← Al Davies, 250 High Street

Best way for a 50 person ops team to track requests in Microsoft 365

Short answer: one SharePoint list for all requests, one intake form, a few views, and one scheduled flow that nudges owners about old requests. Keep permissions at the site level so 50 people share one set of rules. Microsoft states a list can hold up to 30 million items, so size is not the problem; unclear ownership is.

Why one list

Fifty people send requests: purchases, access, repairs, schedule changes. Separate inboxes and sheets mean two people answer the same request, or nobody does. One list gives every request one row, one status and one owner. For a smaller internal help desk, see "Help desk ticket tracker in a SharePoint list". This page is about the design choices for a team of about 50.

Step 1. Columns for the Requests list

Our advice, not a Microsoft rule. Create a list on your ops team site and add these columns:

  1. Title: one-line summary of the request.
  2. Request type: Choice, with a short fixed set such as 1 Purchase, 2 Access, 3 Repair, 4 Other.
  3. Requester: Person or Group.
  4. Owner: Person or Group. The one person responsible.
  5. Status: Choice, such as 1 New, 2 In progress, 3 Waiting on requester, 4 Done.
  6. Priority: Choice, such as 1 Urgent, 2 Normal, 3 Low.
  7. Needed by: Date and Time.
  8. Details: Multiple lines of text.
  9. Reminder sent: Yes/No.

Keep the Choice sets short. A 50-person team will invent new words fast if you let them.

Step 2. One intake form

Everyone submits the same way, with the list's own New item form. Put the link to the form on the team site home page. Hide Owner, Status and Reminder sent from the requester's form so requesters fill in only what they know. See "Customize SharePoint list form sections".

If requests also arrive by shared mailbox, see "Requests lost in a shared inbox" to move them into the list.

Step 3. Views for 50 people

Save these as public views so every person sees the same names:

Step 4. Permissions for 50 people

Start with the site's own groups. Give the ops team Edit. Requesters must add items, so they need at least Contribute; Microsoft's permission levels page says Contribute can "View, add, update, and delete list items and documents." Read alone cannot submit a request. Do not set rules item by item.

Two limits from Microsoft's SharePoint limits page, in its words:

So decide before the list grows. If requesters should see only their own rows, use the list's advanced settings for item-level access, described in "People see only their own items". If a whole list must be private to a smaller group, Microsoft's page "Customize permissions for a SharePoint list or library" says to select "Stop Inheriting Permissions" on the Permissions page for the list. Exact names may differ on your screen. Do this while the list is small.

Step 5. The overdue flow

One scheduled flow, built from Microsoft's "Run a cloud flow on a schedule":

  1. Sign in at https://make.powerautomate.com and select My flows.
  2. Select the Cloud flows tab, then Create from blank.
  3. Select Add a trigger and pick Recurrence.
  4. For a daily run, Interval is 1 and Frequency is Day. Then pick the hour.
  5. Add the SharePoint action Get items for the Requests list. The default limit is 100 items. Set Top Count (up to 5,000) and turn Pagination on if the list is bigger.
  6. Use a Filter Query so you get only requests that are not Done, past Needed by, with Reminder sent not set to Yes.
  7. For each item, send an email to the Owner, then update the item so Reminder sent is Yes.

Reminder sent is the Sent flag: the flow checks it is not Yes, acts, then sets it to Yes. Because the flow updates the list, do not also trigger a flow on "item modified" for the same list without a loop guard. See "Send a reminder before a due date" and "Flow triggers itself".

Step 6. Check the numbers

Microsoft's page says a list can have "up to 30 million items." Your limit is not storage. Check these instead: does every request have an Owner within a day, and does the Open view stay short. If it does not, move Done items to an archive list. See "Archive closed items to another list".

When this is not enough

If 50 people need chat-style boards, many boards and automations on cards, compare options in "Monday vs SharePoint for a 50 person team".

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs to build". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

What is the best way for a 50 person team to track requests in Microsoft 365?

One SharePoint list with an intake form, an owner, a status and a scheduled flow for old requests is one workable design.

How many items can a SharePoint list hold?

Microsoft's limits page says a list can have up to 30 million items.

How many unique permissions can a SharePoint list have?

Microsoft says the supported limit is 50,000 and the recommended general limit is 5,000.

How do I make a SharePoint list private to a few people?

Microsoft says to select Stop Inheriting Permissions on the list's Permissions page, then set the groups.

Why does my Get items flow stop at 100 requests?

The default limit is 100. Set Top Count up to 5,000 and turn Pagination on.

Sources