What is Microsoft Forms?

Microsoft Forms allows you to quickly and easily create custom knowledge checks, surveys, polls, questionnaires, registrations, and more. When you create a knowledge check or form, you can invite others to respond to it using any web browser or mobile device. As results are submitted, you can use built-in analytics to evaluate responses. Forms data, such as knowledge check results, can be easily exported to Excel for additional analysis or grading.

Microsoft Forms can be used in many institutions, businesses, and government offices to fulfill their requirement for data collection and generate real-time report.

Likewise, it is deeply integrated with Microsoft365 apps to provide a seamless experience for basic data collection. Please note some of the integration features are under rolling out and will be available for your organization soon. As part of the Microsoft 365 suite, Microsoft Forms adheres to the compliance, security, and privacy levels you’ve come to expect from the Microsoft 365 apps. Companies can collect information without users having to go to non-secure solutions, and there is no need to build and maintain custom surveying tools. IT admins can also manage user licenses and enable or disable Microsoft Forms co-authoring outside of their organization.

Go to https://forms.office.com in order to access Microsoft Forms and start building your forms, quizzes, surveys, knowledge checks etc.

Microsoft prepared some templates for you separated by categories:

• Organize successful events
• Gain insights trough user research
• Improve employee satisfaction
• Digitalize day-to-day workflows

By clicking View all next to Explore templates you will see all available to you templates and can start building your form immediately.

Building a form is a very easy and intuitive task. Microsoft includes AI in order to help you build your form or quiz.

By start typing the title of your form AI start suggesting you what type of questions you can add to your form:

• Choice
• Text
• Rating
• Date
• Ranking
• Likert
• Net promoter score
• Section

Even by typing the questions AI is helping you with suggested modifications/options:

To every question you can add subtitle, insert/paste or drag media, make it multi answered or required question etc.

Microsoft Forms are very flexible and allow you build very nice- and good-looking forms/quizzes that will make a good impression to the people they are sent. At every step of building your form/quiz you can click Preview and see how the form/quiz will looks like when the user opens it.

When you are ready with your form/quiz you can start collecting responses by clicking on Collect responses.

Anyone, only people in my organization or specific people in my organization can respond are the 3 options available. Users can response once or multiple times. The responses can be anonymous or not by deselecting or selecting Record name. The options for sending an invite to end users to fill in the form or the quiz are:

• Directly sending a link (long or short URL) to the form/quiz
• Invite people by sending an email or message in Microsoft Teams
• Download and include the QR code in your presentation
• Copy a code and paste it in a webpage or Sway

At any time, you can see a pie chart of all responses, how many people responded, what is the average time spent by the users on the form/quiz, if the form/quiz is still active or not, the individual responses if the anonymous response is disabled, export the results in Excel, delete the responses, print summary and share summary link.

Microsoft Forms can be opened on any device: PC, mobile phone or tablet.

Display Microsoft Forms on your company Intranet

There are many occasions where you may want to collect feedback from your employees regarding a specific topic. That’s why Microsoft made Microsoft Forms available as a web part. To integrate Forms into your Intranet using a web part, you can follow these general steps:

• Edit Intranet Page – navigate to the page you want to embed the Microsoft Forms survey or quiz and click on “Edit” to enter the page editing mode.
• Add a new section (optional) – click on the big + sign to add a new section. Choose between one column, two columns, three columns etc. or use a template:

• Add a web part – within the page(section) editing mode, look for the option to add a web part

• Search for Microsoft Forms web part – you will find it under Data analysis section next to Power BI, Quick chart, Site activity web parts:

• Configure the web part – once you add the Microsoft Forms web part, you will need to configure it. You need to decide whether you will create a New form (this will trigger the process of creating a new Microsoft Form) or Add an existing form (you will need to provide Form web address). By adding an already existing form you will be presented with 2 options:
  • Collect responses – this option will display the form for collecting end users’ responses
  • Show form results – this option will display the results from already submitted responses

• Save and publish – when you are ready and OK with the look and feel of the page you need to save and publish the page. This will make the Microsoft Forms survey or quiz accessible through your intranet.

Microsoft Forms and Power Automate integration

Another cool feature of Microsoft Forms is that forms and quizzes can be integrated in Power Automate. With Microsoft Power Automate, you can create a flow for Microsoft Forms that performs one or more tasks automatically after it’s triggered by an event.

In our case we will create a flow that will send an email with details (address, dress code etc.) to people who will attend the birthday party.

• Create a Flow in Power Automate – after your Form is ready you need to create a flow. Go to https://flow.microsoft.com and create a new Automated cloud flow. Provide a name and select When a new response is submitted.

• Get response details should be your Next step. You need to provide the Form Id (chose from the dropdown menu your form) and the Response Id

• Condition is the next step. Click or tap in the Choose a value search box, and then select the question you want to use to decide what kind of email to send. In this particular example, we’ll select Are you going to attend Brittney’s birthday on 22nd of September 2023? In the next box select is equal. In the Choose a value search box next to is equal to, type Yes.
• In the If Yes box select and action and search for Send an email. In the To field select Responders Email. In Subject and Body, you write your own text message to the users:

• In the next If no section, select Add an action and choose what would happen if the users responded with No.
• The last step is Save and test your flow.

With this integration, you can automate various tasks and workflows based on the responses you receive through your Microsoft Forms. It’s a powerful way to streamline processes and save time on manual data entry and notifications.

Another useful scenario is to export the user responses to SharePoint list by using Create item operation from Add an action menu. In this case you will have all responses in a list in SharePoint and can easily navigate through the responses.

Or to have all the responses in tabular view, in Microsoft Excel you can easily view all of the response data for your form or quiz in Microsoft Excel. An Excel workbook with your response data will be downloaded to your desktop or stored in OneDrive, depending on the starting point of your form or quiz.

In the following three scenarios your data will be presented in Excel:

• If you created a form with Forms on the Web, every time you click Open in Excel (in the Responses tab), an offline, standalone workbook will be downloaded to Excel desktop. You can save this workbook to any location. Each time you click Open in Excel, you will get a new workbook, which contains the latest data.
• If you created a form in OneDrive for Business, every time you click Open in Excel (in the Responses tab), Excel for the web will open with a workbook automatically saved to OneDrive for Business. Response data – such as annotations, formulas, and functions – syncs with your workbook and you’ll see the latest updates each time you click Open in Excel or re-open the workbook.

• If you create a form in Excel Online, every time you click Open in Excel (in the Responses tab), Excel for the web will open with a workbook automatically saved to OneDrive for Business. Response data – such as annotations, formulas, and functions – syncs with your workbook and you’ll see the latest updates each time you click Open in Excel or re-open the workbook.

How to setup Microsoft Forms

Microsoft 365 administrators can control how Microsoft Forms is used in their organization through the following tasks:

• Turn off or turn on Microsoft Forms: Microsoft Forms is on for your organization by default. You can turn it off at any time.
  • Turn off Microsoft Forms for everyone in your organization: from Microsoft Azure set Enable for users to sign-in to No for both Microsoft Applications> Office Hive and Microsoft Applications > Microsoft Forms

• Turn off Microsoft Forms for individual people in your organization: When you turn off Microsoft Forms for a specific person, they won’t be able to use it and the Forms tile won’t show up for them in the Microsoft 365 app launcher or homepage.
  • To turn it off login to Microsoft 365 admin center go to Users -> Active users select the user under Licenses and apps uncheck Microsoft Forms

• Set up Azure Active Directory conditional access for Microsoft Forms
• Control external sharing settings, record names of people in your organization, and/or protect forms from phishing: In the Microsoft 365 admin center, you can:
  • Control whether external users are allowed to collaborate with users in your organization on a form or quiz.
  • Choose whether to capture the names of people in your org who fill out forms.
  • Turn off or turn on automatic phishing detection on forms.
• Enable users to insert a form into PowerPoint:
  •  Sign in to https://admin.microsoft.com
  • Click Settings > Settings.
  • On the Settings page, under the Services tab, click User owned apps and services.
  • Check the option, let users access the Office store, to allow users to insert a form into PowerPoint.

Security and compliance

Microsoft Forms data is stored on servers in the United States and Europe. All data is located in the United States, except for European-based tenants who started using Microsoft Forms after May 2017. Their data is stored in databases in Europe.

Microsoft Forms has met GDPR compliance requirements as of May 2018. It meets Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as well as BAA protection standards.

Who can use Microsoft Forms?

Microsoft Forms is available in the following plans:

• Microsoft 365 business basic, standard, and premium
• Microsoft 365 A3/A5 and E3/E5
• Office 365 A1/A3/A5 and E1/E3/E5
• Microsoft 365/Office 365 F3

Microsoft Forms is also generally available to Office 365 Education customers, Microsoft 365 Apps for business customers, and users with a Microsoft account (Hotmail, Live, or Outlook.com).

Conclusion

Microsoft Forms is a versatile and user-friendly tool for data collection and survey administration. Its integration with Microsoft 365 makes it a valuable addition to the toolkit of businesses, educators, and organizations seeking efficient and reliable ways to gather and analyze data. Whether you’re a teacher, HR professional, or business owner, Microsoft Forms can simplify the process of gathering information and insights to drive informed decisions.

If you still have questions about Microsoft Forms don’t hesitate to contact us at Impactory GmbH, we have 10+ years of experience and knowledge in Microsoft 365 world. We will analyze your business requirements and find the best solution for you and your organization.