Microsoft Forms: Introduction

Microsoft Forms is a tool in which you can create questionnaires, surveys, quizzes, or polls. You can invite others to respond to it using almost any web browser or mobile device, see real-time results as they're submitted, use built-in analytics to evaluate responses, and export results to Excel. This tool is generally available to Office 365 Education subscribers, Office 365 Commercial subscribers, and users with a Microsoft account.

Pros:

This is a very user-friendly tool and requires little investment to start learning and using it. Any time you want to solicit information from a group of users (e.g. if you want to receive some feedback from an event or if they are submitting a request), Forms can provide a very clean and quick way of doing this. In addition, you can use other techniques such as branching (logic that changes the form according to the responses to specific questions) and Microsoft Flow to make your forms more focused and integrated with other Microsoft Office 365 products.

Cons:

The tool may be too simple for some users - there are a limited amount of options that you can use as questions and dynamic content (e.g. choices that populated from another list somewhere) is unavailable. Microsoft PowerApps would likely be a better solution if you are looking for something considerably more powerful. Unfortunately, these other tools do come with a considerable learning curve and higher time investment.

Summary:

In summary, Microsoft Forms is a great option if you are looking for a simple, static form that can be distributed across an organization. It won't handle complex form designs, but is powerful enough (particularly when it is combined with other Office 365 products) that it still can be an incredibly useful tool to solicit information from a broad audience.

How to create a Form:

Log into Office 365 and choose the forms app. Alternatively, choose the app from the waffle in the upper left corner while in a Office 365 app or simply go to https://forms.office.com and log in with your Microsoft account:

Simply click the "New Form" icon to create a new form:

Name your form and a description to it by clicking the title and typing it in. The form will automatically save every few seconds:

Add questions by clicking the "Add new" button and choosing a style of question. The styles are pretty straight forward (and it is easy to delete them as well), so I would recommend adding a variety of different types when starting start so you can the difference between each style. Additional options are available by clicking the "..." icon. Choice and text are usually the most popular options, where users can choose one or more responses or type in a response. 

Each style of question comes with some additional options to help you design the questions appropriately. Additional options are available by clicking the "..." icon:

Copy the question, delete the question or move it up and down in the form by using the icons at the top of the question:

Once you are done adding the questions, you can see how the form looks by selecting the preview button in the top right corner:

Use the Back button to return to the main screen and click the "Share" button in the upper right to distribute the form to others. Any responses made can be viewed in the "Responses" tab along the top. You can view analytics around the responses and download the responses to Excel from this tab:

Additional response options (e.g. customized thank you message, email notifications, etc.) can be found under the "Settings" menu under the "..." menu at the upper right:

That's it! Your form is now ready to go. All the forms you create can be accessed from the main app screen and you can create them to your heart's content. Simple, easy and intuitive. Branching (logic that changes the form according to the responses to specific questions) and using Microsoft Flow to populate an actionable SharePoint list from form responses will be presented in another blog post.