12 SharePoint and Teams Integration Points Infographic and Webinar

 

Download the infographic and share and use it how you’d like…

 

SharePoint and Teams are Better Together: Here are 12 Ways…

  1. Add your SharePoint Pages to Teams
  2. Documents added to Teams are automatically stored in SharePoint and OneDrive
  3. SharePoint enabled coauthoring protols in Office with SharePoint backed documents work in the Teams UX
  4. Teams presence and chat is even better with Office 365 and SharePoint.
  5. Automatically post your documents to Channels with Flow
  6. Easily add SharePoint sites to Teams or Create Teams for your SharePoint sites
  7. Use the Bots in Teams to call your SharePoint sites and lists data with the Bot Framework
  8. Preview 270+ file formats in OneDrive and SharePoint directly in Teams UX
  9. Synchronize your SharePoint and OneDrive documents and access them in Explorer for files you add with the Teams interface
  10. Teams information will be accessible in SharePoint. Chat is already getting better and better.
  11. Access SharePoint News in a Tab or in automatically in a channel
  12. SPFx isn’t just for SharePoint anymore. Write SharePoint Framework parts for Teams


Join us for the Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Better Together Webinar

Teams and SharePoint Better Together!

Description: Teams and SharePoint are transforming the enterprise. SharePoint has never been the same since the launch of Teams. There are now better ways to work with SharePoint and it’s getting better. When combined, Teams and SharePoint are unstoppable. In this session, we are covering the rich integration between the two. There’s great chemistry…

Tuesday 16th April 2 PM Eastern / 11 AM Pacific / 6 PM GMT

Register Now!

Joel OlesonLeave a comment

4 Easy Steps to SharePoint Data Compliance

Compliance and Data protection has never been more important.  Microsoft has put a huge effort behind the “Data Loss Prevention” and “Labels” as well as site designs and levels to help users do the right thing.  Unfortunately, there has been a major disconnect between the business and IT (those tech teams providing the solutions) based on SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2019.  Business users often expect that IT has already setup the proper governance, compliance settings and all that’s necessary before the solution is released.  Very few company have setup the necessary, but new built in features of Site Classification, Data Loss prevention or the new SharePoint Labels.  Something I’ve repeated in the past that’s very applicable is defaults have faults.  SharePoint out of the box is not necessarily setup to ensure compliance in your industry without configuration.  These 4 prescriptive setups designed in a easy to consume Infographic provide the settings and configuration that’s required for compliance and due diligence for modern data protection.

Download the “4 Steps to Data Compliance in SharePoint” Infographic…

Feel free to use or share this infographic it in your slides, in your blogs, with your business and review with Information security Legal or security teams.  This Infographic is designed to be shared.  It has a license of creative commons share alike.

As it relates to the importance of compliance in Office 365 SharePoint Online, many companies are missing the keys to success and may find a lot of value in seeing a sample built out based on prescriptive guidance.  SharePoint Online may seem plug and play, and releasing the service as is and letting users get on with their work and sites may seem like the right thing to do.  The reality is, with a little bit of configuration the environment can be setup in a much more purposeful way to protect data and the company from litigation due to lack of reasonable compliance actions taken to protect information privacy and records.  SharePoint Server in 2016 and 2019 have support for Data Loss Prevention.  The need for compliance and privacy applies to all types of environments.

There are really 4 key steps in setting up and configuring your SharePoint environment for base compliance.  I’ve worked with Colligo to put together this clever Infographic designed to simplify the process.  I hope you enjoy it.  Hope you like the Infographic, but even better I hope you join us for the upcoming free webinar where I’ll walk you through the 4 steps in more detail.

Free Webinar: SharePoint Data Compliance Made Easy: Site Classifications, Labels and the User Experience

Over 60-minutes we’ll review 4 Easy Steps for Compliance:

  1. Defining Office 365 Labels for information protection
  2. How to create, publish and apply Labels to Libraries
  3. How to create and apply data loss prevention (DLP) policies to warn users and block data from leaks
  4. How to make it easy for users to Save and Classify emails and files to SharePoint without leaving Outlook and Office 365

Join Joel Oleson, a Microsoft MVP/RD and 19-year SharePoint veteran with 7 years of experience at Microsoft as he shares practical guidance to keep your data secure and compliant. Colligo’s Roland Reddekop will show how users can save, classify and label emails and files right from the applications they primarily work in like Outlook and Office 365.

Title: SharePoint Data Compliance Made Easy: Site Classifications, Labels and the User Experience
Date: Thursday, April 11, 2019
Time: 8 a.m. PST, 11 am EST — Register
Date: Thursday, April 11, 2019
Time: 11 a.m. PST 2 pm EST — Register
Speakers: Joel Oleson, MVP Office Apps and Services & RD
Roland Reddekop, Colligo

>> RSVP for the Webinar

This webinar and infographic is sponsored by Colligo. See more on the colligo.com website

Joel OlesonLeave a comment

Office 365 Power Tools: What To Use When… PLUS NEW! Charts and Graphs and Recording and Slides

Thanks for joining me on the Office 365 Power Tools What to Use When Webinar. We had over 500 users connected in that session. Incredible. We got a ton of feedback and questions, so I wanted to share my thoughts and provide some answers, links and explanations as well as links to the recording and slides.

Download and View Recording with no registration on Youtube

Incredible Insights Charts and Graphs

What Power Tools are you using for Development for SharePoint Apps today?

Joel’s Insights: So most are still using the basics of lists, libraries and workflows… think about the missed potential. Incredible that we had a funeral for Infopath about 5 years ago, and there are about as many people using InfoPath and SP Designer. There’s a big responsibility to help the community catch up on Forms, Flow, PowerApps and Power BI. I was also surprised to see a few responses during the event from people saying… when will Infopath be replaced? People who don’t get the power of PowerApps. Many have found third party tools to help fill the gaps. I realize I should have added SPFx, but the session was more about the power tools.

What Version of SharePoint are you using?

80% using Office 365. That’s great! The fact that more than 50% still have 2013 and 2010 is a little sad don’t you think? I think we need more campaigns around upgrading to SharePoint 2019… What do you think? Tell me in the comments. I’ve got ideas for a Top 10 Reasons Why you should upgrade to SharePoint 2019 Infographic. Would make a good webinar too.

Questions

What does E3 include as it relates to Forms, Flow, PowerApps and Power BI?

  • Forms is free for everyone including building and consuming forms including anonymous.
  • Flow is covered for all of the standard connections except for the premium Flows.
  • PowerApps licenses are included, but do NOT include Plan 1 or Plan 2 these are additional addins.
  • Power BI you can download the client and run it, to get Power BI Pro you need E5 or you can add on Power BI Premium.

Can anyone create PowerApp without a license?

No. You can’t create or consume a PowerApp without a license. E3 does include license to create or consume PowerApp… it just needs to be assigned if it hasn’t.

Can you please provide all the training videos links to know how to use in details of all the apps flow, form, power, apps, power bi and nitro. to ease the use of them. and if we have any question for support, how can we contact a direct chat with the supporting team?

https://support.office.com/en-us/office-training-center

Then go to youtube and go to the Microsoft Flow Channel and from there you can navigate to the PowerApps, Power BI and Office 365, Dynamics 365 Youtube Channels in Featured Channels on the right

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG98S4lL7nwlN8dxSF322bA

Please can you give us an update if know on when PowerApps and Flow will be available on the government tenant? Can you please also include what is available for the GCC? PowerApps/Flow is not available to us yet

GCC = Government Cloud Community

The Office 365 Roadmap says March CY2019

Power BI vs Tableau? Thoughts?

They are very different and have very different capabilities… that being said, check out what Gartner said… they are both in the leader quadrant as of 2017.

Would Power BI Report server with gateway bipass some of those limits?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-onprem

I have not seen any reference to quotas in on premise Power BI. I expect not all of them would apply, but you should be smart and do testing and validation.

On-premises data gateway: Multiple users can share and reuse a gateway in this mode. This gateway can be used by Power BI, PowerApps, Flow or Logic Apps. For Power BI, this includes support for both schedule refresh and DirectQuery

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-getting-started

Does a form belong to a person or to the company? What if a person leaves the company?

A form is stored in Azure or any number of places. You can’t update them, so they definitely don’t follow you, but in European and soon to be California and many other places laws, you should have rights to your private data. Today you don’t have many rights for access to your data stored in forms or powerapps as a user. You can always try… that’s what privacy is all about.

Powerapps: is it possible to connect one powerapp to multiple Sharepoint Lists during runtime? E.g. choose a teamsite and select the values from a list, then connect to another teamsite with a list having the same name? E.g. list to collect issues in multiple teams or projects

Yes, check out a direct question in the forum https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Discussion/Read-and-write-to-2-seperate-SharePoint-lists/td-p/101938

the web link on the what to use where isn’t working… can you double check it?

You’re right, it was messed up. Here’s the correct link

http://bit.ly/msformslimits

Does Nitro Studio have On-Prem options or similar that could be required to meet InfoSec/goverment compliancies?

Maybe quickly explain Microsoft Forms Pro

Forms Pro????

There is a slide in the presentation on Forms Pro from the announcement at http://formspro.microsoft.com

Will Forms ever evolve into more that what it is today or is the direction to use Power Apps?? This is a tough thing to swallow for non dev SharePoint admins?

Forms is the for lightweight quick Survey, Polls, and simple forms. It will get better, but it will never be PowerApps.

Can you give a link to the Usage stat reports for PowerBi?

Check out these links:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/usage-analytics/usage-analytics?view=o365-worldwide

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/usage-analytics/customize-reports?view=o365-worldwide

Microsoft 365 usage analytics contains a number of reports, including:

  • Adoption overview report — offers an all-up summary of adoption trends. Use the reports in this section to learn how your users have adopted Office 365as well as how overall usage of the individual services has changed month-over-month. You can see how many licenses are assigned, how many of those are in active use by people in your organization, how many users are returning users and how many are using the product for the first time.
  • Product usage report — offers a drill-down view into volume of key activities for each service. Use the reports in this section to learn how your users are utilizing Office 365.
  • Storage used report — Use this report to track cloud storage for mailboxes, OneDrive and SharePoint sites. You can use this to make sure people in your organization stay within limits, or to decide if you need to purchase more storage resources.
  • Communication report — You can see at a glance whether people in your organization prefer to stay in touch by using Teams, Yammer, email, or Skype calls. You can observe if there are shifts in patterns of use of communication tools amongst your employees.
  • Collaboration report — See how people in your organization use OneDrive and SharePoint to store documents and collaborate with each other, and how these trends evolve month over month. You can also see how many people share documents internally or externally and how many SharePoint sites or OneDrive accounts are actively being used.
  • Office activation report — Track Office 365 ProPlus, Project and Visio activations in your organization. Each person with an Office license can install products on up to five devices. Use reports in this section to see the device types on which people have installed Office apps.
  • Access from anywhere report — Track which clients and devices people use to connect to email, Skype for Business, or Yammer.
  • Individual service usage reports — Usage reports are available for certain individual services. These reports provide specific usage details for the respective service. Exchange usage, Teams usage, and Yammer usage are examples of these reports.
  • Individual service user activity reports — User activity reports are available for certain individual services. These reports provide user level detail usage data joined with Active Directory attributes.

Where is the slide deck shared?

Can forms handle attachments? This is a show stopper for us.

I agree. No it is not, but they say they are working on it on User Voice.

https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box

Are they the top 60 responses (on choice fields)?

Yes, the limitation in Microsoft Forms on the 60 choices being stored is only 60 are stored, all of the other choices are shown as “Other”

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Forms/Microsoft-Forms-Choice-question-Limit/td-p/172463

I have created a Custom PowerApp Form and a mobile app that triggers a flow approval after the data is sent to a sharepoint list. I have flow plan 1 that created the flow, do I need to be concerned if that flow gets triggered too many times by employees entering in data?

No, you shouldn’t be too worried unless you’re doing some kind of check every 5 minutes. You will get a warning if you’re getting close to running out of your quota of runs for the month.

I was told by a MS expert at ShareFest DC that Forms cannot hide a field like you can in InfoPath. Will it have that ability?

I can’t tell you what hasn’t been announced. You can see the roadmap at

https://office.com/roadmap

Is it possible to use Flow on premise without Hybrid systems?

No. You need a gateway because there is no On Premise install of Flow or Forms.

Does Power Apps replace Infopath and it is on SP 2019 on Premise?

Flow, Forms and PowerApps all replace Infopath and SharePoint Designer, but it gets more complicated for On Premises. SharePoint Framework is another alternative for building applications.

We Use Nintex Forms and Workflows. Can I see Nitro? I want see the difference. Would love to see Nitro I’d like a live demo. That was too high level

Yes, sign up for the webinar or contact us and we’ll provide you with a demo.

http://Nitro.Studio

Forms and Flows not look for me as an replacement to create Forms in SharePoint or build process for my company

You’ll have to tell that to Microsoft. Forms Flow and PowerApps are the replacement, but do not line up directly. They are new tools that provide new functionality.

Here’s a quote directly from the PowerApps page: “Use PowerApps, the successor to InfoPath, to improve business productivity in SharePoint without writing code.”

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/

You have the same license strategy like Nintex? I pay on Premise for each WF?

No it’s a different license. See more at http://Nitro.studio

Nitro Studio like K2 with her own Engine with seperate DB’s or integrated in sharePoint like Nintex?

Can you distribute a Microsoft form outside of the organization?

How much work is it to port existing InfoPath forms (we have many) to the next thing (MS Forms, MS Flow, Power Apps, Nitro)?

There aren’t any migration wizards that I’ve seen. I recommend building new in Forms, Flow, PowerApps, SharePoint Framework, third party Forms/Workflow tools, etc..

If you have Office 365 but Exchange on premise you must use the older tools or Crow Canyon since Flow can’t email on prem mail. I’m currently blending Powerapps with Crow Canyon approvals as well.

You can share the form with a group to edit.

Yes, You can invite lots of users or send it to a DL, but there’s no .

What do you think of SharePoint Framework as a tool to overcome the limits of powerapps?

Fantastic idea. Really depends on which limit.

How can we access the Forms Pro preview?

You’ll hear soon. It says Spring 2019, which means March or April likely. Follow http://formspro.microsoft.com

Is there a way to move the form to be owned by another individual? Currently it seems you can only move the form to a 365 group.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/delegatepage.aspx?originalowner=JasonFabian@contoso.com

  • On the form you want to transfer, click More form actions  , and then select Move.

Can 1 user have flow p2 and see organization usage for all users that would just have flow 1?

Yes, Certain users can have Flow2.

Can 1 user have a p2 flow license such as an admin, and be able to see organization flow usage?

Yes,

Is flow equivalent/competetive to Nintex or K2?

Flow is a browser based If this then that style conditions, actions, and workflow.

Will you provide the slides as PDF or such?

Slides are on slideshare.net/joeloleson

Create a form via an O365 group? The form would belong to the group and not a specific user

A group can own a flow or a form. You can reassign ownership of a flow or a form.

None of the tools that Microsoft has really mimic the functionality found in InfoPath. How long until we see that same level of functionality?

Don’t hold your breath. Microsoft is not planning on rebuilding InfoPath. Flow, Forms, PowerApps, etc… are their own new creations. You can vote up features, but don’t expect them to rebuild Infopath… it’s dead.

Can flow be used by non-licensed Office 365 users /or shared external users? Can flow on a SP list be used by external shared user?

No, but you can vote for that feature on user voice.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/O365-Approval-Flow-to-external-users-in-non-default-flow/td-p/147424

Common data service is it like an odata connector to pull and post data with LOB systems?

What does E3 get us?

You could share the output of the reports on sharepoint?

Sharing the PowerBI reports on SharePoint still requires proper licensing.

Hope you’ll join me on the next webinar!! Thanks for coming!

Joel OlesonLeave a comment

Addressing Office 365 Adoption Challenges Infographic

Office 365 is clearly popular.  In fact the new Okta 2019 Business at Work report lists it as the clear leader in the cloud SAAS space for the past 5 years.  It’s an incredible commanding lead at this point, but while that may help comfort you in your decision to deploy it isn’t enough to call it mission successful as 76% of customers in their report also some have overlapping solutions including duplicates such Box, Google Apps, and Salesforce.  In addition, in an AIIM report focused on adoption and enhancing Office 365, has concluded in their summary the need to enhance your implementation

Office 365 is the best

Chart Courtesy of Okta Business at Work 2019 – it’s truly a must read… I’ve been following their annual reports, and they are great.

AIIM Research www.aiim.org/research survey for responses from 124 individual members of the AIIM community during the month of November 2017.  In the report, they share Forty-four percent report their users like it.  It makes sense why in a subscription model, Microsoft is so focused on adoption and consumption of the workloads.  The overlapping solutions also were exposed in the AIIM research, “Fifty-five percent of our respondents agree that getting users to manage and share their content in Office 365 and no place else is their biggest on-going issue [while] Forty-six percent feel that lack of expertise is the biggest issue.”

“Use add-on, and auxiliary products and services to supplement out-of-the-box functionality and lack of in-house to maximize your investment and transition to Office 365 and fill the gaps where they are needed.”  – AIIM Research

In my conversations with Apps 365 on their solutions and their success in the ecosystem they shared how they have been addressing Gaps exposed by the product.  It’s not unusual in fact Microsoft has a very rich ecosystem and welcomes partners to address gaps in the product.  These could be considered enhancements or things that may eventually come on the roadmap, but customers who hold their breath waiting for unannounced features may be disappointed and may want to consider proven solutions.  The AIIM research suggested 30% or more customers are looking to implement two or more third party add-ins in the next 12-18 months and more than 20% have already deployed one or more add-ins.

The Conclusion from AIIM research lines up with the emphasis Microsoft has put on it’s rich ecosystem… “Use add-on, and auxiliary products and services to supplement out-of-the-box functionality and lack of in-house to maximize your investment and transition to Office 365 and fill the gaps where they are needed.”

Office 365 Adoption Infographic
Office 365 Adoption Infographic

There are really three areas of focus in addressing Gaps in Office 365: Expertise, Staffing Resource, and Tools.

The new certifications can help you with your expertise gaps, as well hope to see you at the SharePoint Conference 2019 use discount code OLESON if you register to save yourself some money, the resources are something the many many partners can help you with, feel free to reach out for local or regional recommendations, and the tools gap is filled by the immense vendor partner network such as in the app store.  Consider these gaps in the graph below…

Apps 365 is sponsoring a webinar where we’ll be diving into the Microsoft Roadmap and in helping you understand the Gaps and Solutions.

New Webinar – 2019 YEAR OF THE LIST: Five Top Futuristic SharePoint List Trends to Follow in 2019

“We’re excited to host our first webinar from the ‘Mind The Gap’ webinar series with Joel Oleson, MVP who will be highlighting the Five Top Futuristic SharePoint List Trends to Follow in 2019.”

When: Mar 13, 2019 1:00 PM Pacific, 4:00pm Eastern

>>Register Now

Here are the 5 Trends we’ll be covering…
1: Automated Transcription and Enrichment
2: File Sharing Compliance Enhancements
3: Search & Findability Enhancements
4: Client-Side Enhanced & Extensible List UI
5: GPS 1and Location Metadata

Community FlashMob at #SPC19 Ministry of Silly Walks

Join @JoelOleson, @EricaToelle, @HeatherNewman, @PaulSwider, SPCPartyPatrol and a bunch more at the community at the SharePoint Conference Ministry of Silly Walk (click here to register to join us).

Apps 365 is providing a bunch of Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks T-shirts.  You can find out more about that on my post about the Ministry of Silly Walks at #SPC19.

silly walks spc

Joel OlesonLeave a comment

Office 365 POWER TOOLS Infographic: What to use When

It’s incredible how much effort Microsoft has put into so many new tools.  People’s heads have been spinning around all of the new tools in Office 365.  The most important tools as it relates to Application development are the Office 365 Power Tools.

This infographic is designed to help you understand which of the Power Tools to use when…  Apps, Forms, Workflows, Reporting, and More this simple infographic is designed to make it easier to understand.

Office 365 Power Tools

If you like this Infographic you can download it and use it in your internal decks and training materials.  Simply right click on the image and save it.

Feel free to use it in your SharePoint Saturday and event decks as well.  It is shared Creative Commons Share with Attribution… Just let ’em know you got it from Collabshow.com

If you like this Infographic you may also like the companion Infographic on Microsoft Forms Limits and Boundaries

Looking for more?  Join the Webinar where I’ll dive deeper into the comparisons between Forms and Forms Pro, Flow and Flow Premium, Power Apps and developmental scale challenges.

This Webinar is not designed for the hard core developer whose been using these tools day in and day out, but for the Power Users and those trying to get their heads around the differences in the Office 365 Power Suite of Tools.

Join “the Apps, Forms, Workflows and Tools of Office 365: When to Use What?” free webinar on March 7, at 11am Pacific Time, 3pm Eastern Time.  See you there!

 

 

 

Joel OlesonLeave a comment

Join the Ministry of Silly Walks Flashmob at #SPC19

And Now for Something Totally Different… Those who know me know I’m a HUGE fan of community and love to put on silly things.  Some remember the Infopath funeral for good or for worse.  Others may remember the year we sang our hearts out “Don’t Stop Believing” when we were concerned SharePoint was taking a back seat to things like Yammer and becoming simply “sites” in Office 365.

This year I want to do something totally different and even more Silly.

Silly Walks Featured Photo

I’m assembling a Ministry of Silly Walks for a Community March Through the Exhibit hall at #SPC19 on the first day May 21 at lunch time.  Eat your lunch quick and meet us at the entrance of the expo hall… don’t miss the music.  We start marching at 1:01pm sharp.

What is a Silly Walk?  Haven’t heard of Monty Python?  It’s an international Phenomena see more on the Monty Python website on International Marches.  I want this to be the biggest one ever.

How do I register or get involved?  You can register on #SPCSillyWalks on Eventbrite or on The Facebook Events for #SPCSillyWalks

I’m looking to recruit the true Monty Python Fans.  For those of the Organizing Committee Ministry I will get us Bowler Hats and Mustaches.  I’m working with Apps 365 as sponsor for T-shirts for attendees.  They are totally on board and love it.  Any other vendors who want to help.  Please reach out.  We can always use more swag.

When: May 21, 2019 at 1PM Pacific Time (Las Vegas)

Where: MGM Grand SPC Expo Hall Entrance (more details provided to those who register, but registration is not required)

What should I bring: Plan to bring a funny hat, suit coat, umbrella, and whatever other silly props along with your best silly walk
Remember to register on #SPCSillyWalks on Eventbrite or on The Facebook Events for #SPCSillyWalks

Not yet involved at SPC?  Get registered and use my invite code for a discount.  It’s going to be a blast.  I’m speaking on SharePoint Search.  More on that in another post.

Register for SharePoint Conference North America May 21-23 Discount Code OLESON

Want to be part of the Flying Circus Band?   I’m looking for Flying Circus style Tuba player, Trombone player, and a whistle chorus etc… (Song is “Always look on the bright side of Life”) various percussion options.

If you’re absolutely confused.  It’s probably a problem with your walk and we at the Ministry can help you with that.

monty python swing dance GIF

Reach out to me joel.oleson@outlook.com or on twitter at @joeloleson

Need some practice or inspiration on Silly Walks?

Here’s some history on Silly Walks

Here’s the original Hillarious and Fantastic Monthy Python Sketch from 1970.

#SPCSillyWalk #MontyPython

 

 

Joel OlesonLeave a comment

Getting Started Guidelines to Microsoft Forms Limits and Boundaries

Infographic_MicrosoftFormsGuidelinesFinal

 

Microsoft Forms is a basic lightweight app for quickly collecting information via surveys and quizzes, but you should be aware of its limits.  The strength of Microsoft forms is its licensing.  It’s free to use for anonymous or authenticated users, and the data can be stored in a list or connected to flow to push into other systems, but there are some limits to be aware of especially in relation to using it to build an app.  When do you decide to use a PowerApp vs. a form or even just use the list?  Microsoft Forms is a great way to get started with the new generation of tools in Office 365, but when should you look into the Microsoft ecosystem?  It was when I started pushing the limits that I found there are some limitations in Microsoft Forms.  Even walking through User Voice, you can’t get a clear picture.  I couldn’t find a single place with guidelines on what those limits were that I decided to put together an infographic to simplify the process.  I’m working on a broader infographic for what to use when, and I’m hoping this will simplify the process.  As with all things in Office 365, it’s a moving target and these limits are subject to change anytime, but this is current as of my evaluation and testing on 2/11/2019.  I did see acknowledgement on various forums, but never saw a list of Microsoft Forms Limits in one place so this is my effort to try to consolidate.  Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments or feedback on my experience as well.  Hopefully this posting will encourage users to weigh in on User Voice options to increase these limits.  Let me know if you see any changes as time goes on.  I will plan to support this list over the coming year… and maybe more with encouragement from the community.

1.  Users Can’t Update or Come back to finish their responses.

In this limitation users have to fill out the form and be done.  If users might need to come back to change a response such as in an RSVP or if they want to save and come back later to finish, Microsoft Forms is currently not able to support users coming back.

2. Hard Limit of 100 Questions.

Essentially there is a hard limit of 100 questions in Microsoft Forms.  This boundary does seem like one that should be published and I expect it will be published in the near future.  Of note it really depends on how you ask the questions and what style of questions you’re using as to how this limit is reached.  Some users have experienced the limit at 60 by using different style of questions… see #6 for another example.

3. You are limited to 2 to 10 options on a ranking question.

If you have 10 ranking questions you can only ask 10 questions.  If you have a ranking question with 2 options you’ll only be able to ask 50 questions.  This can make for an odd survey if you keep finding you’re hitting a limit.

4. Choice Questions store only 60 options.

This is a soft limit, so you won’t even notice.  You can provide hundreds of options, but only a max of 60 options are stored to viewed in your results.  So imagine you’re asking the user to choose their country.  As a traveler I know there are 193 UN countries, but At&t seems to think there’s a whole lot more than that so they can say they are in a ton more than they actually are.  That aside, if you ask someone to choose their country, you’ll find Microsoft Forms is only storing 60 options.  So when you’ve got users from 90 countries you’ll find only 60 of them were stored.  In my mind that’s pretty serious.  You could ask that question in a text field, but that’s a little strange.

5. You get a max of 4000 characters in a response.

Imagine your users are giving you feedback and you get a nice essay as a response and find it’s only half there.  Be aware you’ll only get 4000 characters in the long text box response.  I can’t imagine someone pouring their heart out to provide detailed responses and then you get only the first 4000 characters in that response.  Is that enough?  Who knows, but to have it be truncated isn’t cool.

6. Likert scales are limited to 20 questions.

Just as in the limits above, you might find yourself designing a survey and finding you’re running out of questions.  Be aware.

If you like the infographic and want to use it in a blog or in your presentations at SharePoint Saturdays or community events, no problem.  This infographic is shareable with creative commons share with attribution.  As long as you include the whole image you’re good to go.  You can download this infographic on Microsoft Forms Limits from slideshare as a PDF or as a JPG from this blog post, simply right click on the image and choose save.

Join me for a Webinar on this Topic and More

If you liked what you saw here and want more.  You can join me on a webinar where I will dig into the differences between each of the Power Trio and Forms and Forms Pro (what little we know from recent news).

Webinar on March 7, 2019 at 11am Pacific

TOPIC:  “Apps, Forms, Workflows and Tools of Office 365: What to Use When?”

Sponsored by Crow Canyon.

Register free << RSVP – register >>

I’ll be going over each of the Microsoft Apps and Tools and describing their strengths, helping you best understand “when to use what tools” in building out your solutions.

Join Microsoft MVP Joel Oleson with Scott Restivo, CEO of Crow Canyon Software to explore the core of Office 365 tools and dive into the fundamentals of business applications. In this session we’ll: 1). Demystify the tools and reveal limits in application construction and look at when to use what in your biz app lifecycle. 2). Focus on fundamentals and directing when to use what in your tooling and fundamental approaches and provide you with some great take-away’s in the form of Infographics. 3). Finally, we’ll explore the interconnected nature of business solutions from ingestion, business processing, evaluation, reporting, and data analysis in a single platform with integrated tools all in a content services platform. It doesn’t stop there as Hybrid solutions can be constructed with gateways and the power of the cloud allows scale like no other time.

<UPDATE! 2/22/2019>

Kudos to Phil Worrell among others who shared their thoughts on things they thought for which people should be aware.  I’ve gathered theme here from various social platform (in comments) who had some additional “Feature” differences and things to be aware of…

More Forms Limits or Desired Features

  • Limited customization and look & feel, no ability to even change fonts size
  • No attachments or file upload option
  • No country picker (as I mentioned above if you create your own it won’t work well if you use over 60 items and expect to get all items back)
  • No paging or section breaks
  • No way to share a link to collaborate share a secure form with selected individuals only a group option or a link that is open to the entire org
  • No comments on questions to add to an answer for further details.
  • No multiparty questions e.g. fill in you details first name , last name, address etc in one question.
  • No field validation, including email address or other data type validation except numbers
  • No calculated field options

Remember these are subject to change.  In fact, have may have heard about Forms Pro?  We should hear more about this solution, but as you look at what they’ve shared it doesn’t appear to be focused on addressing the things we’ve called out here.  Keep reporting things you care about and voting on User Voice!

Read more about the recent announcement of Microsoft Forms Pro

Microsoft Forms Pro highlights:

  • Easy to set up and configure
  • Trigger surveys around specific events
  • Collect feedback across channels
  • Embed surveys across apps, web, and mobile
  • Identify sentiments automatically
  • Analyze feedback for impactful insights

“This enterprise survey tool makes it easy for organizations to collect feedback across customer touchpoints using surveys, quizzes, and polls, correlate the feedback with business transactions, and derive actionable insights from the combined data,” wrote Alysa Taylor, Corporate Vice President, Business Applications & Industry at Microsoft.

Microsoft Forms Pro will be available in public preview this spring [2019].”

 

 

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