How to format Microsoft Lists for a course schedule so that it doesn't suck?

Microsoft List can be a nice way to add a course schedule or program in the Teams channel of your course. That's how we are playing with it at the Master Service Design of the HSLU these days.

The problem: the default layout sucks

The lists and calendar look okay, but when a learner opens a specific day to see the details, the default layout just isn't optimized. It's all in one column and has little emotion.

The solution: JSON code

The hacky nature of Microsoft tools make it so that weirdly you can add custom JSON code to adapt how the header, body and footer of an open list element looks like.

You can learn how to write that JSON code yourself, or you can just ask once any AI tool to write that code for you by sharing to it the official Microsoft documentation.

The before and after

Here's how a day in the schedule looks like when open without the custom code:

And here is how it looks like with the custom code:

Fun things you can create

The JSON code for the header has a rule that looks if the course material field has data in it, and if it has it shows then a call-out with what learners should do with this material

As this text is basically each time the same, it's a nice way to show that text quickly.

A more basic thing, but nice in terms of layout, is that you can create sections where the fields in this section are then displayed in columns.

The limitations I discovered

As always with these types of hacky things it's limited in strange ways:

• The header can have rich styling, but people can't select the text in the header
• The body can't have rich styling
• You can't hide elements like the attached documents or the comments