The Ultimate Guide to Microsoft Forms

2017-07-07

Microsoft has launched Microsoft Forms for Office 365 education customers which is another step to make Office 365 a more collaborative platform. Presently, Microsoft Forms is available only to Office 365 Education subscribers and a public preview will be rolling out for Office 365 commercial subscribers.

Microsoft Forms is an initiative of Microsoft in the education market, and this product is built based on the feedback from the educators as they want to have a tool to assess their students progress on a regular basis. Microsoft Forms can compete with Google Forms in the education market.

What is Microsoft Forms?

Microsoft Forms allows users to create custom surveys, quizzes, polls, and questionnaires. It also can send an invitation to other users asking them to fill out the Microsoft Forms using a web browser on any device or computer. The creator can review the results in real time and can perform analysis on the collected data.

What are the main benefits of Microsoft Forms?

Microsoft Forms can be used in many institutions, businesses and government offices to fulfill their requirement for data collection and generate a real-time report. Below are the benefits of using Microsoft Forms:

It is easy to use and configure a quiz or survey to collect the data. Also, it has the capability to generate a report using real-time analytics.
It’s easy to integrate with other Office 365 services.
Microsoft Forms can be customized and embedded on any other web page or blogger website.
Microsoft Forms can be shared with anonymous users to collect data. Also, results can be shared.
It has features to modify and delete forms data easily.
It allows duplicate forms to be created using an existing one as a template.
Microsoft Forms data is secure as it follows Office 365 compliance rules.

When would you use Microsoft Forms?

Microsoft Forms service can be used in many institutions, businesses and government offices to collect data and share information with their employees and customers. Below are scenarios where you may like to use the Microsoft Forms service.

You can create quiz easily and share with anonymous users quickly
Creating an order application for a small business
Teachers can use Microsoft Forms to assess their students on a topic.
Creating quick survey and collect data from audience
When you want to embed the survey, quiz and registration forms on web pages, blogger or any Learning Management System.
When you want to customize forms and integrate your forms application with other Microsoft Services like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Flow.

What is the licensing model and what Office 365 licenses can it be used with?

Microsoft Forms service is available for Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, and Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, and E5 plans. It also is available for Office 365 Enterprise E4 customers before their plan retired.

Can anonymous users complete a survey or quiz?

Microsoft Forms service can be shared with anonymous users using their email ID’s. It also has provision to hide the username for a response on a survey.

How to create your first form?

To create a Microsoft Form, you need to follow the steps below.

Browse and login into https://forms.office.com/Pages/DesignPage.aspx

After successful login, you will arrive at the “My Forms” screen as below. Click on “New Form” button to continue.

On the following screen, you can add form name, description, and quick on “Add Question” button to add a new question.

You can add many questions based on available types.

Once, you’re done. You can preview and share your survey with others.

You can preview the results as depicted below in the screenshots.

Different theme options are available. To change the theme, you can select any option from the theme panel

Now, you can share your created survey with many people using multiple options as depicted in the below screenshot.

On the following screen, we’ll share the survey using email.
This screenshot shows how the recipient views the emailed invitation, and how they can then use the links provided to complete the survey.
Now, you’re done with your first and simple form.

Where can the Form results be saved?

To create a quiz, survey, and questionnaires, Microsoft Forms is available with the Web, OneDrive for Business, Excel Online, and OneNote Online. Users can fill the details on the Microsoft Forms and results can be posted Online on OneDrive, OneNote, and Excel. To add Forms in OneNote, you need to follow below steps.

Login to your Office 365 account and open OneNote service.
Go to ‘Insert Menu’ and click on the ‘Forms’ button
You will be prompted to login into OneNote. Click on Allow button to continue.
Now, you can add a new/existing Form from the available list.

How do you build Reports based on the results?

Microsoft Forms has a rich user interface and real-time analytics to display summary details and individual results from surveys. You can export responses data to Microsoft Excel for further analysis. Also, it has features to delete the responses and print the summary of the form.

To see your summary of responses, Open the form and click on “Responses”.

On top of the screen, you should be able to see the summary details of your form such as Responses, Average time to complete and status. Click on “View results” button to see the individual result of each response with respect to users.

You can export results to Microsoft Excel using “Open in Excel” button.

How to feed Microsoft Form’s data into PowerBI?

Power BI is a power tool to create compelling visualizations and reports from various data sources. You can import your Microsoft Form data into PowerBI for the data analysis and report purpose. It allows you to share the reports with power users on the web and mobile devices. Below are the steps to feed your Microsoft Forms data into PowerBI

Logon to Microsoft Forms Site and go to Responses section on the Form.

Form Click on the “Open in Excel” button and save the data on your Local Machine.
Now, browse and login to PowerBI site to continue

Go to the “Import or Connect to Data” section on the page, and click on “Get” button under Files tile to continue.
On the following screen, you need to click on “Local File” tile to import Microsoft Form data from your Local System (Laptop/Desktop)

You need to select your Microsoft Form’s responses data in the opened file upload window as depicted below.

On the next screen, there are two options that you can use to Import or Upload your data into PowerBI.

Import – Allows you to create reports and dashboard on the imported data.
Upload – Allows you to create an excel sheet with data so you can perform excel related operations.

Now, you can create compelling visualization and report using below screen

To work on excel online, you can create one more Dataset using “Upload your Excel file to PowerBI” option.

Click on uploaded file to check the data and perform operations on it.

What’s the mobile/offline experience?

Microsoft Forms can be accessed on desktop and mobile devices. There is no mobile app available for this product. A large number of user can access this cloud service on the mobile browser to respond the survey.

You’ll not get the option to print the summary of the response while access this service from using the Mobile browser as depicted below in the screenshot.

You can create a template of your survey and share with others. However, it doesn’t support offline features.

What are the branding / customizing options?

Microsoft Forms allows you to change the background design and colors of your survey. To change the background design and color, you can follow below steps.

Open the form for that you want to change the theme.
Click on the Theme menu at the right corner of the design window and select the background design and color that you want to choose for your survey.
Also, you can set up an image for your background from Computer, OneDrive, and Search.

For example, the background image has been changed for the survey in below screenshot.

How can you integrate Microsoft Forms with Microsoft Flow?

Microsoft Forms can be integrated with Microsoft Flow. For example, you want to send an email notification on each respond to your form. You can setup a Microsoft Flow to get response details from the Microsoft Forms and send notification using Microsoft Outlook service.

Below are the steps to integrate Microsoft Forms with Microsoft Flow.

Sign in to https://flow.microsoft.com/ portal and click on “My Flow”
On the following screen, click on “Create a blank” flow

On the next screen, provide Name for your Flow and search for the Microsoft Form connector

Select “When a new response is submitted” from the triggers section of the screen

On the following screen, Select the value for your Form title field from existing Forms

Click on “New Step” button to “Add an Action” to setup email notification using “Office 365 Outlook” connector

On the following screen, you need to provide values for the below fields.

Click on “Create Flow” and Done to save and run the created Microsoft Flow.

Now, you’re done with Microsoft Flow and can check the integration using Microsoft Forms.

You need to fill the form to test the integration, the flow will trigger the email notification to given mail ID.

How to post the results into a SharePoint List?

Microsoft Forms allows you to save data into a SharePoint List using Microsoft Flow. You can create a Microsoft Flow to post data to a SharePoint list by following below steps:

Sign into your SharePoint Online website and create a List with columns as depicted below

Now, open your Microsoft Flow website and Click on “Create from blank” button under My Flows Menu

On the following screen, you need to provide a name for your Flow.

Search for Microsoft Forms connector, and click on “Microsoft Forms – When a new response is submitted” from triggers section

Now, you need to pick up your form to set the value of “Form title” field.

Next, you need to click on “Next Step” button to “Add an action”

On the following screen, you need to search for SharePoint to add a connector and trigger “SharePoint – Create item”

Now, you need to provide your value for fields Site Address, List Name, and list columns value from Microsoft Forms as depicted on the below screenshot.

Click on “Create Flow” button and hit the “Done” button to exit the newly created Flow.

Now, you’re done with your Microsoft Flow.

To test this integration work, let’s open our Microsoft Form and fill it.

Now, go back to your SharePoint list and check the data which you filled on Microsoft Forms.

Does Microsoft Forms support multiple languages?

Microsoft Forms is capable of changing the language based on the browser language settings. You can follow below steps to change the language preference for Chrome Browser:

- Open your Chrome browser and click on three dots right corner of the top.
- Go to settings and scroll down the page for “Advanced”.
1. On the following screen, go to language section and add the language you want.
1. Now, you can move up and down your preferred language by clicking on three dots.
1. You’re done. Close your browser and re-open the browser to see contains in your preferred language.
2. Check out supported languages in Microsoft Forms.

Is the data secured and encrypted?

Microsoft Forms follows Office 365 compliance rules and meets FERPA and BAA protection standards.

Summary of likes / dislikes..

Microsoft Forms is a product that helps teachers to create assessments, which can be filled on any device using any browsers. Below are the features that I like:

Easy to create quiz, survey, and questionnaires etc.
Copy the existing form to create duplicate forms.
Easy to shuffle questions, and multiple responses can be submitted.
Easy to embed the Forms on any other portal.
Create Forms in OneDrive, Excel, and OneNote Also, these forms can be shared anonymously.
Generate good response summary and real-time analytics.
Easy to apply the theme for your form.
Easy to integrate with Microsoft Flow.

Also, there will be a few things that will be good to have in Microsoft Forms:

Forms cannot be grouped into folders.
Customization for branding is limited. The user can only change the image.
Form data doesn’t get copied when duplicate forms will be created using existing one.
Microsoft Forms is having threshold limit of 5,000 responses.

Microsoft Forms is a powerful tool that can be used easily to create quiz, survey, and questionnaire. Anyone can use this web-based forms to collect the data by sharing the forms with others. Now, you should be able to use Microsoft Forms using this article, and you can perform below things: