Ownership transfer of your employees forms
Published Mar 27 2019 02:34 AM 78.5K Views
Microsoft

If you’re the global administrator of an organization, you’re probably familiar with digital property sitting in the account of an employee that has left your company and/or whose account has been disabled. To prevent digital property loss, you can now gain access to the forms of that former employee or from a disabled account.

 

 

ownership - move page.PNG

 

To transfer ownership of a form, administrators can access the user’s portal via a specialized URL. After that you can move any forms to your own or another group’s portal via the existing Move feature. Learn more about how to transfer ownership of a form.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions 

 

Q: I’m a colleague or manager of a former employee. Can I transfer ownership of my former colleague’s form?

A: No. Please reach out to your company’s global administrator to transfer ownership.

 

Q: An employee left the company a few months ago. Can I still transfer ownership?

A: Due to GDPR regulations, data is only stored for up to 30 days after an employee leaves an organization. After 30 days, his or her data is permanently deleted. Please ensure you move ownership of a form within 30 days of an employee’s departure.

 

Q: How can we prevent form data loss from a former employee?

A: Before an employee departs, ask him or her to transfer the ownership of their forms to a group. This guarantees the forms data goes to the most relevant new group owner.

Keep in mind that a form can only have one owner at a time, so ownership transfer to a group ensures that form data will be preserved as long as the group exists.

 

 

 

 

26 Comments
Iron Contributor

Is this also possible with Sways?

Iron Contributor

data is only stored for up to 30 days after an employee leaves an organization

What defines "leaves an organization"? After the account has been disabled or deleted in AD?

Microsoft

Hi @TobiasAT, that's right that if an account is disabled or deleted in AD, the admin can move the account's form's ownership to prevent data loss. 

Bronze Contributor

@Si Meng this would be more useful to me as an admin if I could change ownership for a form for an employee that is still active.  

Iron Contributor

Hope they enable a PowerShell cmdlet for this to transfer it. That way we can automate the process.

Copper Contributor

This is really good news! But the article states "administrators can access the user’s portal via a specialized URL." What specialized URL? How do you get that? Thanks.

Copper Contributor

So the Admin can gain access to the forms but they can only be transferred to a group? We may not want an entire group to be able to modify a form... why can't the forms be transferred to another specific user to manage?

Microsoft

@David Ferber transferring to another specific user to manage is indeed in our backlog. Sorry that it's not currently available yet. 

Microsoft

@Lucinda you can find the specialized link in the help document, please note this will only work for global admin.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/transfer-ownership-of-a-form-921a6361-a4e5-44ea-bce9-c4ed63....

 

https://forms.office.com/Pages/delegatepage.aspx?originalowner=[email address]

Note: email address = Email address of the form owner that has left your organization and/or whose account has been disabled.

Microsoft

@Alexander Broere thank you for the feedback. It's not currently in the backlog yet, but we'll keep note of this suggestion. Thanks.

Microsoft

@Eric Davis thank you for the feedback. Due to data privacy reason, this is not currently supported. Is it possible to ask the active employee to move the form his/her self? May I understand more background about this ask?

Brass Contributor

Can we move for transfer ownership with existing employees? Or can existing employees transfer ownership to another person? I run into this a lot when asked to attach a Flow to a Form. I must copy the Form so I become the "owner/creator" and then I can attach Flow. I'm not able to attach Flow to Forms created from Teams/O365 Group so I worry/wonder if a Form is Moved to an O365 Group, will that break any backend Flow?

Silver Contributor

How can we move a form from the current Group to a different Group?

Microsoft

@Dean Gross thanks for your question. This capability is not currently available. It's in the backlog. 

Copper Contributor

Transferring ownership of a "Forms Pro" form?

It seems that you can only "move" a form to a group if it is just a form. if it is a "Pro" you cannot move it. is this in planning?

Thanks in advance

Copper Contributor

Same question as @Numpty_ 

Copper Contributor

@Si Meng I have the same question that was raised by Eric Davis. One of our user is on Paternal leave. We would like to transfer the ownership of the form to other user or group. It doesn't allow with delegate access URL as the account is still active. Please let me know using Global Administrator role, if we have the functionality now to transfer the ownership of the forms whose account is active. 

Copper Contributor

a quick option for your employee on leave - IT admin could temporarily disable this user account. Then with a disabled account follow the directions here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/transfer-ownership-of-a-form-921a6361-a4e5-44ea-bce9-c4ed...

Copper Contributor

Hi,

Please advice which role can be used to transfer ownership of resigned staff from the admin portal.  We use PIM (Privileged Identity Management) Mean need to request specific access instead of Global Admin.

Iron Contributor

@Theebhan08 , yes, it's ridiculous that only the Global Admin can xfer ownership of a form (especially for large organizations with thousands of users). 

Furthermore, it seems the global admin can only move the Form to their own groups now (I could have sworn I could move it to an individual using the delegatepage.aspx previously). 

 

The global admin may not belong to every group in the organization, so they can't transfer it to the correct group.  Adding the global admin to the group just to do a forms ownership xfer may not be possible due to security/privacy/legal requirements re: the information discussed in the intended destination group.  This is especially pertinent and also likely in GCC, GCC High, and DOD tenants.

Copper Contributor

just a tip....I found the following.  Hope it helps:

https://forms.office.com/pages/delegatedpage.aspx?originalowner=<Useridemail>

Example

https://forms.office.com/pages/delegatedpage.aspx?originalowner=jdoe@whateverdotcom

 

I also noticed this same address....at the top of this article so apologies if its repeated.  I tried it and it work for me as I knew the users email who created the from.  Just remember the 30 deletion rule (I think that applies also for office 365 users converted to shared mailboxes)

 

NOTE!:

The user either has to be a shared mailbox or a deleted user in order for that to work otherwise you get a n error stating the user is still a valid account.  Of course this solution will only work if you know the users email address that owned the forms.  I hope it helps in some small way;

Copper Contributor

Couple things to add:

Form is still active even if account is in Azure AD recycle bin.

 

It is possible to find ObjectID of form owner by using method found in this thread :

 

1. Access the form using this designer direct URL https://forms.office.com/Pages/DesignPage.aspx?origin=shell#FormId=<YourFormID>

 

2. Inspect the network traces. You will find a request similar to this 

https://forms.office.com/formapi/api/72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47/users/e5351c57-d147-418e-89ab-3a3d50c235b6/light/forms('v4j5cvGGr0GRqy180BHbR1ccNeVH0Y5Bias6PVDCNbZUOUg4TkZJUEswSVQ1ODhNNkpHVVlMMldPTi4u')?$select=id,... 

 

3. The ID in bold is the AAD ID of the user

 

4. Use Graph Explorer - Microsoft Graph to run this request to retrieve the username and email address of the owner https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/<UserID>

Iron Contributor

This is just one small part of a pervasive failure in Microsoft's 365 offerings. How many times do you think an employee leaves an organisation and is directly replaced by a new recruit? Now, I have never been able to find a single official Microsoft document that covers what you have to do to ensure every piece of the web of a person's existence, throughout the entire 365 ecosystem is reallocated to the new recruit. There are a myriad of threads across as many fora for pont solutions, such as moving their mail, OneDrive documents etc. But none yet covers everything and a significant number contradict, are out of date or are simply incorrect. Microsoft documentation needs to cover real life scenarios for its customers, detailing precisely what needs to happen for each of the most common scenarios. Such as, a new employee, moving employee, leaving employee, promoted employee. With point instructions for each of the many 365 products. Each time one of these events occurs there are multiple points of contact for the entity, reaching out through the web of Microsoft products and normally this just ends up getting things tied in terrible knots or valuable data simply disappearing into the rest of the organisational amnesia that occurs when people move within or leave a company.

Iron Contributor

It is a major problem for my organisation that we cannot transfer ownership of a form before an employee leaves. There are times when an employee creates a form and we need to have administrative oversight. I work in a school where it is important that we can moderate and review the use of forms, especially if they go out to vulnerable children, parents and other third parties. It would be really great to have a better way to control and manage Forms in our tenancy. I know it is possible to do an Audit in Microsoft Purview (Compliance) but it is very unwieldy and if an employee has made the form private, I cannot check the form for security purposes. It has been years, but I really hope a more comprehensive admin experience can be implemented as this is a very popular tool, but the danger of exfiltration is huge with this product.

If you are on the development team for Microsoft Forms, please let me know if this is something under consideration for the future.

Copper Contributor

How do i transfer the ownership to another user instead of a group?

Copper Contributor

Hello Microsoft,

 

it would be very much appreciated by admins and users alike if there was a way to transfer ownership to another user whilst users are still active.

 

I will be retiring soon after over 30 years as an IT Admin managing Windows and Office among other things, and have created a large number of Forms which different colleagues will need to manage later. I also have Power Automate flows connected to these Forms. Duplicating a Form would create a new Form ID and dynamic content in the form is not always easily identifiable by an answer to a question. Sometimes an ID is used instead. Now for such Flows where I need to grab data input from the Form and update e.g. an Excel spreadsheet I would need to go through every Flow linked to a Form (some very long and complicated) and determine which dynamic values would need to be changed within the Flow. Moving the Flow to another user account would avoid such issues as the Form ID would not change and neither would any dynamic values whose fields are identified by IDs rather than clear text. Users and admins have been waiting years for this possibility as can be seen from the date this post was created. It would be great to see this available soon, or will Forms have been replaced before this ever happens? Thank you

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