Views

You can use views to display the items from a list or library that are most important to you or that best fit a particular purpose. For example, you can create views of the files in a library that apply to a specific department or the items in a list that were created by a specific person. Views are available for the list or library you create them in. Each list or library has at least one view, based on the type of list or library and the way it was configured. You can modify these views and create new views in a browser.

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View types

Before creating a view, you may want to add columns to the list or library to enable more flexibility for sorting, grouping, and filtering the items in the list or library. For example, people may want to see only the documents in a library that apply to their department or the items in a list sorted by the project number. If you create views that will be accessed by phones and other mobile devices, you need to consider the capabilities of the mobile devices, or use the FlowForma Mobile App. When you create a view, you first choose whether you want to base the view on:

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List view

• Displays list items in a standard tabular format (rows and columns), similar to a spreadsheet.
• Ideal for sorting, filtering, and managing data efficiently.
• Best for structured data like tasks, inventory, or logs.

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Calendar view

• Displays list items with date-related information as events in a calendar format.
• Useful for tracking events, deadlines, appointments, or schedules.
• Automatically aligns with start and end date columns in your list.

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Gallery view

• Shows list items in a visually rich format with cards.
• Ideal for showcasing items like photos, product descriptions, or portfolios.
• Highlights key fields for easy viewing and interaction.

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Board view

• Displays list items as cards grouped by a selected column, such as “Status.”
• Mimics a Kanban-style layout, useful for task tracking or project management.
• Allows drag-and-drop to change groupings dynamically.

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Default FlowForma views

FlowForma creates these views on the forms list:

• All Items: every form, with no filter.
• Forms awaiting my input: forms that are not completed or rejected, and are assigned to you or to a group you are in.
• Forms created by me: forms you created.

FlowForma’s own screens use these views. The homepage tiles, the My work tiles, and the mobile app show the forms that match a view’s filter, so changing a view’s filter also changes what those screens show.

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Create and change views

You can change a view in two places:

• The filters pane: select Filter (the funnel icon) at the top of the list, or a column heading. This is quick for simple filters, but it cannot use [Me] or [Today], and it cannot combine conditions on different columns with Or.
• The Edit current view page: select View options, then Edit current view. Use this page for filters that use [Me], [Today], or Or.

When you save a view, choose who can see it:

• Public views are available to everyone who can open the list. Creating or changing a public view needs the Manage Lists permission, which is included in the Edit, Design, and Full Control permission levels.
• Personal views are only visible to the person who created them. A personal view cannot be changed to a public view later. To share it, create it again as a public view.

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Filter conditions

On the Edit current view page, a filter can have up to 10 conditions, joined by And or Or. SharePoint has no brackets in view filters. It groups the conditions from top to bottom, so each condition is combined with the result of all the conditions above it. For example, A And B Or C means (A and B), or C.

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Filter by the current user

Use [Me] to filter on the person viewing the list, for example Created By is equal to [Me]. Use [Today] to filter on the current date.

• [Me] and [Today] only work on the Edit current view page.
• On sites in other languages, use the translated keyword, for example [Ich] and [Heute] in German.
• [Me] only matches the person directly. It does not match forms assigned to a group the person is in. The default Forms awaiting my input view does include group assignments, so use it as the starting point for assignment views.
• Assign to can hold more than one person, so filters on it are less reliable than filters on single-person columns.

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Large lists and the list view threshold

SharePoint blocks views that need to check more than 5,000 items in a list or folder. This limit is the list view threshold, and it cannot be changed in SharePoint Online. A forms list with more than 5,000 forms needs some planning to keep its views working. Form archiving moves completed forms into an Archive folder. This keeps the number of active forms under 5,000, so views at the top level of the list keep working. For views inside the archive, see Manage views with archived forms.

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Indexed columns

A view of more than 5,000 items works if the first condition in its filter uses an indexed column and returns fewer than 5,000 items. SharePoint only uses the index on the first condition, and filters that use Or cannot use an index. These columns in the forms list are already indexed:

• Flow Title
• Completed
• Rejected
• Priority

To filter on your own data, publish questions from your flows as columns, then index those columns. Choose the column type with the threshold in mind:

• Single line of text columns work best. Publish a text question, such as a department or region, to filter large lists.
• Person or Group and Lookup columns can be indexed, but filtering or grouping on them can still be blocked when a view covers more than 5,000 items.
• Multiple lines of text and hyperlink columns cannot be indexed.

A list can have up to 20 indexed columns, including the ones FlowForma creates. Add indexes before the list grows large: adding an index to a very large list can fail.

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Other view limits

• A view can show up to 12 Person or Group and Lookup columns. Created By, Modified By, Assign to, and Parallel Assign to all count towards this limit.
• Show all items without folders shows forms from every folder in one flat list. It checks every item in the list, so it needs an indexed first filter once the list has more than 5,000 items.
• Sorting, grouping, or totals on columns that are not indexed can also push a view over the threshold. Remove them to test whether they are the cause.

For more detail, see Microsoft’s guide to working with the list view threshold.

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Troubleshooting