Microsoft launched Microsoft Forms in September 2018. Since then, it has amassed a large audience of people looking for a service that allows them to create surveys, polls, and questionnaires. Compared to Google Forms, Microsoft Forms has a simpler and nicer interface. Microsoft Forms is accessible to all people with a Microsoft 365 account (formerly Office 365) for the creation of the form, the collection of results, and accessible to all participants even if they do not have an account. Microsoft 365.
What is Microsoft Forms and how can you use it with its different integrations?
Why use Forms ?
Microsoft Forms is a powerful and intuitive tool, integrated into the Microsoft 365 suite, that allows you to quickly and easily create polls, questionnaires and surveys. But why choose Forms over another tool? Here are some reasons:
- Seamless integration with other Microsoft tools: Forms integrates seamlessly with other applications in the Microsoft 365 suite, such as Teams, Word or Excel. This makes it easier to create pop-up forms and in-depth data analysis.
- Ease of use: The Forms user interface is simple and intuitive, making form creation accessible to anyone, even without special technical skills.
- Format flexibility: Forms offers a variety of question types (multiple choice, text, ranking, etc.) to accommodate all types of surveys.
- Customization: You can customize the appearance of your forms by choosing themes, colors and adding images.
- Real-time results analysis: Forms lets you track responses in real time and get detailed reports in graphs and tables.
- Facilitated collaboration: Several people can collaborate on the creation and modification of the same form.
- Accessibility: Forms is accessible from any web browser and mobile device, making it easy for respondents to participate.
How to create a questionnaire or form/survey with Forms?
1- Create your form or questionnaire
The Microsoft Forms platform is one of the easiest to use. All you have to do is log in to your Microsoft 365 account and go to the “Forms” application.
Then you will arrive in the main dashboard where you can manage your already active forms / questionnaires or create a new one.
What is the difference between a Forms form or questionnaire?🤔
- The form is used to ask questions to collect answers.
Examples of use: Survey of your employees, your customers, etc. - The questionnaire is used to ask questions to which we know the answers, we can award points to the correct answers.
Examples of use: Quizzes, evaluations, etc.
How to transform a form into a Forms questionnaire and vice versa?
From here you will have several options to customize your form, such as title, photo, publication and expiration date. You can even later share your form via different platforms and to the people of your choice, both internal and external users of your company. Many possibilities are available to you.
MS Solutions’ advice: Don’t hesitate to use Copilot to help you with your first draft of your questionnaire, both in terms of content and form! To learn more about how it works, check out our recent article on the subject: Copilot in Forms: Create effective forms in the blink of an eye.
2- Collect the responses and analyze them in Microsoft Forms
Once your questionnaire is completed, the Microsoft Forms platform offers you an overview of the responses you obtained in order to analyze them.
Simply head to the Responses tab of your form and you will see the responses.
The good thing is that Microsoft Forms gives a visual representation of all the responses, making it easy to understand. You can of course see the answers in more detail if you wish. Also take advantage of the Microsoft Excel integration to find all the answers to your questionnaire in an Excel table.
Tutorials and sample forms (surveys) with Forms
Forms / Surveys Forms
As a real-life example, let’s consider a situation where using Microsoft Forms could prove extremely beneficial to your organization. Let’s say you’re in charge of planning your team’s holiday party. With Forms, you can easily create a form to collect everyone’s food preferences, date choices, theme ideas, and activity suggestions.
This tool allows you to centralize all responses in one place, simplifying the organization of the event and ensuring that the needs and expectations of all participants are taken into account. Whether for a festive breakfast, a gala dinner, or a casual evening, Forms helps you orchestrate a memorable end-of-year party for your team.
Here is an example of ours:
MS Solutions advice:
Imagine a questionnaire where the answers to one question determine the following questions. This is exactly what the “Branching” feature in Microsoft Forms allows!
The junction allows you, among other things:
- Personalize the user experience: Based on the answers given, you can direct respondents to specific questions, making the questionnaire more dynamic and relevant.
- Optimize questionnaire length: Avoid asking unnecessary questions to each respondent by only displaying them if they are relevant.
- Create complex scenarios: You can build different paths depending on the respondents’ choices, like a decision tree.
In our example:
You start by asking whether the participants will be present or not.
- If the answer is “yes”, you direct them to the menu choice.
- If the answer is “no”, the form stops there.
Possible integrations with Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms and SharePoint
Just like many other Microsoft 365 apps, Forms works well with SharePoint. There is a Microsoft Forms tab in SharePoint Online that allows you to embed intake forms or embed results.
Microsoft Forms and Power Automate
Forms also integrate with Power Automate. This means you can take the form input and carry it through the process, populating its data into lists in your SharePoint intranet and integrating it into other applications and databases of your choice.
Microsoft Forms and Power BI
Although Forms gives you a summary overview of your questionnaire results, you can connect Forms with Power BI. Thanks to Power BI you will be able to have much greater detail of your results.
In short…
Microsoft Forms is an intuitive and versatile solution that facilitates the creation of forms (surveys) for Microsoft 365 users. Its simple and user-friendly interface allows anyone, even without technical skills, to create forms adapted to various needs.
Seamless integration with other Microsoft tools such as Teams, Excel, SharePoint, Power Automate, and Power BI, makes Forms a powerful asset for collecting, analyzing, and leveraging data effectively.
Additionally, Copilot’s integration into Forms further simplifies the creation process by helping you design optimized forms, whether for an internal event, an employee survey, or a quiz. Microsoft Forms offers you all the features you need to centralize responses and derive valuable data.
If you would like to find out more, do not hesitate to contact one of our experts or follow one of our Microsoft 365 training course.
