Can I see what forms have new answers?

Copper Contributor

I'm a teacher using Forms (with Teams) in Distance Learning. I use Forms constantly. I create a new one almost every day to check understanding, gather information, etc. I have about 100 students. Over the last 7 weeks, I've generated about 30-35 different Forms. It's only going to get worse. Students during this time are turning in things from weeks ago, sometimes. 


My question is this:

 

Is there a way to see which forms have had new answers submitted BESIDES looking at the number of responses?

 

I don't remember how many responses were given yesterday unless the difference is significant, and it would be nice if they could be highlighted or something. Is there something I can turn on?

 

Also, is there a way to organize the forms? I've seen that folders are not (for some odd reason) included. The Groups function is not really what I'm looking for (or anyone else, according to what I'm seeing). The explanations that, "You can search for the forms!" or, "You can change the color!" is downright ridiculous.

 

Anyway, is there a way to lock down order according to creation date or something? They seem to move around pretty randomly on any given day (which is also ridiculous).

3 Replies

@C_Elven there is no way to clearly highlight whether a new response has been submitted for a form, but what you do do is to build a simple flow in Power Automate which will email you whenever a new response is submitted. At its simplest it just needs the steps below,

 

simpleResponseFlow.png

But as you get more experienced there is more you can add, and we use it to send a email back to the responder with details of their response (so they can see we've got it and they've got a record of what they submitted). And you could also save the response to a SharePoint list behind your Teams site for long-term storage. That list could be ordered by the submitted/created date in reverse order so the newest on is always at the top. And ones submitted today could be color-coded automatically. But I appreciate that you would need a lot of lists for this given the number of forms you issue. But if there is any info or assistance I can give you about any of this do shout.

 

Unfortunately folders are not available for Forms. There are a lot of requests for this on the uservoice site at https://microsoftforms.uservoice.com/forums/386451-welcome-to-microsoft-forms-suggestion-box?query=f... but there's no indication that Microsoft are working on this which they really should be as, with Forms now in mainstream business as well as education people are creating more & more forms with no way to organise them.

 

In the spreadsheet behind each form I've never noticed an issue with the order, it just puts them in order of submission. Again, considering saving each response via a flow to a SharePoint list would resolve this.

 

Not sure I've helped much!

 

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

 

 

@RobElliott 
Thanks. That...that seems like it would generate a LOT of emails. I do appreciate the suggestions, though.

As a note about the order, I actually use the Forms web interface. I know that responses are ordered according to time of submission. I use the Excel sheets all the time (it's REALLY useful to find plagiarism from one student to another). What I was referring to was the order of the Forms/Quizzes themselves. There doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason in the way that they show up in the UI. 

@C_Elven we've had a form running over the last 2 weeks which has generated more than 900 responses, so an email to me for each one would have been impossible to manage. That's why I would always save the form responses into a SharePoint list and then work from there. 

 

Ah sorry, I misunderstood you about the order; no there doesn't seem to be any particular rhyme or reason to the order other than that recently edited forms are usually top left.

 

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User