Microsoft Lists: Teamwork Management w/ Row-Level Security

/ Charles

Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project are both great project management solutions. Planner easily groups task items into buckets, visualizing everything for small to mid-sized teams. Project, being a more robust tool, allows subtasks, which are perfect for bigger teams and more nuanced projects. Unfortunately, both can fall short when the client asks for super secure AND easy to manage item-level security for some of their project tasks.

The ask, team leaders would like to assign tasks to their team members, allowing everyone to view open task items. However, there are a handful of instances where a sensitive task needs to be assigned and only be viewable by senior members of the team. Here, Microsoft Lists could address this feature gap of Planner and Project.

Summarizing this approach, because Microsoft Lists are SharePoint Online (SPO) lists behind the scenes, create a list and take advantage of the SPO security model. Create a folder for “sensitive” task items, break the folder’s permissions, give access to only the necessary people, then create task items nested inside of the folder.

To create the folder, first open the list’s List settings:

Figure 1 - Microsoft Lists link for List settings.
Figure 1 – Microsoft Lists link for List settings.

Here, the Settings screen should look familiar because again, SPO is the backend of Microsoft Lists. From this screen, select and open the Advanced settings:

Figure 2 - Settings screen of Microsoft Lists list.
Figure 2 – SharePoint Online Settings screen of list.

Because lists are intended for items, folder creation is toggled off by default. Toggle this on so the “sensitive” folder can be created, then return here to toggle this back off afterwards:

Figure 3 - Advanced settings option to allow new folders.
Figure 3 – Advanced settings option to allow new folders.

With folder creation toggled on, the New button offers a Folder choice. Choose to create the folder for “sensitive” task items:

Figure 4 - Microsoft List option to create folder.
Figure 4 – Microsoft Lists option to create folder.

Finally, select the newly created folder and choose to Manage access. Either (1) right-click the folder, then select the menu option from the context menu, or (2) open the information pane with the folder selected:

Figure 5 - Context menu from right-click of folder.
Figure 5 – Context menu from right-click of folder.
Figure 6 - Information pane of selected folder.
Figure 6 – Information pane of selected folder.

From here, select Stop Inheriting Permissions and confirm the choice, which will create unique permissions for this folder. Add the people, either explicitly or via a security group, that will need access to these “sensitive” task items and remove permissions for everyone else:

Figure 7 – SharePoint Online Permissions screen of list.

At last, exit the list settings, open the “sensitive” folder and Add new item. Thanks to SPO’s security trimming, only people with permissions to the folder can see this nested task item:

Figure 8 - Microsoft Lists with Sensitive folder for task items.
Figure 8 – Microsoft Lists with Sensitive folder for task items.

Conclusion:
Microsoft 365 solutions like Planner and Project are great for what they do. However, clients are unique, and they’ll often have unique asks. For many of these more unique requirements, remembering that Microsoft Lists are actually SharePoint Online lists offers many opportunities to be creative. Get creative…

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