated incident response. The Incidents template helps people quickly setup a list and get started.
  3. Loan officers at a mortgage broker or bank can use the Lists app to track a set of loans and informally collaborate on advancing a them to approval. The Loans template helps them get started with plenty of scope for further customization.

 

How do I start a conversation alongside a list item?

Once you have configured the tab and have a list with list items, you can start a conversation about an individual list item. Go to the details view (or form) for the list item by clicking into the title field and then click on conversation to start a conversation about the list item on the channel. With this feature, you can collaborate with your team about the list item (your key business entities) and get work done, faster.


Since the conversation is a channel message in Teams, all the messaging features like @mentions, rich text, giphies, stickers, emojis, mentions, tagging, and attachments are available for use! The conversation shows up in the right rail for the list item and also on the channel for those who might not have viewed the list as yet.

You can chat side-by-side individual list items within Teams.You can chat side-by-side individual list items within Teams.

 

See more about getting started with the Lists app in Teams “Create a list in Microsoft Teams” click-thru demo. And do not forget to try the Lists app experience in the Teams mobile app to track your lists within Teams on the go. Just go to your Teams android or iOS mobile apps and go to the channel where you have added the Lists app and click on more and tap on the tab name to open up the list.

lists in teams5.png

 

 

Learn more about the Lists app in Teams

If you are unable to see the Lists app in your channel, please contact your Teams Admin because applications in the Teams app store can be disabled or enabled by app permission policies. For more information, see the Manage the Lists app in Teams article. If you are looking for more resources and guidance, please review the help article here. For general help content and resources on Microsoft Lists, check out the Microsoft Lists resource center.

 

Note: Users of the existing SharePoint tab app in Teams that have pinned a list will see their experience inside the tab get upgraded to the latest Lists in Teams experience. This change will be rolling out today as well. 


Millions of people use SharePoint lists and libraries every month in Microsoft 365 to track issues, manage inventory, report status, onboard new hires, build out event agendas, manage FAQs, and more. With flexible columns, forms, and views, you can build your own solution to meet your specific needs without knowing how to code. All these great capabilities now come to you inside the Lists app in Teams.


As always, thanks for taking the time to read about Lists in Teams! We’d love to hear any feedback or ideas you might have. Do submit suggestions on user voice. We are listening!

83 Comments
Such a great add can't wait to test this over the next few days :D
Microsoft

This is awesome!!!

Steel Contributor

Would really like to make it easier to set item level permissions and hiding columns during edit for different useds too.

 

Excited to see what we can do with it though 

Great to see this landed and among all the features you get in SharePoint List, one of my favourites is having a conversation about an individual list item :)

Iron Contributor

I may be missing something, but is there really no search bar to search through list items? The universal search bar at the top of Teams window does not filter the list, and there isn't any place in the UI to bring up a search box. It's a rather glaring omission if this is by design.

Microsoft

@Jakub Misiura _ This is a feature in the backlog. Please upvote on user voice, it will help. We do want to enable local search within the Lists App to search through large lists and in the future integrate with the top search bar in Teams. Thanks for the candid feedback. 

Brass Contributor

Good one, Nice and Impeccable!

Steel Contributor

Why aren't tab conversations supported in the Lists app?  I've never come across a tab that doesn't support conversations (outside of the standard "Posts", "Files", and "Wiki" tabs)...

 

Oh I just saw that tab conversations are stored at the list item level, but I'm now more confused by this decision.   Does this mean item-level comments can be made in both Teams AND the MS Lists web app? 

 

If I leave a comment on an item in the Lists web app, will I see it in Teams?  Or will there be two independent methods to leave a comment on a list item?  

 

Why weren't normal tab conversations good enough for the Lists app?

Copper Contributor

Bravo pour cette belle évolution, List était attendu

Brass Contributor

When will it be available in SharePoint? I'd like to create these for a communications site instead of a teams site

Copper Contributor

Super super excited to see this App arrive!! 
(It feels like i've been hitting F5 for months awaiting its arrival). 

Have moved in straight away and will start using it in Teams, but I must say it, it feels like an Alpha level launch.
The UI is not as polished at the marketing brochure/demo and you still need to dive back into the deep settings of Sharepoint to configure even what are relatively simple settings. So the learning curve for the non-IT user will be quite frustrating. I wouldn't be encouraging it for non-IT people just yet. 

Never the less, great potential and excited to see where it develops..  

Microsoft

@Angus_Booker  - Thanks for your excitement. Sorry to hear about the Alpha feel for you. Can you specifically drop me a note on email anach@microsoft.com elaborating more about your experience and what deep settings you needed to access in a list creation flow that weren't available on the Lists App? 

Copper Contributor

Will there be a stand alone app?

Copper Contributor

Hi All - does anyone know if there is a way I can create links in a links table. So - we are trying to use the Lists function in Teams as a job tracking lits. The documents  etc are in a seperate folder on our team sharepoint drive etc.

 

Is there a way to create a hyperlink in Lists to access those documents for each particular job? Thanks!!

Brass Contributor

Any information on how they are implemented?

 

Looking at the underlying SharePoint site , they don't appear to be:

  • site designs
  • site content types
  • site list templates
  • site features
  • site collection features
  • site solutions

 

Copper Contributor

Looking forward to all of the ways we can use Lists.

Silver Contributor

@Ansuman Acharya, interesting that it rolled out for Teams and still hasn't totally rolled out for OneDrive or SP separately.  When is the mobile app due out?

Brass Contributor

Any date on when we can create these for a SharePoint communications site?

 

I created one in teams for testing and other than the templates, I can't tell any major differences between the current lists and lists?

Brass Contributor

What can an admin do to make this feature appear in our tenant? It's super frustrating to see high profile releases about this feature but not be able to access it in our tenant.

Microsoft

@Andy_Kinnard  check out this article: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/manage-lists-app Please ask your teams admin to enable Lists App if blocked 

Copper Contributor

How can I extract data out of this list. Any security arrangements to handle this lists like Confluence

Copper Contributor

I'm trying to make the image field appear in the Asset Manager (template-based) list but no avail. I'm wondering if others have the same experience. @Ansuman Acharya 

Brass Contributor

great app, experiencing it now

 

besides, it will be greater to allow this app adding to group chat

Copper Contributor

Are there any plans when Lists will be available as an Office 365 app and will supplement or replace the current Sharepoint List?

Brass Contributor

I m not able to see many of the features like freeze first column, Auto fit row height, gallery view etc. Will these not be available within Teams?  

Iron Contributor

It seems there are troubles with adding links to OneNotes as there is a 255 character limit on hyperlinks. I created a feedback item on Microsoft Teams UserVoice, if anyone is interested in voting on it :)

Copper Contributor

@Jakub MisiuraI too was surprised by the lack of basic search functionality - many lists of any significant size are almost unusable without the ability to search.

 

The UserVoice request that I think @Ansuman Acharya refers to can be found here: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/38991736-sharepoint-list-searc...

Copper Contributor

Just saw this get pushed to my org and was excited to give it a try.  I have some powerautomate flows that work off of Sharepoint list modify events, and it appears that modifying a list (albeit super convenient in Teams) does not trigger the same way as modifying in Sharepoint proper.  Is this a known issue or is there a potential work around maybe?

Brass Contributor

Is this "disconnected" from the availability of the Lists App as a stand alone solution (e.g. available from office.com apps menu)?

Brass Contributor

@fratzcat if that is true, I sure hope its a bug.

Brass Contributor

@Tony Hignett - Looks like these lists are placed in the Site Contents root. That's where I found the one I created. 

CG-1717_0-1599584389197.png

 

Brass Contributor

@CG-1717 I still cannot create them outside of Microsoft Teams

Silver Contributor

@WC_KStill, I believe Microsoft Lists is still rolling out for SharePoint, outside of Teams and OneDrive even though now available via Teams.  We have it in Teams but not elsewhere yet, but my demo tenant has it for both.

Copper Contributor

There are alot of functions that Miceile Barret, program manager, shows in her video that is not there https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/microsoft-lists/

 

for example

1. no calender or galley view

2. Cant comment on a single task. See video 8m15s

3. Rule function is missing too

Capture.PNG

Rule function was the most exciting one. Why can't I use these functions?

Steel Contributor

Looks nice so far!  But no Links template.  Boooooo.  

Copper Contributor

Hi,

 

is there a way to create custom templates ? - the ones available are ok but we would like to design and add our own templates.

 

Thanks!

Brass Contributor

I can't assign a task to more than one person? Also notifications of tasks don't work if you don't use Exchange (we won't for a while). Currently this doesn't seem to do more than planner, though I do like the fact that you can assign tasks to people without inviting them to your whole team. 

Copper Contributor

Good afternoon

 

Isn't Microsoft Lists available for accessing as an a Unique app? I mean, I entered in portal.office.com but don't see the Microsoft Lists icon.

 

Regards

David Gutherz

Brass Contributor

@dgutherz It does not seem like the stand-alone app has been added, at least not to our tenant. Even trying to sign into https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-lists redirects us without accessing the app. It works okay in Teams, but there are several shortcomings even over Planner e.g. you cannot assign a task to more than one person, unless it is an established group (O365 Group?). Doesn't seem like you can use tags either. 

Silver Contributor

@MGSpaceCaptain and @dgutherz, Microsoft Lists only works in Teams in our tenant as well and not as a standalone app as I mentioned earlier.  Hope it rolls out soon.

Brass Contributor

Agreed that this rollout process is exceedingly confusing, opaque and, most distressingly, hyped in main stream press well in advance of release. So, here we are as admins, trying to answer stakeholder questions about how to use Lists (or the new Tasks app that is also supposedly rolled out but totally MIA on our tenant) or why we don't yet have it in our tenant. It makes us look stupid and impotent.

There are significant limitations to Lists as rendered in Teams, like complete lack of functional search...don't let your lists get long, folks...limited views and absence of many features highlighted in the various rollout videos MS teases us with. We already have power users trying to use Lists for critical tasks, and I can't even determine yet whether it's a functional fit for our organization.

A few suggestions, Microsoft:

  • Never hype as "available" services that aren't available to most tenants.
  • Provide clearer timelines for how new services will be rolled out: Information about what features to expect in what order and time frame should NOT be delivered by peers making suppositions based on anecdotal experience.
  • Never release a product whose content cannot be searched within the container in which it is presented (e.g., Teams wiki, Planner/Tasks, Lists, etc.)
  • For the love of God, stop with the branding merry-go-round (I'm looking at you, new Tasks, app...or are you Planner, or Tasks by Planner, or Tasks [which is somehow distinct from the current implementation of Planner]). Kick marketing out of the room when you make these decisions; land on a good name and stick with it. Make sure it doesn't clash with names of existing services. This isn't rocket science; it's astounding you're still THIS bad at it.
Silver Contributor

@MGSpaceCaptain, if you have it in Teams, there is a way to access your lists through the browser in Office 365.  https://yourtenant-my.sharepoint.com/personal/your_user_account/_layouts/15/Lists.aspx just change the yourtenant and your_user_account to your tenant info.  You may need to refresh the page after it loads the first time, but I got it to go.

Brass Contributor

@Jeffrey Allen where did you glean that nugget of incredibly valuable information.

 

Microsoft, why is this a secret?

Silver Contributor

@Andy_Kinnard, my demo tenant has Lists totally rollwed out so I opened it and copied the link and modified for my regular tenant and it works.  You do need to refresh once but it works.  I've tried with two different users and seen it work.

Brass Contributor

@Jeffrey Allen , yes it works just fine (and seems totally obvious once you see it), it's just aggravating as all get out that MS will produce glitsy videos and a whole marketing push, produce volumes of "guidance" that leads no one to useful solutions and totally neglects basic information about accessing the service (all the while hyping all of it as if it were broadly available). Thanks for your help.

Brass Contributor

"Interesting" search feature: Open a list and search there works smooth as glass, but searching the same terms from the Lists home screen produces an interminable spinning progress wheel. If that's supposed to search all the available lists, it's not working.

Silver Contributor

@Andy_Kinnard, I totally agree with you.  Glitzy release of product material but basic info missing and stating it is generally available to all but not completely rolled out.

Brass Contributor

@Ansuman Acharya 

we have teams in our company but i still can't find this app, what can be the reason? 

Silver Contributor

@tomkoi, in a channel when you click the plus to add an app, you can't find lists?listsintabs1.png

Brass Contributor

@Jeffrey Allen 

yes i didn't found in any place 

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