Forum Discussion
MS Form - Add to home screen links not working
Hi,
We have a form created that is opened to all to fill out (No auth required) . When creating a link to it, wether a direct link or QR code, it loads up fine on IOS devices (safari). The issue is when wanting to save that form (or any form for that matter) as a home screen shortcut on the IOS device, the link that IOS is trying to save, isn't specific to that form, but rather to the very general forms.office.com website. When creating the shortcut, we can't modify the link, and makes the home screen shortcut useless.
We tried the same thing on Android, and we encounter the exact same issue.
- I have the same problem. Created a form for people to report volunteer hours worked. It's an anonymous form. Adding to iOS home screen breaks the functionality.
Classic modern Microsoft behaviour, pushing people to sign in, sign up instead of valuing basic functionality.- I also have the same problem. I have two forms for my team that are entered every day. I am using anonymous forms so they don't have to log in and waste time and effort doing that in the awful forms interface on the iphone. The work around doesn't change anything anyways for microsoft. My team just have the anonymous form bookmarked on safari. But there was no reason to regress this functionality, all it does is make things more difficult for tech challenged end users. I have to bookmark forms for several of my team members, a homescreen icon was ideal for the month that it worked and we were using it.
- So after a few exchanges with Microsoft Support, and this being brought to the Forms development team, this was a change on their end, which they don't intend to roll back. As a much less convenient alternative, the forms can be bookmarked in a browser and it will be saved correctly and can be accessed from there.
This is also giving us problems in my company - MS Forms must be easy to access for our mobile workers and as stated above, this change will impact a lot of people and deteriorate simple business processes across the world.
- same issue here, as all our Team Leaders are our people managers and use iPads everyday... instead of this being an easy icon added to their home screens, now they have to go back through and pull the link off of email, teams message or bookmark it. This was intended to be a quick and easy creation... not add more time for them to be aggravated with extra steps to accomplish a task.
- Similar to the responses above, we have team members save specific forms to their phone home screen for quick access. Our Forms are setup to only allow those within the organization to access. This change seems easily reversible for the development team. This is the biggest disappointment since Bing.
wwilhite Just to add my feedback on this. This is a terrible move by the development team. We used specific Form URLS as apps in the workplace and it was very convenient. Now I can only install the Forms app. No choice between the specific URL and the MS Forms app.
It is not functional and has ruined some simple Form app processes we had set up that worked very well. Can't understand this change. Hopefully it is reconsidered.
MarcLaroche hi I noticed this issue today and found a work around. Save the Ms form as a bookmark and then create a shortcut that says open bookmark (select the from list). You can edit the bookmark name and icon and then there is an add to home screen option. It works just a quickly as saving the bookmark to home screen.
- Thanks, might be one of the easier workarounds, but remains more complicated then we'd like for our industrial environment end-users.
The best workaround which allows for customization of the appearance of the shortcut on the home screen. Thank you Charlotte230
WeiTangMicrosoft
Hi MarcLaroche, This is by design as we have started to support download Forms as an app starting on Oct.
However, I do want to understand more regarding your scenario and see how we can help. Could you please elaborate more on why you want to save it as a home screen shortcut? What's the use case of it?
- Hi,
Not sure if you can access it, but the use case was recorded on a Teams call with an MS Engineer (TrackingID#2312180040010439).
At a High level, our Health and Safety team created multiple Forms that are required to be completed by employees & contractors before entering specific work locations to identify safety risks and mitigations. QR codees were generated to those forms, and information published and printed on how to save them to homescreen and be able to access them easily without needing to scan the QR codes everytime. This was printed out in many many copies, and right after being started to be used, stopped working.- Hello,
We have encountered this same issue with a new created form.
Although helpful, seeing this thread is very upsetting. I moved us from Qualtrics to forms as it was much easier for our teams when rounding or completing observations.
I see that this thread started in December, have there been any updates or intentions to roll back this functionality?
Just been hit by this today and it's horrible. I want a team of about 40 not-very-technical people to have a simple shortcut on their phones to fill in a form. This used to work Seems simple, but now broken. No sign of a 'Forms' app on iOS.
Do I really have to waste time struggling to build a PowerApp because this has been broken? :(
- DingkunXieAt present, Microsoft Forms does not support this particular scenario.
- Hi Xie, This used to work before in October. Something changed since then.
- DingkunXieIt could be a regression. As I checked the current implementation, the start_url in the manifest is set to a static link '/?pwa=1'. I will open a bug report for the Product Team to fix this issue. Thank you for reporting it.
- I have the same problem. Honestly, it does my head in why - for Microsoft - it seems to be more important for people to be able to create a form from a mobile phone rather than respond to one. Go figure.
MattBee That's what I'm seeing as well.
C'mon Microsoft, just give us back the ability to save an uncompleted form to our mobile homescreens. It must be impacting millions of people.
- Well, I have found a solution for Android devices. You cna get the Website Shortcut app from the Play Store and install any links you like. Still, it used to be soo much easier. Here's a link to the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deltacdev.websiteshortcut&pcampaignid=web_share
- We're no longer using Google MS forms
I have found another workaround for the problem without a 3rd party app using Airplane mode
- Open the Chrome browser
- Type in the URL you are trying to set a shortcut for and go to it.
Put your phone in airplane mode and disable WiFi to turn off all internet access after it loads
- Press the 3 dots and select Add to Home Screen
- Select Create Shortcut
- edit the name you wish it to be called and press Add
- if it comes up asking Add to Home screen press Add again
Turn off airplane mode and you're golden.This applies to Android as high as version 12 and it still works
- Soul crushing, I've just built a form for my wife's non-profit to use and the exact mechanism that makes getting to the form easy just redirects to the app rather than the form. Why would anyone want any other function than to fill out a form, the link to which they specifically added to their mobile desktop???
