There are a number of reasons to use a form or survey. You may want to take a year-end customer satisfaction survey to see how you’re doing, or you may need a good way to collect webinar registrations.

Forms are also standard on most websites, but they’re not always easy to implement, especially if you want custom fields.

If you’re a Microsoft 365 user, you may not realise that you have a powerful, yet simple app called Microsoft Forms.

Microsoft Forms puts the power of form creation in your hands and makes it as easy as point and click. You also get real-time responses for your forms, surveys, or polls without anyone having to correlate the data manually.

In this article, we’ll go through how easy it is to make forms in this technology solution and highlight some ways you can use the app in your business.

Microsoft Forms Overview

We’ll start with an overview of what you can do with Microsoft Forms and how you can access it.

Where to Access Forms

You can access Microsoft Forms online at: https://forms.microsoft.com/

You’ll need to sign with your Microsoft account or Microsoft 365 account.

You’ll land on an easy-to-use interface that gives you the option of using a template to create a form or creating one from a blank template by choosing “New Form” or “New Quiz.”

Form Section Options

When you click to create a new form, you’ll be taken to a page where you can name the form and then click to add sections.

The section options represent different ways that a question can be answered or another form element, like text or a date. Options include:

• Choice (i.e. multiple-choice question)
• Text
• Rating
• Date
• Ranking
• Likert (a scale that records attitudes/opinions about a topic)
• Net Promoter Score® (a scale from “not likely” to “extremely likely”)
• Section (separator that can include a title and image)

Dynamic Branching

Beyond the section options, you can add dynamic branching that offers another question based upon a prior answer.

For example, you may ask something like, “Does this software help you in your daily tasks?” and if a person selects “No,” a new section appears asking them to describe why it doesn’t help them.

Adding a Form Theme

It’s simple to dress up your form with a theme, color, or your own image.

Just click the theme button at the top and you’ll see theme suggestions as well as have the ability to upload your own image (such as a company logo).

Sharing a Form is Simple

Sharing a form can be done in a few different ways. Once your form is ready, just click the Share button.

Sharing options include:

• Copying a link that allows others to access and fill out the form
• A QR code that you can download in .png format
• Embed the form in a webpage
• Click to email the form link through your email program

Viewing Form Replies

When you create a form, you’ll notice two tabs at the top: “Questions”, which is where you build your form, and “Responses” where responses to your form will populate in real-time.

You’ll be able to see the average time to complete the survey (helpful for training quizzes) and you can view all form answers online or click to download them and open in Excel.

How Can My Business Use Microsoft Forms?

Because Microsoft Forms is so simple, you’ll be able to use it for surveys and forms that you may have anticipated being too cumbersome to bother with in the past.

There are several templates in Forms that give you a head start on putting many of these forms, surveys, and quizzes together, but it’s also quite easy to build them from scratch.

Customer Satisfaction Survey

You can create and send out a customer satisfaction survey in minutes, which makes it easy to collect vital data to keep your business ahead of the competition.

Because the interface is cloud based, it’s also easy for your customers to fill out the form on any device. They don’t have to remember to fill out a Word document and email it back to you. You can even text them a link and they can access the form from their smartphone.

Remote Team Needs Identification

Many UK businesses have been forced to transition to remote employees this year due to the pandemic. While the initial disruption shock has passed, it may be that remote employees are still lacking all the tools they need to be as productive as they’d like.

Stay connected to remote teams and their needs by sending a survey to help identify any equipment, software, or policies that could make working away from the office more efficient.

Webinar or Event Registrations

You don’t have to sign up for an expensive webinar tool with notifications. If you’re using Microsoft 365, you can use Teams for webinars and use Forms to send out your webinar registration forms.

You can also use it to send an after event survey.

Employee Training Quizzes

Microsoft Forms is a perfect way to quiz new employees on office procedures they’ve learned. You can also use it in your cybersecurity awareness training.

Create quizzes in Forms easily and then track the average time it’s taking users to fill out, so you can gauge proficiency and hone your questions.

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