Advice on Forms capabilities

[darrenbrown]

Hi

A bit of a strange one, but I'm looking for advice as to whether forms is the right tool to create company checklists? For some reason our company IT manager has turned off our access to forms, teams and most new features, which in my opinion is like not letting us use word, excel etc. 

So at present we're using a third party to create forms we can use of smartphones for things such as safety observations, daily forklift inspections, vehicle inspection, site inspection etc. This is to move forward from using paper checklists that are then scanned and saved in out management system, but using third party is going to cost and I'm wondering if forms (or anything else in 365) can do what we require.

So, as an example a warehouse inspection would be a question such as is the fire exit clear, then a choice answer of Yes, No or N/A but we'd require the ability for the user to then take a picture that can be attached to the question, especially if the answer is no and is posing a safety risk.

Regards reviewing the data, we have multiple sites worldwide so a question on the form would have a choice to select the applicable site, and I'd require the ability to be able to search sites and the drill down in to users etc. Nothing too complex, but like I say without access I'm unsure what forms can do.

I basically want to be able to present a case of why should we be paying a third party, if we have the tools at our finger tips but we're not allowed access.

Thanks in advance

[#2]

@darrenbrown, although Forms can do what you require and is simple to set up I would suggest you also consider having a SharePoint list with a customised PowerApps form (called a canvas app) which gets its fields from the columns in the SharePoint list. The link to create this is at the top of the list. That will allow you have a nicely-formatted form with checkboxes, dropdowns, toggles, text columns, photo fields, attachments, logo etc. And, when you save it the data is saved to the list. As an example, a large form that we are using (which I built) is shown below and as well as saving the data to the underlying SharePoint list it also triggers an approval workflow via Flow.

I hope your IT Manager has a re-think as the new tools in Office 365 are really good and can save huge amounts of time and increase productivity.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Flow Community Super User

[#3]

@RobElliott I'm wondering if there are any tutorials etc available on what you suggest?  I too was looking for solutions for logging QHSE inspections via Microsoft forms. Thanks

@darrenbrown Did it work out for you?

[#4]

@rcoural A very good source of tutorials are the videos on YouTube by Shane Young who covers Power Apps, Power Automate and SharePoint and is an excellent teacher.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

[#5]

Thanks!

[#6]

@RobElliott Would you be willing to provide some more detail on how you created this document, this is exactly what I need to do.  We are building a Quality Management System in SP.

Thanks,

Larry