Today, we are pleased to announce the availability of Microsoft Forms for our Office 365 Education customers. Forms is the result of direct feedback from educators that they want to have a quizzing function with Office 365 Education. Educators told us they need an easy way to assess student progress on an ongoing basis. They also told us they want an assessment solution that will save them time, help differentiate instruction for all students and provide quiz takers with real-time personalized feedback.
We designed Forms to be super easy so that anyone could confidently create a form and easily see results as they come in. Forms lets anyone with an Office 365 Education account create and/or respond to quizzes. What makes Forms unique and so valuable for educators is the automatic grading and in-quiz feedback functionality. Automatic grading does exactly what the name implies and greatly reduces the time spent grading. In-quiz feedback is a feature that lets quiz authors personalize messages depending how a student answers a question. For example, if a student answers a question incorrectly they may get a message, such as: “The answer is incorrect. I suggest you review chapter four as this will be on the final.”
How Forms works
When an instructor wants to assess how well the students understand a given topic, they can quickly author a quiz directly from their desktop or mobile web browser. The instructor simply determines the questions they would like to ask and then chooses an answer type, such as multiple choice, text or a rating. The Forms authors can then send a link or QR code to quiz takers or embed the quiz into a web page, blog or Learning Management System (LMS), and recipients can complete the quiz on phones, tablets or PCs. And with the real-time feedback in Forms, the instructor can very quickly see where the class may need additional instruction or could advance more rapidly. Forms responses can also be exported to Microsoft Excel for richer analyses.
Forms is a great quizzing platform because quiz question types are unique. Quiz authors can also indicate the correct answer(s) while authoring quiz questions and they can enter feedback for each answer.
Quizzes aren’t the only scenario where Forms can be used. Because it is so flexible and easy to customize, Forms can be used to create surveys, requisitions, assessments and so much more. For example, a school teacher may want to get feedback from a student’s parents on their child’s study habits.
Forms is available to Office 365 Education customers today. If you are an existing Office 365 for Education customer, you can locate the tile for Forms in My Apps on the Office 365 App Launcher. New customers will see the Forms tile appear directly within the App Launcher and need not take any additional actions to use Forms right away. Anyone with an Office 365 school ID can go to forms.office.com today to create their first form and provide feedback on Forms.
Frequently asked questions
Q. Will Forms be available in all markets and languages?
A. Yes, Forms will be available in all of the Office 365 Education customer markets and languages.
Q. When will Forms be available to customers outside of Office 365 Education?
A. We are exploring possibilities but do not have any details to share at this time.
Q. My school already has Office 365; does that mean we’re getting Forms?
A. That depends. Forms is only available to those schools that subscribe to Office 365 Education or Office Education E5. In some instances, schools opt for another Office 365 subscription type that does not offer Forms at this time.
Q. Can I embed Forms into a web page?
A. Yes. Forms can be easily embedded into web pages via the embed code provided in the Send tab in the upper-right hand corner of the Forms page.
Q. How do I get started with and learn more about Forms?
A. Create a form or quiz with questions, define settings, share your form and check the results—in a few easy steps:
- Sign in and create a new survey form or quiz form.
- Adjust settings for your form.
- Share your form with others.
- Check your form results.
Also see Copy a form and Delete a form for more information.
Q. Is there a Forms mobile app?
A: No. Forms are available through desktop and mobile browsers, and users can both create and complete forms within the browser. This ensures that the widest number of people can reply to your Form without having to download and use a separate app.
Q: Who can reply to the Forms I create?
A: Anyone can reply to forms, including those within your school as well as external users. When you create a form, you can choose to either limit its availability to within your school (i.e., all those with your school ID) or you can choose to allow anyone with a link (no sign-in required) to access it. External uses might be things like collecting homework habit surveys from parents.
Q. What are the browser requirements for Forms?
A: Forms is optimized for Internet Explorer 10+, Edge, Firefox (latest version), Chrome (latest version) and for Android (latest version) and iOS (latest version) web browsers.
Q. Is Forms HIPAA and BAA compliant?
A. Yes, data in Forms follows the standard Office 365 Compliance Framework and belongs to Compliance Category C as outlined in the framework.
Q. Are FERPA and BAA protections in place?
A. Yes, Forms meets FERPA and BAA protection standards.
Q. Where (geographically) is the data stored?
A. Forms data is stored on servers located in the United States.
Q. Can Forms be disabled?
A. Yes. Administrators can turn off Forms by visiting the User Management tab in your school’s Office 365 Admin Center and then follow these easy steps:
- Select All users and click Edit.
- Go to Step 3, Licenses.
- Uncheck Microsoft Forms for different SKU.
Why not forms for Enterprise customers ? We are dying for this. This saves lot of time and keeps tight integration with office 365 enterprise.
Thank you for your interest Srikar. We are considering additional options for Forms but don’t have anything concrete to share at this time. You enthusiasm is noted and shared with the development team.
Please allow me to use Forms with Office 365 Business Premium! Would be amazing to use this to get project briefs from clients. Using Google Forms at the moment but hate Google! Microsoft fan-boy here. 🙂
Hi David,
Thanks for your interest in Forms. We are evaluating options but have nothing to share at this time.
Is this similar to the Access Forms technology used by OneDrive that lets you create Surveys that store form results into Excel?
Will this be a future replacement for InfoPath?
Thanks
S
Hi Steve–great observation. You are asking specifically if Forms is like the Excel Survey on OneDrive and the answer is yes with the caveat that Forms does so much more than surveys. Overtime we might see Forms take over Excel Survey.
Microsoft Forms is NOT a replacement for InfoPath. We get this question a lot about forms and the answer is no.
Stay tuned…
Isn’t InfoPath one of the products that will be phased out on the long run?
Is this ADA/508 compliant? Also, will there be an opportunity to add images and videos for assessment purposes?
Hi Michael and thank you for your question regarding 508/ADA and Office 365 Education (through which Microsoft Forms is offered).
It’s important to note that Forms is accessed through a browser which allows customers to use the accessibility features in their browser of choice.
I’d like to point you to Microsoft’s Accessibility site where you can learn about the accessibility features available in Office 365 (https://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/office365/default.aspx)
Thanks,
Marc
How performant will these forms be? One element which is a big timesaver for teacher (like me) is an easy import system (check quizlet.com, theirs works pretty well – you don’t want to make questions one by one as many of us have WORD-documents with question material). For language teachers a bonus if text can be read (indifferent languages – with an on and off switch – check quizlet.com again). Will there be options like: fill the gap, multiple correct answers, ability to structure learning paths, export function for archiving, link to some kind of scorebook (which is a timesaver for teachers as well),… Perhaps you should check Blackboard.org for their quiz options – they are pretty good. I already checked out your preview but it is very very basic!! When may we expect more possibilities?
Hi Filip,
I really cannot comment on the features roadmap here but I can tell you that Forms isn’t a build and forget about it solution. We will be delivering features customers request overtime and on and ongoing basis. There is a feedback link within the Forms product that we encourage customers to use to tell us what they think.
I will share your message with the development team Filip.
Thanks,
Marc
Loving the functionality of Forms…it is going to work fantastically for schools I think. One thing which is really missing is the ability to share a template. I was hoping to create a feedback form which could be shared with colleagues in order for them to get diagnostics on training…but unless I’m missing something, the feature is not there to share. Surely this could be written in using the Office 365 environment, in the way that everything else can be shared?
Hello Archives,
Thank you for your feature request. We have a long list of great feature suggestions and are actively reviewing that list and building new functionality on an ongoing-basis. Forms will offer richer functionality over time based on user feedback.
Marc
Awesome solution! I cannot seem to get a report showing the score per respondent, only see the result per question. Is this something which will be included later, or am I missing something? The user get’s the score upon completion, but there is no summary for the quiz creator.
As a SharePoint user on Office 365 user I can’t express how much we need something like this! A tool for simple and effective data capture whilst fitting in with the 365 and SharePoint platforms? yes please!
Great job though MS, it looks incredibly slick.
I was wondering if an future update while make an upload of images possible. At this moment using Google form because of the need of adding images. Love to work around office365. Check: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wNaeFnkJYuwlWclmjsP3kfPh4PYLpbjZsdjT9Prk6IQ/viewform
Hi Belldboot–we are planning and building all sorts of functionality for Forms. While I can’t comment on specific feature availability, you can imagine that many of the suggestions to this blog post are ‘in the works’.
Marc
Conditional branching for survey type questions and pick lists would be nice to have. I also second the suggestions to be able to export and import forms for reuse.
Thank you. Your suggestions are noted and have been shared with the development team.
Please add forms for Enterprise users, it just doesn’t only benefit education but many non profits who use for research!