Forum Discussion
When will Microsoft Forms be finalized
Hi All,
I was wondering if a microsoft employee could provide some color around when Forms will have a final version release? Also has there been an instance where something was put out in "release" state and then scrapped? My team is planning on developing a significant number of flows based off of form responses and we want to be certain we won't have to duplicate the effort in 6 months to a year.
Although in the IT world one can never be sure, Microsoft has a current focus of Cloud first, mobile first. All their efforts are focussed in this direction. All of their products which conform to this, I believe, are relatively safe for the long term, especially where there is no duplication or large overlap with another offering. Although there may be overlap between Forms and other offerings, Forms is the newer and more actively developed offering.
Microsoft has put a significant amount of effort into Forms. It has been around for a while now, but until recently, was only available to education tenants. Since around June 15, 2017 Forms is now also available to business tenants, noted as a preview. Microsoft is expanding Forms availability, therefore I don't think they are going to scrap it anytime soon.
John ToewsMicrosoft
Hi Giovanni, thanks for the question. The Microsoft Forms Public Preview for commercial customers is being rolled out now to our Office 365 commercial subscribers. Forms has been generally available to education customers since August 2016. For general availability of Forms for commercial customers, at this time we expect this in calendar year 2017.
Microsoft Forms is a simple, lightweight tool that lets you easily create surveys, quizzes, and polls. It sounds like you might be creating business solutions, and you may want to check out SharePoint, PowerApps and Flow for scenarios like creating apps or business logic, or that integrate with data from other systems. https://products.office.com/en-us/business/business-process-automation
Although in the IT world one can never be sure, Microsoft has a current focus of Cloud first, mobile first. All their efforts are focussed in this direction. All of their products which conform to this, I believe, are relatively safe for the long term, especially where there is no duplication or large overlap with another offering. Although there may be overlap between Forms and other offerings, Forms is the newer and more actively developed offering.
Microsoft has put a significant amount of effort into Forms. It has been around for a while now, but until recently, was only available to education tenants. Since around June 15, 2017 Forms is now also available to business tenants, noted as a preview. Microsoft is expanding Forms availability, therefore I don't think they are going to scrap it anytime soon.
- I would approach this very cautiously. While Forms has been in use by the Education tenants for a while, there are many examples of significant changes occurring during Preview stages of other products. PowerApps, Flow, Teams and PowerBI all receive updates at least monthly and even though Forms is much simpler, being prepared for frequent changes should be included in your project planning efforts.
Agreed Dean_Gross. Changes such as Forms being available, turned on and licensed to users in a tenant, then mysteriously unavailable. I had it working, the tile was available. Now the tile has gone and I can't access it via the direct link to forms.microsoft.com.
John Toews, can you shed some light on the rollout? Is it being retracted from some tenants / regions?
- Agreed @darell this kind of behavior is most unpleasant and strange!
