How to Streamline Team Productivity with Microsoft Lists

For many organizations, recording and tracking different kinds of information is an important part of any project. For instance, you could be listing all customers interacting with a new feature or receiving offer messages and see how it’s affecting their behavior through metrics like average order value.

But, depending on the project, there can be tons of information that is constantly changing. This is even more likely if you have various team members collaborating on a project. Typically, there’s a person put in charge of making sure that any data or lists involved are updated in an accurate and timely manner.

They may receive spreadsheets and other documents which they have to merge to create the most up-to-date version of a list at any one point. This approach comes with a number of issues that undoubtedly affect team productivity. Some of them are:

• Wastage of time in trying to unify data from disparate sources manually, especially when some have conflicting data.
• Higher likelihood of making errors.
• Limited features to support collaboration and other administrative actions.

Some organizations have previously opted for a mix of different tools including custom databases, customer relationship management (CRM) software, plus other web applications and third-party tools.

However, team members handling bulky information through a list approach, say within spreadsheets, may find such setups limited and inefficient for team productivity and executing more actions using data in lists. Luckily, a new feature called Microsoft Lists is here to deliver more functionality in regard to how teams handle lists. 

What is Microsoft Lists and How does it affect team productivity?

Microsoft Lists is a smart application that extends the capabilities of SharePoint Lists, enabling users to track information and streamline workflows across numerous Office 365 products. At its core, Microsoft Lists aims to create a more centralized environment for collaborators while still offering access to other functions common in conventional productivity tools, which ultimately leads to increased team productivity.

With Microsoft Lists, users get to eliminate the confusion that comes with having multiple sources of truth.

What makes Microsoft Lists unique?

For starters, Microsoft Lists does a lot of what other tools like Excel do regarding data entry and management. However, while Excel offers an analytical approach centered around a cell, Microsoft Lists focuses more on an entire row. Users can pinpoint the rows they want to track.

Microsoft Lists can also build lists using templates that come with columns, data structures, and other formatting already geared towards particular purposes. Users can then customize them as they go along.

Secondly, Microsoft Lists offers greater flexibility in retrieving and viewing information. You can use the “List Views” feature to filter the information in your lists. This approach makes it easier to track information according to specific criteria.

Thirdly, Microsoft Lists is a part of Office 365 and therefore comes with massive integration capabilities. Microsoft Lists can be integrated with Power Automate in order to map list data to corresponding business processes. If you’re using forms to enter data into your lists, you can customize them further to create more wholesome workflows.

Microsoft Lists also integrates with Microsoft Teams, allowing users to track information and manage workflows without having to switch between these two products. It exists within Microsoft Teams in the form of a List tab where you can create new lists or pin those already created within a specific team. Users can also add lists to this tab from different SharePoint sites they have access to.

Lists also works with Microsoft Approvals, enabling you to quickly build an approval workflow around a project you’re tracking within a Microsoft Lists. You can also set it up for all the relevant stakeholders to get notifications regarding contributions made or to be made.

All this can be done without having to write any code, which makes Microsoft Lists more user-friendly for the less tech-savvy users. By integrating Lists, you effectively boost team productivity possibilities. To learn more about integrations, check out our detailed run through of the Top 5 Strategic Integrations for Lists.

Last but not least, all this can be done on both PC and mobile devices, meaning that users can collaborate on the go.

All-in-all, Microsoft Lists delivers on at least three major fronts:

• It centralizes information tracking, thereby doing away with the data inconsistencies that come with having various sources of truth.
• Lists also increase efficiency by helping workers spend less time submitting queries through different interfaces for data that is related.
• Microsoft Lists pools together as much of the features and functionality present in Office 365 and other Microsoft tools to simplify workflows and processes.

This is why Microsoft Lists improves team productivity, and this is why it is an application worth considering when managing projects where multiple participants generate, reference, and modify tons of information constantly.