Microsoft Ignite 2020 – Microsoft Forms
Klarinet Solutions hosts monthly Tech Talks for our clients and partners, covering various topics around Microsoft 365 and the modern digital workplace. In our latest Tech Talk, Daniel Amaro, Lead Architect at Klarinet Solutions, led the main discussion on the 2020 Microsoft Ignite Conference. This year Microsoft Ignite took place on September 22nd – 24th through a virtual platform, and there were various announcements and feature updates. This article will review the Microsoft Ignite Conference and break down the updates that pertain to Microsoft Forms. Let’s get started:
Microsoft Forms
Millions of people have been using Microsoft Forms to create surveys, polls, and quizzes since April 2020, when this feature became generally available for Office 365 commercial users. During Ignite 2020, Microsoft shared the latest Forms capabilities and scenarios that empower team engagement, feedback sharing, and connectivity across your entire organization. Microsoft has focused on bringing richer intelligence capabilities and more in-depth administrative controls to users. Along with those perks, they are trying to boost up several capabilities based on users’ feedback. In our Tech Talk, Daniel Amaro provided a demo of the new capabilities within Forms. He created different forms (surveys, polls, and quizzes), explained how your organization could leverage Forms in SharePoint, Team, and Excel, and various methods of breaking down data. You can receive this free demo: click here. Ultimately, these new Microsoft Forms capabilities will help you create forms faster, surface new insights from response data, and give you greater administrative flexibility.
Idea, Design, Data Intelligence
The most impressive new updates in Forms are the recent innovations around Forms intelligence. Based on the context of a survey, Forms intelligently suggests a set of questions or and options. For example, say we create a Tech Talk Feedback Survey. It will suggest various questions to select from. You will see automated question ideas to use in the survey. Also, users can use new types of questions that they can design within a form. Users can integrate those designated questions within Forms whether you want a text, multiple-choice, rating, or scaled answer. Following this, executives administrating these forms have access to a sophisticated data set that allows them to digest results with visualized charts, graphs, and metrics. Essentially, users can create unique surveys without sacrificing valuable productivity, time, and effort—the days of having to deal with tedious form creation, design, and management are over for the Microsoft community.
Microsoft Teams Meeting Polls using Forms
Microsoft Forms also has the capability of new poll integrations within Microsoft Teams. The purpose of this ability is to enhance the remote collaboration experience before, during, and after meetings. Polls have been a convenient way to quickly gather feedback in the Teams chat panel. Now, Microsoft is bringing the power of polls to meetings, helping you conduct more engaging, informative, and productive meetings. With this integration, meeting presenters and users can create polls before a meeting, all in one place under a tab in the Teams meeting using Forms.
Branding enhancements
Forms can now better represent your company’s brand with improved customization for survey logos, themes, backgrounds, and “Thank You” pages. This capability has been requested for some time by companies looking to leverage branding to unite their workforce, establish their culture, and uphold HR policies. 
Are You Using Microsoft Forms?
If you are not using Microsoft Forms, why not? Join the millions of Microsoft users who are taking advantage of all that Forms have to offer. As you know, Microsoft Ignite was filled with many new tools and feature updates. However, it was no coincidence that Microsoft Forms was one of the most important topics of conversation at the Ignite Conference. Forms existing integration within solutions like Microsoft Teams, Excel, SharePoint, and PowerPoint, and other apps had Microsoft users hyped for the future. We at Klarinet continue making investments to improve the Forms experience for our users. Like other Microsoft 365 products, forms have constantly improved their capabilities to empower all customers to achieve more, make better business decisions, and stay connected.
Klarinet Solutions specializes in optimizing your Microsoft Forms integration, implementing policies to secure your data, and developing a streamlined process that supports business objectives. If you want to hear the latest news, insightful hacks, or ways to leverage the Forms technology, contact us at 866.211.8191 or through email at info@klarinetsolutions.com.
