Forum Discussion
Submitting Information for Multiple Activities in MS Forms in One Submission? [Table feature?]
Hi Everyone.
I'm new to the community, first time posting, so hello! I have an issue that I'm hoping the community can help me work through. I am trying to determine if data collection through MS Forms is the best solution or if there's a better way to do what we are attempting to do.
Context: Have a paper process for travel approvals and reconciliations within our organization. Long-term plan is to revise the business process but in the meantime, we need to capture travel information from our end users that is currently housed in multiple forms and systems, none of which talk to each other. Current method is to ask users to fill in travel details for their units in a GoogleDoc that everyone in the org can edit (!!!).
Issue: Would like to collect data via a form rather than having everyone in the org editing the same spreadsheet. However, most travel is managed by admin assts who would need to input travel data for multiple (dozens) of users at a time, making submitting one response per traveler in a form frustrating.
It would be easier if end users could submit answers within a table, but to my knowledge Forms doesn't have that option.
E.g.
| Traveler Name | Location of Travel | Conference Name | Total Cost of Travel |
| John Smith | San Diego, CA | ABC Assoc 2020 Annual Conference | $3,000 |
| Jane White | Atlanta, GA | NAXYZ 2020 Annual Meeting | $2,500 |
Is there a better way to do gather this information that makes it as easy as possible on the end user without them having to make multiple submissions?
Hi rleer
A few questions:
- Do you have access to Forms Pro (potential costs associated) or Forms only?
- Do you have access to Power Automate to be able to create flows?
If you want admin assistants to be able to create the travel approvals for multiple people but don't want them to do it one at a time, then it might not be the best option, and you might be better of creating spreadsheets still.
However, if you want to have all of the requests available on one area, but don't want everyone having access to the same spreadsheet, then Forms Pro might be your answer. That then takes you back to having the admin person filling out the form.
What you COULD potentially do (assuming you have Forms Pro and Power Automate) is have a survey that asks how many people do you want to submit in the request for the first question. Then use branching rules to determine how many other questions show. However, you would only likely be able to do a handful of people at a time as you would need to have a question for each number. So it would be a question for Traveler Name One, then a question for Traveler Name Two, Traveler Name Three and so on. Those questions would need to exist so you could show or hide them depending on the number selected at the start.The best option if you are looking at a new process, is one form submission per traveller. It's the same amount of typing, and it means you can control what happens with the responses a little easier.
Hope it makes sense, any questions, let me know! This might help in terms of how you could add the responses to Excel/SharePoint etc. - https://meganvwalker.com/extracting-survey-variables-from-forms-pro-responses-without-access-to-cds/ - this is with Forms Pro.
Forms doesn't have a grid editing function like you are describing so it can be a bit of a challenge.
But what you might be able to do is use PowerAutomate (the workflow processing engine from Microsoft) in conjunction with say Sharepoint and or Excel to ease your pain.
A more complicated but more powerful option might be to look at PowerApps. Microsoft might even have an expense management application as an example out there.
Hope this helps
