Pre-fill Responses in Your Microsoft Forms

junyuB 

For a starting point, I think it's a great idea.

However, to make it even more useful, I feel there are still some missing functionalities.

Specifically, what I think is needed is the ability to hide pre-filled question items from the respondent. In other words, since you can create multiple URLs with different pre-filled values/responses for one or more question items from a single Form, and send them to the appropriate respondents, there may be cases where you don't want the respondents themselves to be able to change or edit the responses for those items.

And, if a question item is not meant to be answered or edited, there's no need to show that item to the respondent at all.

There is an issue with cookies for this.

Instead of retaining the URL, the page re-directs you to the form original URL and seemingly uses cookies to retain the answers.

This is not working when having multiple pre-filled URLs, the form remembers the first pre-filled responses even if you click on a different link.

Also, the branching is not working. If you prefill a response that has a section, you see a submit button and you can submit a half completed submission with no respect for mandatory fields that would usually be present.

Very good functionality but 2 major bugs.

Definitely the need to have hidden input parameters for the respondent is very necessary. So far I haven't found a way to do it.

This is a really nice move towards missing functionality and I'm looking forward to implementing.

However, the character limit is still 256, which is not an issue with the initial URL link, but if I try to ad any dynamic input the character limit sets back in and causes a value error. The form id takes up literally half the character limit and the question ids are so long that '&[question id]&' takes up 35 characters. Only 2 or 3 dynamic inputs can be used before breaching the 256 limit. 

This is really preventing the pre-filled link form being utilised effectively within hyperlink functions in excel etc.

junyuB is it possible to have the product team notified of the bug where the URL is saved on the first call? It's impossible to use the feature more than once.

Thanks

Hidden fields are essential for surveys/polls as well as having the prepopulated values for those hidden fields in the invite URL. Without some way to track who it was sent to and who the response is from, you have created siloed data and more work for a human to try and synchronize data. Bad Bad Bad in 2024. Further, you need to track and capture partial/incomplete surveys as well.

A core goal of any survey is to keep it short to increase the odds that your target audience will take it. A key strategy for this is to not ask redundant questions for data you already have on the target audience. Starting each survey response as a blank slate or requiring them to validate a prepopulated answer all reduce the number of responses you will get.

MS Forms team you are very close to getting to this survey nirvana, please keep moving in this direction!

MajorMojo thanks for the reply, yes I have tried the incognito approach. It requires you to enter your Microsoft credentials every time as for my use case this is a form restricted to the organisation. 

In my opinion the answers would be best retained in the URL and not converted to local browser storage as this is preventing the user from moving between different prefilled links.

This is so close to being helpful, but being able to prevent the user from changing the prefilled values is a MUST.  I want to be able to 1) make the prefilled values read-only to the user and, sometimes in addition, 2) be able to hide the pre-filled values completely from the user. 

Finally going in the right direction, but:

- why I can't save pre-filled form and use it another time?

- when client sends corrected pre-filled form, why I can't use it as another pre-filled form? Like an every year survey for clients, where they can see their last years answers?

Tnx

TakuyaHirose I haven't tried it myself, but you could have those prefilled answers to be hidden somewhere at the end of the form, and then use branching on the previous step to skip over them. They wouldn't be presented to the submitter, although I don't know if the form will still record these answers if they're not ever shown. Worth a try.