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Michael-McDonald's avatar
Michael-McDonald
Copper Contributor
May 19, 2021

Forms data storage

Does Microsoft have future plans to store data created in Forms in the data centre's closest to where the Form originated example. Australia?

 

As Country's become more risk adverse to storing data overseas (i.e. US / Europe) this may see many future customers seek alternative platforms for running forms, surveys and workflows.

 

Regards

 

Microsoft Forms
  • gchickpv's avatar
    gchickpv
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 24, 2023
    Hi. I googled this today and found that MS now says that Forms data is stored in Australia.

    "For customers in Australia, Microsoft Forms customer data will be stored at rest in Australia for all new tenants using Forms and existing tenants that have not previously used Forms."

    (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/data-storage-for-microsoft-forms-97a34e2e-98e1-4dc2-b6b4-7a8444cb1dc3)

    However, the statement is conditional, and leaves a lot of ambiguity for us existing tenants who HAVE used Forms. Is our data still in the US? If we create new Forms where does the data go? What bout new submissions for existing forms? And what does 'previously' mean - previous to when?

    Is there someone at MS listening to this who can answer these questions (and maybe make sure that online documentation is actually helpful in this case?)
  • DataSparke's avatar
    DataSparke
    Copper Contributor
    May 10, 2022
    Thank you for raising this! I'm amazed Forms data is stored separately from other MS data. This really does need to be looked at by Microsoft.
  • SkyeF's avatar
    SkyeF
    Brass Contributor
    Apr 22, 2022

    This is an active concern for whole sectors. It makes little sense to the end user that their OneDrive, Sharepoint and Exchange data can be stored regionally but Forms data cannot when there are privacy laws governing data sovereignty - see where the govt here actually discourages its use: https://desktop.gov.au/blueprint/office-365.html#microsoft-forms . It's creating painful workarounds to come up with locally stored alternatives which is a missed opportunity.

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