The initial rollout of modern SharePoint lists to First Release customers will be in early August 2016. Thereafter Microsoft will add PowerApps and Flow to the command bar. As Office 365 groups will receive full team sites soon, all users will have access to Microsoft’s business app tools.
Microsoft promised to showcase more of the features at Microsoft Ignite this fall in Atlanta. To satisfy the early adopters, Microsoft is providing an early preview of the modern SharePoint list experience ahead of First Release according to the official Microsoft Office blog.
This is hot on the heels of a new cloud-first, mobile-first vision and roadmap for SharePoint, which included innovations that empower people, teams and organizations to intelligently discover, share and collaborate on content from anywhere and on any device.
Modern SharePoint lists look great on the SharePoint mobile app—making every location and every device a first-class component of business processes. Microsoft is delivering a modern list experience which is responsive, accessible and easy to use on any device. According to Chris McNulty, senior product manager for the SharePoint team, the new lists empower the user to:
- “Improve ease of use by empowering users to add columns to lists and sort, filter and group data in place.
- Elevate data quality by viewing and editing all item details in the information panel without leaving the list.
- Improve productivity by bulk editing list items with Quick Edit.
- Automate simple business processes with versions, approvals and alerts.
- Enrich static information with rich data types including people, images and managed metadata tags.”
The new integration with Microsoft Flows allows the user to create and launch Flows directly from a SharePoint list and then store and modify the resultant data within SharePoint. PowerApps, on the other hand, allows the user to build efficient mobile forms and apps directly from a SharePoint list, without needing to write code.
The new lists are deliberately designed for backward compatibility. On detection of any compatibility blocker, like an unsupported browser, the lists automatically downgrade to the classic mode. The classic mode will not be deprecated any time soon, with plans to continue development for modern experiences with SharePoint Foundation.
