Forum Discussion
Need the ability for external users to upload files into MS Forms
Here, I had to create two different Forms and two different Power Automate automation because of Microsoft Forms limitations with guest users (registering name and submitting files). Ultimatly, it works, but using another tool like Google Forms or Jotform that allows thoses functionnalities would've been probably more efficient for our organisation.
mgiguere, may you explain to me the e2e solution that you have designed ? I have very similar need.
Users outside of the domain are categorized as Anonymous sender. Also I have organized a Onedrive folder to contain all documents. I am looking for a proper automation to link the two fields (eventually triggering some field of the form to the file on onedrive) so to have a sorted curated list, however it's not clear to me how, yet.
Thanks for your help
None. Anyone who makes a form like this is expecting a certain types of file. Anything that does not have the file extension that is expected gets discarded or blocked by the form itself in the upload process.
Some designer form probably want PDFs or Adobe files.
Some other forms probably want Word or Powerpoint files.
Some programmer forms probably want some code files along with some binary files.
It all depends on the use case.
Its not like sharepoint will execute any file on its own.... right?
- DthMaul, sure! I have two versions of the same form. The internal version endswith the form file component; the external form ends with a file request. The external form also have extra questions about name, email and organisation (they have to repeat this information even if it is in our azure active directory). In the file request, people also have to input their name.
In power automate, there are also two flows. Both will trigger when a form is submitted and will create a list element (the same list is used for externals and internals).
The internal flow will use the Forms output related to the question with the files. It will classify those files in a SharePoint library (again, the same library for internals and externals) and add metadata from the form answers.
The external flow will list all files in the folder used for file request. If any of those files have the same name as the form, they will classify the files in the SharePoint Library.
For the internal flow, there are less risk of errors. For external flow, many kind of errors might arise: if there's a typo in the name, if many people submit files at the same time, if the person submit the files after submitting the form, ... Still, we've used this for many months and most of the time, the flow is able to make the link between the file and the Form using their name.
I hope this can help you for your needs,
