From Business Management to Party
Management
Introduction To Microsoft Forms
Everyone — anyone — in business needs to make forms from time to time. Consumers also often need to have a custom form handy. All of us have heaps of appointments and schedules to keep track of. Into this array of different folks having different needs for different types of information to gather and distribute comes the Microsoft Forms web application. Anyone who has a Microsoft 365 account (formerly Office 365) has access to Microsoft Forms. I would wager most Readers of The Dispatches would have such an account.
MS-Forms is a very feature rich application. What follows is an introduction to get anyone started with Microsoft Forms. The app invites users to use their imagination and creativity to create the perfect form for any need. I only scratch the surface, here.
| Simply go
to
office.com.
Log in to your Microsoft account if prompted. You will come to the main Page for Office Applications on the Web . From the available list of apps, click Forms. ↓ |
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| The Forms Web App opens to an
attractive screen. Here, if you are not yet signed in with the valid Microsoft account credentials, you will prompted here to do so. ↓ |
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| You can chose among many preformatted
templates or design and create your own form. Click the New Form Button to begin to create Your Own Form. ↓ |
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| When you Click to Create a New Form,
you are presented with the opportunity to name your form. Click and type your Form Title. To start building Your Form, click the "+ Add new" button. Our example form here is a Call Sheet. ↓ |
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| Each click of the Add new button adds
a new line to our Call Sheet. ↓ |
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Your Form is stored on OneDrive at your
Office account. So the app gives users the ability to distribute the form to recipients via an emailed hyperlink. You simply click the Copy link button and paste that into your email. ↓ |
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| Once completed you can add some jazzy
visual styles and more templates via the Microsoft Designer AI. The Setting control sets the timing settings if you give a time tracker to Your Form. ↓ |
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| If you add a timer to your form, then
your collected results will show the time it took each recipient to complete the form. ↓ |
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| If you are the social secretary for a
group that needs to manage the members' registration to an event,
MS-Forms have several templates to make this easy, yet still attractive. ↓ |
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| For Office personnel who manage requests for
service and requisition of items MS-Forms also has several templates to make those forms both functional and attractive. ↓ |
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This short tutorial is an Introduction to a very feature rich application that is both useful from a practical viewpoint, but can also open up creative avenues that make the mundane form into a marvelous piece of Web Art. Information collection need not always be boring.
Form and substance are one and the same.
Form is the
life expression and substance the living painting.
—
Asger Jorn
Gerald Reiff