Microsoft Lists is part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. While on the surface, it sounds like a simple to-do list app, it allows you to do much more than that thanks to its flexible templates. We’ll take a look at what’s possible with this app and how you can use it to boost your productivity.
1. Scheduling Content
Microsoft Lists allows you to quickly and easily manage content publication across multiple platforms. The content scheduler is one of the many templates available in the app. You can schedule posts for social media, blogs, or websites and even track the performance of these posts.
It’s similar to creating a content scheduler in Google Calendar, but you get a ready-made template here that is easy to tweak. This template allows you to focus on creating high-quality content and streamline the creation/distributing process by sharing the calendar with your team. The list also allows you to assign projects to different team members and lets you keep track of deadlines with ease.
2. Tracking Work Progress
The Work Progress Tracker template will assist you in organizing and managing your work and projects. It enables you to see all of your tasks and projects in one place, allowing you to prioritize and stay on top of what needs to be done.
You can assign tasks to your team members, and check in on their progress in real-time. This also comes in handy to judge how long a certain task usually takes, so you can take that into account for future planning. The app also makes it easy to categorize tasks, set a priority, and set a start/due date.
Some of these features are similar to the best task management apps, and that’s high praise for what’s essentially a simple spreadsheet-like app on the surface.
3. Tracking Issues
Whether you are working alone or with a team, problems and issues will arise on projects. This could include software bugs, technical problems, design revisions, etc. Fortunately, you can use the Issue Tracker template within Microsoft Lists to manage any problems that arise during a project.
The template includes details about each issue, such as its priority, status, and who is responsible for addressing it. You can use this information to ensure that important issues are dealt with promptly, helping teams stay organized and on top of their work. It even tells you when an issue was reported, so you can come back to it for future reference.
4. Tracking New Recruits
If your part of the job entails hiring, interviewing, and onboarding new recruits, you’re well aware of how exhausting that entire ordeal can be. The Recruitment Tracker template within Microsoft Lists makes it easy to manage the process of hiring new recruits.
You can keep track of each candidate’s specifics, such as the job title, interview time, recruiter, and more. This template even allows you to view each candidate’s LinkedIn profile and resume straight from the app. It also makes it easy to monitor each applicant’s progress throughout the entire hiring process
5. Improving Work Processes
Microsoft Lists also helps in building an efficient work process for productive workflows. This makes managing your work easier. This tool helps you identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your current process and find ways to fix them.
While there’s no template set for this specifically, the combination of the work progress, content scheduler, and event itinerary templates come in handy. You can easily figure out which tasks take longer, so you can figure out ways to streamline the process during the planning phase.
Every list also allows you to see which team members take more time to complete a certain task, allowing you to quickly address productivity/efficiency issues with the team.
6. Tracking Expenses
Cash flow management is crucial for financial success, and keeping track of your expenses is important for any business. Fortunately, there is a template for this called the Expense Tracker in Microsoft Lists. It allows you to track and control every expense your business makes.
You can enter individual expenses by entering the amount, date, and category of the purchase or expense. Categorization simplifies this template quite a bit, allowing you to quickly sort through and manage different categories.
It even allows you to add receipts to calculate your cash flow monthly or annually. This works similarly to Notion’s budget tracker and helps in managing project budgets.
7. Managing Assets
The Asset Manager template within the app allows you to keep track of all devices in your organization. Using this template, you can easily figure out when devices are checked in and returned. You can assign an asset tag to each product, and easily see the status, model, serial number, and current owner of each device.
Furthermore, you can quickly add a photo, purchase date, purchase price, and order number for each device that is either checked out or checked into the system. You can even add notes that tell you about the device condition for each asset.
Microsoft Lists: A Highly Underrated Software for Managing Your Work
You might be surprised by what’s on offer with Microsoft Lists. If you are already subscribed to Microsoft 365, then using lists should be a no-brainer for you. It also compares well to other productivity apps, considering the templates are on par with some of the best Notion templates.
The only thing lacking with Microsoft Lists is note-taking. While you can create notes in the app, a proper template for doing so will turn this into one of the best productivity apps out there. Even then, the amount of stuff you can do with this app is incredible.
