Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms (https://forms.microsoft.com) is an online application which enables Office 365 subscribers to create custom surveys, quizzes and polls that can then be shared amongst specific people in their organisation, the wider company or externally.

Microsoft Forms works in any modern web browser, including mobile devices.

How does it work?

Navigate to https://forms.microsoft.com or use the Office 365 app launcher to find the forms app in your browser (click on ‘All apps’ and then ‘Forms’).

You will be presented with the ‘My forms’ view:

This is where you can create new forms and quizzes, as well as find the content you’d previously created.

Click on the New Form button and provide a name and optional image and description for your form by clicking on the title.

Add a first question by clicking on the Add question button. For each question, select the type before entering any other detail:

As displayed above, you’re able to choose among 5 different question types:

  1. Choice: allows the user to answer selecting one of the available choices
  2. Text: allows the user to answer writing an answer
  3. Rating: allows the user to rate a piece of content (text, image or video)
  4. Date: allows the user to answer specifying a date
  5. Ranking: allows a user to rank the available options
  6. Likert: allows the user to rate the individual options

In this example we see a ‘choice’ question:

There are additional options, to enable multiple answer, to specify that the question requires an answer, to add a subtitle and to shuffle the available options.

Questions can be rearranged at any time.

At the end of the process it’s possible to preview your form, apply one of the available themes and share it.

You can preview your form, both in desktop and mobile mode:

You can choose to share the form with people in your organisation or with external users and it can be shared in several ways: through a link, a QR code, embedded in a webpage or simply via email.

As people answer the questions, the responses tab will start to be populated. You can view the responses as a chart and export them as an Excel spreadsheet.

If you shared the form within your organisation you will be able to see the names of the people who answered. If the form was shared externally instead, all the data will be anonymous. In this second case you can add ask for the user name as a first question, if you are interested in gathering this information.

Common Scenarios

  • Surveys –to collect feedbacks and opinions (e.g. feedbacks on the new intranet)
  • Quizzes –to measure employee knowledge on a specific topic
  • Polls – to gather quick responses on a very specific matter

Data collection – to collect data from a wider group about a technical topic/issue (e.g. GDPR enforcement)

Integration with SharePoint

Microsoft Form can be integrated with other products of the Office 365 ecosystem and in particular with SharePoint.

You can embed the forms you created in a SharePoint page using the new Microsoft Forms webpart

From the webpart settings you can decide if you want to display the questions or the results:

You can also embed the form on any page using the embed code.

Further reading