Microsoft™ Forms with WordPress

Overview and features

Microsoft™ Forms (forms.office.com) is included with all Microsoft™ 365 Business subscriptions and can offer attractive features for WordPress sites:

• Editing
  • Easy to edit online, ready-made styling and colour customization
  • Easy to include rich media (videos, photos, audio)
  • Add multi-lingual versions
  • Automatic progress bar
  • Group form field into sections
  • Add branching (skip irrelevant questions)
  • Choice of fields: Text, multiple-choice, options, date
  • Required field, or leave as optional
• Security
  • SSL (https) hosted securely on trusted Microsoft domain
  • Eliminates hacking attempts to main website
  • Overcomes email spam filtering since Microsoft™ emails have strong reputational trust
  • Respondent can request copy of form
  • Email notification complies with data privacy
    • You must be logged into Microsoft to view the form response
    • No form content (data) is emailed
    • No form data is stored on your website
  • All data is encrypted when stored online
  • Can be edited in Excel online and Excel desktop app
  • Can be viewed easily online
  • Form structure can be securely shared (duplicated)
• Ease of implementation
  • Generated URL can be used as a WordPress navigation (menu) link
  • Can open in new tab or same browser tab
  • Can be embedded within the WordPress page as "Custom HTML" block (iframe)
  • Can be self-edited rather than requiring a qualified web designer
  • Does not require complicated email setup or ever-changing anti-spam measures
• Ease of use
  • Perfectly adapts to mobile/desktop/tablet view
  • Updated to comply with continuously changing HTML/CSS standards
  • Trusted Microsoft™ brand with familiar interface
• Cost effective
  • No limit on number of form responses or emails per day
  • Included in cost of Microsoft™ 365 Business subscriptions
  • No drain on WordPress website bandwidth, database or file usage

How to implement: step 1 - design the form

Design your form at forms.office.com (contact us if you would like assistance, or need a subscription)

Ensure the following "Settings":

• "Who can fill in this form": Anyone can respond
• Options for responses: 
  • Accept responses
  • Show progress bar
  • Hide "Submit another response"
  • Customize thank you message
• Response receipts
  • Allow receipt of responses after submission
  • Get email notification of each response

Click button "Collect responses"

• Ensure "Anyone can respond"
• Tick "Shorten URL" & Copy link
  • This is the permanent URL for people to fill in the form
  • This can be used as the URL for navigation (menu) links and buttons within WordPress
• Click the embed button "</>" & Copy
  • This can be used an an "Custom HTML" in a WordPress page

How to implement: step 2 - use in WordPress

As a menu item:

• Appearance > Editor > Navigation: add the URL to the form (copied above)

As a button action:

• add the URL to the form (copied above) as the button action
• Specify target as "_blank" (new window) if you want your website to remain within the browser (form opens in new tab)

Embedded within a WordPress page:

• Place a Custom HTML block inside a Row block, setting the Alignment to "Full width", Block settings: Stack=vertically, justification centre

• For the Custom HTML content simply paste in the embed code copied above

Finally, be sure to test your form in a desktop and mobile browser, and send a test response to yourself. For more complicated forms that use branching, test the branching options to ensure respondents don't miss out important fields.

We hope that you found this article useful, and feel free to reach out to us if you want some additional expertise.