Microsoft just rolled out a brand-new column type in SharePoint Lists and Microsoft Lists called the quick steps column — and it changes everything about how end users can interact with their data. No JSON. No code. Just buttons.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might remember my post from 2018 about creating a button in a SharePoint list to trigger a Power Automate flow. That post required writing JSON column formatting code, getting a Flow GUID, and setting up run-only users. It worked, but it was clunky. Then in 2022, I wrote about the setValue method — a cleaner approach that let you set column values with a button click, without any flow panel popping up. Both of those posts have been two of the most popular things I’ve ever written, which tells me that people have really wanted this capability for a long time.
Well, Microsoft heard you. The new Quick Steps column type is the no-code version of all of that.
You add a column, choose Quick Steps as the type, configure your action, and a button appears right in the row for every item in your list or library. No code. No GUID. No JSON. In this post and video, we’ll dig into how it works.
Here is an example of a list with a quick steps column added, called “assign”. It’s got two different quick steps in it.
- Assign to me – This button sets the assigned to column to the current user, sets the assigned date to right now, and sets the status to “in progress”.
- Set completed – This button sets the status to “Completed”, and only shows if the current user is the “assigned to”.
📋 What Is the Quick Steps Column?
Quick Steps themselves have actually been around for a while — you could access them through the Automate menu in any list or library’s toolbar. But they were tucked away and not very discoverable. Users had to first select an item, then click Automate, then find the right Quick Step in the menu. Not exactly intuitive.
The new Quick Steps column fixes this inefficiency. When you add a Quick Steps column to your list or library, you can do two things at once: creating the Quick Step action AND place a button directly in that column for every single row. The button is just there, visible all the time or under conditions you define, ready to click without any menu navigation required!
Here’s another great thing about it: you can have multiple Quick Steps in the same column, each one conditionally showing or hiding based on your list data. So a “Resolve” button might only appear when status is not already Resolved, and an “Escalate” button might only appear when status is Open or In Progress — all in the same column, all handled through simple settings rather than code.
Yes, you can create conditions on any quick step! For example, only show the “Set Completed” button if the current status is “in progress” or only show an “Assign to me” button if the help desk ticket is not “Resolved”.
🔧 How to Add a Quick Steps Column
Adding a Quick Steps column works exactly like adding any other column type:
1. In your list or library, click Add column
2. Scroll through the column types and select Quick Steps
3. Click Next
4. Give your column a meaningful name (this becomes the column header, not the button label)
5. Under Quick Steps, either choose an existing Quick Step from the dropdown or click New quick step to create one
6. Configure your action, set a button label, choose a color, and optionally set a conditional display rule
7. Click Save
That’s it. Your button is live in every row immediately.
🎯 Types of Actions in a Quick Steps Column
Here’s a walkthrough of every action type you can use in a Quick Steps column, with real examples of how each one works.
1. Draft an Email
This action opens a pre-filled Outlook email draft when the button is clicked. You can pull the recipient from any person column or text column in your list (great for a Vendor Email field), pre-fill the subject line, optionally CC someone, and include a link to the specific list item.
Important to know: this action doesn’t send the email automatically. It opens a draft so the user can review and personalize before sending. That’s actually a feature, not a limitation — it gives people a consistent starting point without removing their ability to add context.
2. Start a Teams Chat
This action opens a Teams chat with whoever is in a person column in your list. You choose which person column to use as the recipient, and you can optionally include a link to the item in the chat. It’s great for those “hey, can you review this?” moments where the conversation needs to be tied directly to a specific item.
3. Set a Value
In my opinion, this is the most powerful Quick Step action for everyday use, and it can do more than you might expect. When you configure a Set a Value Quick Step, you can set multiple columns at once — not just one. And when you use the special tokens Current User (the currently logged-in user) and the current date and time, you can create really smart, self-stamping buttons.
Example: On a Help Desk Tickets list, add a Quick Steps column with a “Assign to Me” quick step that sets both an Assigned To person column to me AND a Date Assigned column to now in a single click. Set it to only show when Assigned To is empty.
Even better: select multiple rows at once and click the button — it stamps all of them simultaneously. That’s a huge time saver for bulk updates.
You can also have multiple Set a Value quick steps in the same column with different conditions. On that same Help Desk Tickets list, you could have “Resolve” (sets Status to Resolved, green button, only shows when Status ≠ Resolved) and “Escalate” (sets Status to Escalated, red button, only shows when Status is Open or In Progress) both living in the same Actions column. Before the Quick Steps column, getting two conditional buttons in one column required nested JSON arrays. Now it’s just a few clicks.
4. Send an Approval Request
Before you can use this action, you need to enable content approval on your list. Go to Automate → Configure Approvals → Enable. Once that’s done, this Quick Step type becomes available.
When configuring the quick step, you can specify the approver dynamically from a person column in your list (like a Manager column), and you can choose whether a confirmation dialog appears or whether the approval sends immediately with a single click. The “Immediately” setting is important — it’s what makes this truly one-click. Without it, users still have to click through a confirmation panel.
A new improvement Microsoft rolled out alongside the Quick Steps column is the ability to set default approvers that end users can’t override. This is a big deal for governance — you can lock down who receives approval requests so that people can’t change the approver to themselves and self-approve.
5. Execute a Flow
When none of the built-in Quick Step actions are enough, Execute a Flow opens up unlimited automation potential through Power Automate. You’ll need to grab the flow identifier from the Export menu in Power Automate and paste it into the Quick Step configuration. When the button is clicked, the flow panel opens on the right side so the user can run it.
Example: On an Invoices library, a “Convert & Send” button could trigger a flow that converts the selected file to PDF, email it to a vendor, and marks the original file as sent. Converting a file format and sending it as an attachment is something none of the other Quick Step actions can do — that’s where a flow earns its place.
6. Ask SharePoint (AI in SharePoint)
This is the newest and most exciting action type, and it requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Here is a screenshot of the list of quick steps in a library, when I have this Copilot license (notice that libraries have different options than lists, approvals aren’t enabled in this particular library):
When configuring this Quick Step, you write a prompt that will run against your selected file or library content. For example: “Summarize what this invoice is for and flag any amounts over $10,000.”
💡 The Advanced Technique: Use Set a Value to Silently Trigger a Complex Flow
Here’s where things get really interesting. Execute a Flow is great, but it still requires that extra click in the flow panel. What if you want a button that fires off a complex flow instantly, with zero extra clicks, and the button disappears the moment it’s clicked?
The trick is to use Set a Value to change a column — and then build a Power Automate flow that triggers when that column changes.
Here’s the pattern:
- Add a Quick Steps column with a Set a Value action that sets a column (like Status = “In Progress”) to a specific value
- Build a Power Automate flow with a When an item or file is modified trigger
- Add a trigger condition so the flow only fires when that specific column has that specific value
- Add a SharePoint Get Changes for an item or file action to confirm that the right column was what just changed.
- Add a condition to check if that specific column is the one that just changed.
- In the condition’s Yes path, do whatever complex work you need — look up items in other lists, send structured emails, create items, run approvals, write back results. In my video example below, I created an action that will copy a row in a list, to a new row.
The user clicks the button. The button disappears (because the column value changed and the visibility condition no longer applies). The flow runs silently in the background. No panel. No extra clicks.
This is the same concept I demonstrated in my 2022 post Action Button in Lists: Set Column Value — now surfaced through a Quick Steps column instead of JSON. And it’s still the right approach when your automation is too complex for any built-in Quick Step action to handle.
🔒 A Note on Permissions
Who can create and modify Quick Steps columns? Anyone with Edit permissions on the list or library. To prevent end users from changing your carefully configured Quick Steps, change your Members group from Edit to Contribute permissions on that list or library. Contribute allows users to add, edit, and delete list items — but they can’t add columns, change list settings, or modify Quick Steps. Owners retain full control.
Final Thoughts on Quick Steps
If you’ve ever built a JSON button, written a setValue column format — this is the answer to all of that.
Start simple. Add a Quick Steps column to one of your lists and one of your libraries today and try an Assign to Me button or a Set Status button. Once you see how fast and intuitive it is for end users, you’ll find yourself adding these columns everywhere.
Want to see all of this in action? Watch the Power Hour recording below where I demonstrated all of these examples live. And if you want to go deeper on Power Automate flows and SharePoint, check out my training courses at iwmentor.com.
Happy building! 🎉
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