Microsoft Forms: create surveys, quizzes and polls with tools you already own

One of the most common things we find when we review a client’s Microsoft 365 tenancy is a paid SurveyMonkey or Typeform subscription sitting alongside a licence that already includes Microsoft Forms. For most everyday jobs (customer feedback, staff surveys, event sign-ups, quick internal checklists) Forms does the work, keeps the data inside your own tenant, and costs nothing extra.

This guide covers what Microsoft Forms is, how to build your first survey, and where it fits alongside the rest of Microsoft 365.

What is Microsoft Forms?

Microsoft Forms is the survey, quiz and poll builder that comes with Microsoft 365. It runs entirely in the browser, so there is nothing to install: you write questions, share a link (or a QR code), and watch responses arrive in real time. Results appear as summary charts automatically, and one click exports everything to Excel for deeper analysis. Because it is part of Microsoft 365, responses live in your organisation’s own environment rather than a third-party survey platform, sign-in uses the same account your staff already have, and forms can be restricted to people inside your organisation or opened to anyone with the link. A free version also exists for personal Microsoft accounts, with lower limits than the business plans.

What can you build with it?

Forms handles four broad jobs:

• Surveys: customer feedback, staff engagement, post-project reviews. Question types include choice, rating, ranking, date, text and Likert scales.
• Quizzes: set correct answers and point values, and Forms marks responses automatically with instant feedback. Widely used for training sign-off and induction tests, not just classrooms.
• Polls: one or two questions dropped straight into a Teams meeting or channel for a fast read of the room.
• Registration and intake forms: event sign-ups, leave requests, visitor registers, health and safety checklists, simple job-request forms.

How do you create a survey in Microsoft Forms?

1. Go to forms.microsoft.com and sign in with your Microsoft 365 account (it’s also in the app launcher in Outlook or Office.com).
2. Choose New Form, give it a title and a short description.
3. Add questions with Add new, picking the type that fits: choice, text, rating, date, ranking or Likert. Mark the important ones as required.
4. Use branching (under the “…” menu) if later questions should depend on earlier answers, so a “No” at question 2 can skip someone straight to the end.
5. Check the Style options and preview on mobile, because most responses to most forms arrive from a phone.
6. Set who can respond under Collect responses: anyone with the link, or only people in your organisation, with names recorded or anonymous.
7. Share the link, QR code, or embed it in an email, a Teams post, or a SharePoint page.

Responses appear on the form’s Responses tab as they arrive, with charts built for you. Open in Excel gives you the raw data.

Is Microsoft Forms included in Microsoft 365?

Yes. Forms is included in Microsoft 365 business, enterprise and education plans, which is the point worth repeating: if your business runs on Microsoft 365, you are already paying for it. Before renewing a separate survey tool, it is worth an honest look at whether Forms covers what you actually use. In our experience the answer is yes for most internal and light customer-facing work. The main reasons to keep a dedicated survey platform are advanced needs: complex quota management, sophisticated panel research, or deeply branded multi-page questionnaires.

Where does Forms fit with the rest of Microsoft 365?

The quiet strength of Forms is that it connects to the tools around it:

• Excel: every form can open its live results in a spreadsheet, so analysis happens where your team already works.
• Teams: add a form as a tab, launch a poll in a meeting, or post a survey to a channel.
• SharePoint: embed a form on an intranet page, such as a standing feedback or request form.
• Power Automate: this is where forms become workflows. A submitted response can create a task, send an approval to a manager, add a row to a list, or notify a Teams channel. A simple example we set up often: a staff equipment-request form whose responses route straight to the IT helpdesk with an approval step in between.

Tips from managing this for NZ businesses

• Decide anonymous or named before you share. Staff surveys get very different answers depending on the setting, and switching it mid-survey muddies the results you’ve already collected.
• Keep it short. Completion rates fall quickly past ten questions. Two short forms beat one long one.
• Use branching instead of “if not applicable, skip”. Respondents shouldn’t have to read questions that don’t apply to them.
• Check the sharing scope. “Anyone with the link” is right for customers and wrong for internal-only surveys. It is the most common Forms misconfiguration we see.
• Templates save time. Forms includes starting points for common surveys and quizzes, and you can duplicate any existing form as a base.

Do you need help with any of this?

Honestly, for a basic survey, no. Forms is genuinely simple, and that is its main feature. Where an IT partner earns its keep is the layer around it: getting your Microsoft 365 tenancy configured so sharing defaults are safe, connecting forms to Power Automate workflows that remove manual steps, and making sure you’re not paying for third-party tools that duplicate what your licence includes. That licence review is part of how we run managed IT services, and it regularly pays for itself.

If you want a second pair of eyes over your Microsoft 365 setup, get in touch, or read more about our Microsoft cloud services.