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ravipokala's avatar
ravipokala
Copper Contributor
Jun 15, 2020

API to access MS forms

Looking for an API to access MS forms and pull the survey results on a weekly basis.
microsoft forms
Survey
BinaryBotany's avatar
BinaryBotany
Copper Contributor
Jun 16, 2022

This is my set up (set up from scratch to test it), hopefully it can help narrow down the problem:

 

  1. Set up a basic App registration (single tenant, no redirect URI). 
  2. Copy the application (client) ID
  3. Set up a secret. Copy the secret.
  4. NO API PERMISSIONS REQUIRED (as of writing this). This is strange, but for some reason, it works (for now)
  5. log into forms through your browser, then open a new tab and go to the following: https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/userInfo
  6. Grab the (user) id from that response, and use it in the following: https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/{Tenant_id}/users/{User_id}/forms
  7. Grab a (form) id from that response and now try the following: https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/{Tenant_id}/users/{User_id}/forms

  8. Testing in postman, authenticate using the following and copy the token:

    POST to "https://login.microsoftonline.com/{TenantID}/oauth2/v2.0/token"

    Body:

    • grant_type = client_credentials
    • client_id = {app_id copied}
    • client_secret = {app_secret copied}
    • scope = https://forms.office.com/.default
      • (@mpheasent used this with success as well: api://forms.office.com/c9a559d2-7aab-4f13-a6ed-e7e9c52aec87/.default)

9. Replicate the responses call with postman (note the URL encoding of (''):

GET "https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/{Tenant_id}/users/{user_id}/forms%28%27{Form_id}%27%29/responses"

Headers:

  • Authorization = Bearer {token}

 

Haven't figured out a single call to to get all forms for all users yet either. Hope this helps someone nonetheless.

Oleksiiho's avatar
Oleksiiho
Copper Contributor
Aug 21, 2022

BinaryBotany 

Thanks for your tips. Getting form data is pretty straightforward if OwnerId field is actually ObjectId of the user. But unfortunately "https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/<tenant_Id>/users/<form_owner_id>/forms" doesn't work if the form_owner_Id is a group ObjectId. I've tried to replace users segment with groups but to no avail

 

Some forms in my organization are under group ownership and I'm at loss how to get data about them without using delegated access

  • Oleksiiho's avatar
    Oleksiiho
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 02, 2022

    Oleksiiho 

    Maybe somebody will find it useful so I'll leave it here. 

     

    Unfortunately forms API doesn't work well for S2S solutions, simply because there's no way to get Group forms, and the problem is that sooner or later every user form get transferred to group ownership.

     

    So if you wanna to build something on server side with full support of any forms your best bet is using automation solutions, either it's Azure Logic Apps, or Power Automate, because they have native connectors to forms, and actions which can perform any http request as long as integration account does have O365 license.

     

    Also, there's always a choice to use MSAL and perform authentication using login / password of integration account (with assigned license of course), so you'll be able obtain appropriate user token silently, but I strongly suggest not to look into this avenue

  • Oleksiiho's avatar
    Oleksiiho
    Copper Contributor
    Aug 22, 2022

    mpheasant 

     

    When you logged in to the Forms portal, the browser makes different requests depending on form ownership type. Per my understanding "ownerId" field can contain 2 types of owners: individual users (who own / created the form initially), or Office 365 group (when user delegates form access / permissions / ownership to whole bunch of users i.e. group).

     

    So, in browser, if the formOwnerUserId is user's oid, it uses the following URL:

    "https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/<tenantId>/users/<formOwnerUserId>/forms"

    It's fine and works the same in delegated scenario and S2S

     

    But, if the formOwnerGroupId is office 365 group's oid, it uses another url segment (/groups/ instead of /users/):

    "https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/<tenantId>/groups/<formOwnerGroupId>/forms"

    And that's where the problem lies with S2S.. Apparently it doesn't recognize /groups/ segment and still requires /users/ one, but when used /users/ with formOwnerGroupId it just throws error because apparently it can't treat groupId as userId, meaning that S2S can't grab any data on form which is under group ownership

     

    You can get data using delegated access though, but still..

     

     

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