If you are paying for Monday to manage your tasks, issues, and/or milestones, you should know that you may already have a tool in your toolbox you could be utilizing for free instead. As a Microsoft Office 365 user, the suite of products in a basic license includes many hidden gems, and one of them is SharePoint Lists. SharePoint has evolved substantially in its online versions, so if you haven’t looked in a while, the features you are looking for from Monday might already exist in SharePoint online. Modern SharePoint Lists and Monday offer extremely similar capabilities.
Templates
Both tools have templates available out of the box to get you started.
SharePoint:
Monday:
You can choose to work from a template or start with a blank list with either tool. Let’s go over some basic features that you might be looking for:
Adding/Modifying a Column
You can easily add a column directly from either user interface. Previous iterations of SharePoint required configuration knowledge to set up a SharePoint list. With the modern list, a lot of settings are easily found on the user interface. You can also move around columns and change the size of them in both tools easily.
SharePoint:
Monday:
Adding Comments
Both tools allow you to easily thread comments regarding a specific item and tag users; however, in SharePoint Lists, since your users are already present in the Office 365 suite, they will be more likely to have the ability to access your list. The SharePoint user experience did notify us that Natalie did not have access and allowed me to grant it to her.
SharePoint:
Monday:
Version History
This is used if you want the ability to see how the item has changed, who changed it, and when you would utilize the version history.
SharePoint:
Monday:
Many other features have parity between the two:
- Custom permissions levels and access for internal and external users per board
- No code is required for automations (send emails on triggers, update items)
- No code forms for inputting data
- Data visualization within a click of a button
- Creating views with filters, sorting, and summing
- Bulk or Batching Editing
- Attachments
When you complete your board, you will have a professional-looking board that you can use for a variety of purposes.
SharePoint:
Monday:
So, Why Choose SharePoint?
SharePoint is a great software tool to use for integration with other Microsoft platforms. You are already in Office 365, so you can easily integrate your data, documents, and users right into the boards without additional configuration. For example, Microsoft Teams integrates with Microsoft Lists seamlessly so you can keep the conversation and the items in the same user interface.
You can hover over an individual and automatically pull in their photo, contact information, title, and other important information right from Active Directory without advanced configuration since we are in the Office 365 suite.
Depending on how many columns you have, you might need to display them in a way that is more digestible to your users. For example, here is an example of an onboarding process that is used to see where a new client is within the stages using advanced formatting.
Once you need SharePoint for advanced configurations that are beyond the scope of what an individual can do, DMC can help!
Customization possibilities are endless in SharePoint. Using either advanced configuration or complete custom application development, with SharePoint, anything is possible. DMC is a leading expert in SharePoint and can help with these advanced needs like creating advanced custom forms, implementing complex workflow management, and complicated data analytics.
One of the most overwhelming differences between SharePoint and Monday is the price. Following the trial period, the price of Monday significantly increases as they use a tiered, per-user pricing method. This can become especially expensive for larger companies. Monday may start free, but it does not stay free if you want to use the platform for your business.
Regardless of how you are using either tool, you want to keep permissions in mind and think about your governance. To prevent people from editing your lists or making other changes, you should create a plan for how you are going to maintain your content moving forward.
Microsoft is always working to update the platform and keep it modern, and the added feature in Modern SharePoint Lists has brought it to the next level.
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, we pride ourselves in our SharePoint expertise and want to help you organize your company’s information in the best way possible.
Learn more about DMC’s SharePoint expertise and contact us today for your next project.