Difference between revisions of "Microsoft Forms"

Microsoft Forms is a lightweight tool used to create surveys, quizzes, and polls. While easy to start, following these best practices ensures your data remains secure and accessible to your team.

Step-by-Step Guides

Creating & Designing

Forms start at forms.office.com

• Create a new form: Choose between a standard form or a self-grading quiz.
• Add branching logic: Send respondents to different questions based on their previous answers.
• Using the Evergreen Form Template: Ensure your form meets college branding and security standards.

Sharing & Security

• Adjusting Settings: Control who can see your form (Evergreen-only vs. Anyone with the link) and set closing dates.
• Sharing for collaboration: Invite colleagues to help edit the form questions.

Send and Collecting Responses

When you are ready to go live, click the Collect Responses button.

• Send a Collect Responses: choose who can respond and how to send your form.
• Shorten URL: Check the Shorten URL box to generate a cleaner, more professional link that is easier to share in emails or on printed materials.
• File Uploads & Security: If you need to add a File Upload question, Microsoft requires the form to be set to "Only people in my organization can respond."
  • Why? Because uploaded files are stored in a secure SharePoint or OneDrive folder, the system must authenticate the user to ensure the files are handled safely and mapped to the correct respondent.
  • Note: You cannot collect attachments from "Anonymous" or external respondents.

Managing Responses

• Check and share your form results:
  • Open the form for which you want to review the results, and then select View responses.
  • See a high-level summary of charts and graphs directly in your browser.

Best Practices

Collaborative Ownership (Don't Fly Solo)

A common mistake is creating a form under an individual's account. If that person leaves the college or is unavailable, the form and its data become inaccessible.

• Best Practice: Create a form in a Microsoft 365 Group or transfer ownership to a Team.
• Why? This ensures that all members of your department or project team can manage the form and view responses, preventing "orphaned" forms.

Working with Results & Excel

Every form automatically compiles results into an Excel spreadsheet. You can view these in real-time.

To keep your data syncing correctly, do not manually add columns, delete rows, or rename headers directly in the Excel file that is connected to your form.

• Doing so can corrupt the sync connection, causing new form responses to stop appearing in your spreadsheet.
• If you need to analyze or manipulate the data, Export a copy of the data or use a separate "Pivot" sheet to pull data from the original.

Forms from Microsoft Lists

If you are managing data within Microsoft Lists, you can create a form directly from the list to streamline data entry.

• Create a Form from a Microsoft List (Microsoft documentation)

When to use Forms vs. When to use Lists

• Forms are for one-way data collection (surveys, simple registrations).
• Lists are for ongoing data management and tracking.