Transforming Data Collection with Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms is evolving! We're excited to announce powerful new features that enhance the accuracy and quality of your data collection through open text questions. These new rules provide greater control and flexibility, allowing you to tailor your forms to your specific needs.
This update allows you to create rules that validate the format of answers, such as email addresses and URLs. You can also mandate the presence of certain keywords within an answer or establish minimum and maximum length requirements. Let's dive in to explore how these new rules can enhance your daily work and data collection efforts.
Practical Applications and Examples
Imagine creating a customer satisfaction survey. With these new rules, you can significantly improve the relevance and usefulness of customer feedback. For example:
Input Must Contain a Certain Word: To gather detailed customer feedback on product experience, you can require that responses include keywords like 'experience' or 'satisfaction,' ensuring respondents focus on the core aspect of the survey.
Input Length Limits: In a feedback form, it's possible to set a character limit for responses, such as a maximum of 250 characters. This ensures concise, actionable feedback that's easy to analyze and act upon.
Email Validation: At the end of a survey, if you need to collect email addresses, the new email validation feature ensures that the input is in the correct format, reducing errors and improving follow-up communication.
Implementation How to Implement These New Rules
The process is straightforward. In your Microsoft Forms, select the open text question you want to modify. Access the settings for that question, and you'll find new options to set restrictions. Choose the rules that best fit your needs and set the parameters, such as the required keywords, character limits, or validation type (email/URL).
Additionally, Microsoft Forms allows you to provide default text within the text box to guide respondents and remind them of the correct format. This minimizes errors and ensures more accurate data collection.
“With these new features, you have greater control over the data you collect, ensuring higher quality results and a more efficient workflow.
Microsoft Forms Team
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Available Rules and Restrictions
Here’s a comprehensive overview of the rules you can apply to your open text questions:
Number: Greater than, Greater than or equal to, Less than, Less than or equal to, Equal to, Not equal to, Between, Not between, Whole number.
Text: Contains, Doesn’t contain, Length (Min count, Max count).
Email/URL: Validates email and URL formats.
Connect with the Community
This feature is currently fully available for Microsoft account holders and will gradually roll out to commercial users.
Have questions or want to discuss more? Join our online community to connect with us and exchange insights. Plus, stay tuned for our upcoming customer calls where we’ll share the latest features and roadmap!