Put a little pep in your SharePoint lists and libraries Quick steps
Add automations and notifications into the flow of your information tracking and content management.
One question with lists and libraries is often: How can I get this to work better for me? To do more for me. This can emerge as aspirational ‘automation’ AND equally effective reliable ‘notifications’. No matter, it’s all about being informed and taking action — with fewer clicks (and fewer doubts).
To do this better, enter Quick steps: Putting automation and notification “where work happens”, inside SharePoint lists and libraries, for your items and files respectively. You define them according to your business processes, with very little setup.
Plan to do more for yourself (and your team members). Quick steps can Draft an email, Start a Teams chat, Set a value, and Execute a flow all from the comforts of your list or library (slippers optional). Below is how to get started…
“For frequent, repeatable actions, Quick steps bring lightweight automation directly into the grid view of your lists and libraries, without custom code or complex configuration. With quick steps you can add action buttons that execute predefined logic on selected files or list items, helping you act faster without context switching.”
— John Mighell, Director, Product Marketing, SharePoint and OneDrive - Microsoft
So, here are the (quick) steps to using Quick steps within the Quick steps column, along with a few (quick) tips and (quick) tricks…
1️⃣ Add a new Quick Steps column: From within your list or library, click Add column > ⚡️Quick steps. In the right-hand edit pane, type a name for your column and then click Add a quick step under the Quick steps section.
TIP 💡 If you create a Quick step with a SharePoint document library, you get a few extra step choices. Two being: Move file or folder and Copy file or folder - both of which give you some nice, actionable content’able outcomes at the click of a Quick steps button.
2️⃣ Define your Quick step using a Mad Libs® style approach: Sort of like saying, "Give me a verb ending in -ing," you’ll type in and point and click to choose the data and behavior of your quick step.
In the example pictured below, I wanted a quick step that would set the value of the Status column to the established choice: Published. You can name the quick step (what then visibly appears on the button in your Quick step column). Then, in practice, when I click the We’re done! button, it updates the list item’s Status to “Published".
TIP 💡 Set a condition to make the buttons appear, or not. This is useful when certain actions don’t make sense once an item or file reaches a certain phase or status (as shown above).
Try it and I’m certain you’ll soon be a SharePoint Mad Lib® prompter saying, “Give me metadata ending in a conditionally-based Choice column.” [mic drop] 😉
3️⃣ See the Quick steps button(s) appear within the new column: Once you’ve created your new column and established at least one quick step within it, it/they will then appear as clickable button(s) in that column. And note that the top items don’t show any quick steps since they are all set to status: Published. AKA, they no longer (conditionally) need to be there.
NOTE 📝 From my testing, a Quick steps column only works in list view. AKA, they do not work in Gallery, Calendar, or Board views. 😐
4️⃣ Quick steps, once created, also appear at the top of the Integrate menu: A quick history lesson | Before the Quick steps column was released, you created quick steps from within the then Automate menu. They would then dynamically appear at the top when you selected a list item. A few months ago, Microsoft removed the Automate menu and consolidated its actions into the all-powerful Integrate menu.
Thus today, quick steps appear at the top of the dynamic Integrate menu (see image below). And they obey your set conditions. If an item doesn’t qualify for a quick step, by your design, you won’t see it listed/appear for that list item or file.
BONUS | Ready to see all this and more - in action?
Here’s a thorough 14+ minute demo video 📺 Microsoft MVP, Giuliano De Luca, that showcases how Quick steps work in SharePoint lists and document libraries: How to create and manage them, including various scenarios and his own helpful (quick) tips:
Learn more 🧐 Create a quick step for your list or library (Microsoft Support).
Additional resources
“Automation updates for smarter workflows & business processes” by John Mighell (SharePoint community blog)
“Introduction to modern automation features in SharePoint“ by Nate Tennant (Microsoft Community YouTube)
Cheers, Mark “Automaton” Kashman 🤖🧔🏻♂️