Microsoft Teams has a new feature to facilitate collaboration.

Microsoft has made its new Lists app available as an add-on to its Teams video conferencing service, which the company says will allow teams to track information across various projects in a "simple, smart, and flexible way. The company says Lists will allow teams to track information across various projects in a "simple, smart and flexible way. Over the past few months, Microsoft Teams has added tons of new features and improvements to compete with Zoom at the top of the list of best video chat apps.

Microsoft Lists, announced at Microsoft Build 2020, is separate from both the To Do and Tasks apps. Lists look like spreadsheets with rows and columns, but come with a conversation space for team members to exchange messages about individual items. Users can choose from pre-made templates or create their own custom lists imported from Excel or other sources.

The pre-made templates include three industry-specific ones: medical (patients), financial institutions (loans), and government agencies (cases).

Lists can be added to a Teams channel, where team members can collaborate and provide feedback on items. Also, because they are in Teams, conversations can support all messaging features, including mentions, GIFs, stickers, emojis, and attachments; a preview of Lists can be seen in Microsoft's announcement video.

"The vision of Teams' Lists app is to bring all collaboration and communication styles to lists and list items, making it easy to get work done," wrote product manager Ansuman Acharya in a blog post.

Lists functionality is a key component of the Lists app.

The Lists feature is now available in the Teams mobile app for iOS and Android for all Microsoft 365 commercial and Government Community (GCC) customers. A separate Lists mobile app will be released later this year.