Show notes
In this episode, Chris and Mark talk to Miceile Barrett and Lincoln DeMaris – both from the Lists engineering team. Miceile and Lincoln discuss the innovation in development to bring Microsoft Lists to market – evolving SharePoint lists and beyond across Microsoft 365. You'll hear insights about the new Lists home page, ready-made templates, rules, the coming mobile app, Microsoft Teams integration and more – plus give some fun examples of real customer lists in use today. Full transcript below and if you click here. Resources and Info Links: SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice Mark Kashman |Twitter Chris McNulty |Twitter Miceile Barrett LinkedIn | Twitter Lincoln DeMaris LinkedIn Announcing Microsoft Lists - Your smart information tracking app in Microsoft 365 by Seth Patton, GM, Microsoft 365 Microsoft Lists resource center 15-minute Lists product demo by Miceile Barrett, Program Manager, Microsoft Lists (video) From Microsoft Teams to Fluid Framework—here's what's new and coming soon to Microsoft 365 by Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft 365 What's new in Microsoft Teams | Build Edition | May 2020 by Aya Tange, Product Marketing Manager, Teams Microsoft Mechanics "Teams Build 2020 announcements" video with Jeremy Chapman, Director, Microsoft 365 Microsoft Build, May 19-20, 2020 Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon, May 27-28, 2020 Galactic Collaboration Summit, June 2 and June 9, 2020 GlobalCon2, June 15-19, 2020 Microsoft Inspire, July 21-22, 2020 Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. Microsoft Tech Community Home SharePoint community blog Microsoft 365 public roadmap Stay on top of Office 365 changes Follow The Intrazone: Listen to other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts Show Page: https://aka.ms/TheIntrazone TRANSCRIPT (Music.) MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent internet. I'm Mark Kashman here with my cohost today from the very far distant reaches of, well, about 10 or 13 miles away, Mr. Chris McNulty. CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, thanks, Mark. It's great to be back here when you. You're always top of my list. And on top of our list this week, we're talking with Miceile Barrett, program manager, and Lincoln DeMaris, principal PM manager, from the OneDrive and SharePoint engineering team. MARK KASHMAN: Yes. And at the end of this episode, you will know that a list is a list is a list. And one of the newest extensions and evolutions of our story is Microsoft Lists. We're going to talk with Miceile and Lincoln about the newest app in Microsoft 365 Portfolio, Microsoft Lists. So, Chris, what are your thoughts on lists these days? CHRIS MCNULTY: Oh, I have – I have a long list of things to say about lists. You know, it's – it's really interesting. If you look at something that seems as esoteric as a data construct, right, you have over the past 20 years, you've had a variety of technologies like Access and Access Web Apps, and Excel. How you store the data shouldn't matter too much for these, you know, low-code/no-code, user-driven, lightweight application processes. But one thing that we've really observed is making it very easy for people to start with their data, is how you open up the whole application process, if you think about it. MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, you know, certainly off of our title, you know, you can make a list and check it twice. But I think when you start to do all the things beyond storing the data, you really start to see the value of lists. And you know, in a variety of products and services, you're able to store data and – and present it and work with it. And I think the unique value with lists in the past and certainly going forward is how you can represent that data, how you can share it, how you can visualize it, how you can augment it over time. It's not something that just is here today and gone tomorrow, but changes. And I think what's nice about mapping it to a business process is the business process dictates what you need to see and what you need to know, and then asks you what you need to contribute. But I think it's that representation of information, and with Microsoft Lists, it gets a lot more visible, it gets a lot more organized and aggregated together across multiple lists. But you know, I want to dig in a little bit before we dive in with Miceile and Lincoln to know, you know, from your perspective, because I know you have had, both as a marketer here at Microsoft focused on content services and the lists role that plays into that, but before as an MVP, as a consultant, or anytime you've used lists in the past, how would you say you've used them in the past and how you see them growing up over time? CHRIS MCNULTY: Well, it's interesting, if you just think back over the past, you know, couple of decades, there's been a sort of pendulum back and forth between high structure and high user touch. And if you go back, you know, farthest back to mainframe or sophisticated computer databases, those are things that required the high priestesses and priests of data science to be able to construct for you. And we saw, you know, over time, people sort of came down from the mountain and started breaking them into PC-based databases, like dBase, FoxPro and Access, and spreadsheets really kind of went – in many cases, have provided this data service, in addition to being a calculation service, because people started to find them a very easy place to be able to construct these two-dimensional matrixes, these two-dimensional tables, where they would put in people or locations or sales, or all sorts of things, sometimes to be able to model them and sometimes just to be able to capture the data. And if you think about Excel, you know, Excel has been described as the number one data format in the world and the number one business intelligence tool in the world, and the number one calculation tool in the world because it's ubiquitous, people are familiar with it, it's flexible, you can make lots of copies. As data starts to explode, that whole "it's in a file" starts to become a bit of a challenge. That's where SharePoint lists have come in. And SharePoint lists originally are foundational. They have been with the product since its earliest on-premises days. And I think that at their best, you know, they – we're trying to capture some of the great usability features that people intuitively get about working in an Excel file, about I can see a matrix I can pick a single value, I can add formats, I can work with some calculations, but without all of the user error you can get into in Excel, that if you accidentally drag a column to the wrong place, it blows up all the calculations, or someone can email the file to someone else and you've lost the data. he advantage of a list is that it's centralized. And so, what we have done with lists historically, and I'm really mindful of is, how do you marry kind of the centralized power of a database with the ease of use of something like Excel? And that's where that common structure, I think, really shines for something like a list. MARK KASHMAN: Yeah, I think there is a role for everybody to play with lists, and it's really across a lot of different scenarios and personas. You know, if you think about the ease of use that we're targeting, already today, a lot of people at different skillsets come in and leverage lists either out of the box or start to extend them. But I'll say, you know, for myself, I would qualify as somebody that's just about to be a maker, you know, but somebody that really benefits from the out-of-use ease of lists and creating views and ease of sharing. And so, I know Microsoft Lists, the focus there around making that even easier and more powerful for the common user, but that there's a real spectrum as you start to need a list to do more for you, or you want to start tinkering a little bit more with additional capabilities, either to configure, or really to move into that maker world. You know, our peer and cohort that we've talked with on the show before, Chax (ph), he is clearly somebody that represents the maker in terms of connecting to the Power Platform and being able to use a list as a backend data source to a custom form with Power Apps or extending a more complex workflow with Power Automate. And then if I switched over to that final persona, really a grow-up story with somebody that's well known in our community Vesa Juvonen, who would represent that true professional developer, somebody that's going to be leveraging the list API, building a custom solution around it to bring in both push and pull of data, possibly in a very custom user interface with a lot of logic and – and in between for that custom solution or that custom app. But to know that the element of a list, which is that true data source, and the ease of use, and the spectrum of what you then can configure, customize, or truly build, it gets back to what we really want to make sure people are clear about is a list is a list is a list. You know, we have talked about SharePoint lists with a lowercase L for a very long time. And now with Microsoft Lists, capital L, it really up-levels that and it makes it a little bit more ubiquitous for more people to engage with them, have a better view of all of your lists, and – and you know, that ease of getting in and out of different lists and configuring them, but that we don't lose that value of being able to add more power, more complexity, when there's that need. CHRIS MCNULTY: You know, it's interesting, one of the things that you alluded to there is kind of that grow-up story. You know, there's a challenge when someone builds this almost calcified, multi-table database structure, and they built a number of applications screens and mobile apps to tie into it. And then someone says, "Hey, what if we have customers who have more than one office? How do we handle that?" If you think about something that the software industry has snapped to for the last 20 years, the idea of agile development, that you should, you know, start small, go for quick wins, and just continue making incremental steps, rather than trying to boil the ocean. And I think there's value, especially in the early days, where you may not fully understand all the data you're collecting, having some flexibility as to how am I going to capture it, do I need to add a couple of additional columns that I didn't expect at the outset, and can I make it simple enough that adding those columns doesn't break all the work that's come before? I think lists are a great place to have that centralized flexibility, and then you can add things on top of it over time, whether it's reporting through Power BI, or interfaces that you extend into mobile with places like Power Apps, the fact that you can start smaller, you know, make a list you can check twice, avoid the naughty, focus on nice. See what I did there? MARK KASHMAN: I did. I like it. Yeah, I think when you look at that similar pattern, you know, it starts to be grounded in everything we're talking about lists, but for SharePoint as a backend content service, its lists, its libraries, certainly files as a big part of that, working with pages, working with the sites themselves, and having that common structure so that people can use out of the box, build and configure. But I think the true value what you're touching on is that there is a common single source of truth, and that's most important when you think about this type of data, as it fluctuates, as things change, as you make different plans and need to represent that. Changing in multiple locations can be cumbersome, and oftentimes a point of failure when something doesn't get updated. But with things built in a mindful way, knowing how people are going to leverage it, bringing in and pulling out data, that it's that single source of truth, that is flexible over time, and is really meant to map to what do you need to have it represent at a point in time, and to a certain set of people. You know, you can create different views for different groups, a lot of flexibility. And I know, our peer, Dan Holm (ph), jokes a lot in the past how he would have liked to have been paid by the list, because he puts so much effort and so much energy into the value that they brought, a lot of the solutions that he built for his customers. You know, he was certainly a problem-solver then and is now, and I think that statement alone represents what it is that you're saying, and I hope that we get across to our audiences, there is the power and flexibility, and it's usable and powerful to those different personas. CHRIS MCNULTY: And the thing about list is, you know, are they the place where I would keep track of all the retail transactions for a major online retailer on a second-by-second basis? No, that's not what a list is. Is it a place limited to having a dozen entries? Well, no, that's not what the list is either. It is a flexible, dynamic table. You can store up to 30 million items in it. And our announcements that we made this week, you know, I think really extend the relationships amongst lists. If you think about it, in databases, you have to establish all these entity diagrams. In SharePoint, and now in Microsoft 365, you may have a couple of lists that are related to each other. And I don't mean formally, but you may have a list of contacts, a list of events, and a list of collateral, and be – just being able to get all of those things, which might live across multiple teams or multiple sites, into a common experience that I can then take with me on a mobile device, you know, I think that's just fantastic potential for what lists can do for us. MARK KASHMAN: I agree, and I think as we move to now talk to Miceile and Lincoln. I just want to state that even if you hear something in the background, like clinking pans, or some kitchen noise in the background, that that is the Kashman kids. I know that they are currently making a really nice list and have been maintaining a list of recipes. And I think what you're hearing is them trying out one of those new list items that I will tell you all about after I've had a bite, if they will share. You know, making a list, as easy it is for the Kashman kids, as easy it has been for Chris and Dan and many others to really extend and bring value to customers and partners and now to this recipe that's in the background, but Chris, I think it's now time for us to turn to our experts, Miceile Barrett and Lincoln DeMaris from the SharePoint and OneDrive team, to hear more about Microsoft Lists. I don't know what's going on behind us, but it's fun. They do know that we're recording. You know, make a list and interrupt it twice, I think is what they're going after. CHRIS MCNULTY: Today on the Intrazone, Mark, and I are talking, as we mentioned, with Miceile and Lincoln, from the SharePoint, and now Lists engineering team. So Miceile, Lincoln, welcome back to the Intrazone. LINCOLN DEMARIS: Thank you very much. Mr. McNulty. MICEILE BARRETT: Thanks, Chris, CHRIS MCNULTY: Quite a week at Build for Microsoft Lists. And I really, Mark, should bring you in on that because I know you've been instrumental at helping formulate our story about what we're doing with Microsoft Lists. It is really exciting to see all the investments that are out there. As we're getting going, can each of you tell us a little bit about kind of who you are, how you got to this crazy place called Microsoft i…
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