Microsoft is helping organizations collect information, keep employees engaged, and offering organizations a practical way to gather feedback. Microsoft Forms has a lot to offer!
Microsoft Forms is free to users with Microsoft subscription to the following services offered by Microsoft;
- Office 365 Education
- Microsoft 365 Business
- Microsoft 365 Enterprise
- Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise
- Microsoft 365 US Government Community Cloud (GCC)/GCC High
- Hotmail
- Live
- Outlook.com
Users can start creating forms by signing into forms.office.com using their Microsoft account login.
Once logged in, users can create simple forms that can be used to collect information from employees and customers. At Kiefer, we’ve used forms to decide what the team wants for lunch, to find preferred meeting times, and to find out what the team would like to do for the quarterly team outing. Top Golf wins again.
But, we’ve also used forms to communicate with our clients. We can send a form to a client to prepare a case study, get feedback on project delivery, or gather requirements in advance of a meeting.
Fill out a sample form that was built using Microsoft Forms
Forms for external access is turned off by default. Organizations can turn it on however by going to the Forms settings in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
A user within the Microsoft Community Cloud (GCC) tenant can create up to 200 forms and get up to 50,000 responses per form. It has been our experience that Microsoft Forms is robust to meet the needs of most customers.
Form, question, response, and character limits in Microsoft Forms – Office Support
Why Microsoft Forms?
Microsoft Forms is a simple to use. Non-technical users can quickly create surveys, polls, and quizzes. And, because it fully integrates with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, it is an ideal way to collect information and rapidly aggregate and analyze feedback.
What Are Microsoft Forms?
Microsoft Forms is a simple app used to create surveys, polls, and quizzes. Companies use it to develop training modules, questionnaires, tests, and feedback systems. It integrates fully with Microsoft 365 and Teams, making it useful for easily disseminating information, collating data, and generating analyses.
Microsoft Forms integrates with other applications in Microsoft 365, so you can review form data in Microsoft Power BI or kick off a workflow in Power Automate based on input on a Microsoft Form. The experience is simple for the user that is creating the form and for the respondent.
Three Benefits of Microsoft Forms
Simplicity
Microsoft Forms is easy to use. You can create a form for internal or external use in a matter of minutes! Respondents can be given an opportunity to answer multiple choice questions, provide short answers, ratings, or even provide a Net Promoter Score.
I built my first form to rate a vendor presentation that was delivered to our consulting team. I was able to share feedback with the vendor and was able to share information with another presenter that asked to present to our group. Another 3-question interest survey was completed by 80% of my team with an average time to complete clocking in at 20 seconds.
Dynamic Experiences
Using surveys during Microsoft Teams meetings can make for a “richer” meeting experience and can keep attendees engaged. We use surveys to ask the audience a question, check for understanding, or check availability for a follow-up meeting.
Workflows
Many times, a form can be used to initiate a process. If a respondent response to a survey question in a certain way, you can kick off a workflow. This could be in the form of a notification or sending an automated e-mail to the respondent. Workflows are a viable way to reduce burden on staff and automate processes that are manual in nature.
Getting Started
This article tells you exactly what you need to do to get started. But, if you’d like to learn more about leveraging forms on enterprise scale, contact us! We can share best practices and help you in integrating Microsoft Forms with other applications in Microsoft 365.