Newbie Help With Forms

[Nirmesh Varsani]

Hello I am new to Office 365 and I am keen to start streamlining our outdated practices.

I have a regular customer who orders doors from us that we manufacture to his requirements.

I would like to design some forms to initially capture the requirements for quoting and then capture any additional info for manufacturing as currently when he places an order I always have to chase for information.

I have looked around the web but as my enquiry is quite specific I haven't had much joy.

1. If I send him a form can he fill it and submit it as often as required or would I need to send him a form each time?

2. Once a form is filled does it automatically populate the results in an excel file or do I need to specifically select forms for excel when designing?

I would ideally like an initial question to ask if he requires a quote or wants to place an order.

If he selects Quote then I would like the relevant questions to appear to capture as much info in the first instance as possible.

I would then like (fingers crossed) to be able to provide a price in real time according to his answers which could be calculated from excel tables. 

If possible I would also like for him to be able to attach some images and pdf files for any accompanying sketches or details.

If he selects Place an order, would it be possible for him to then see a list of the quotes which are live and allow him to choose one?

If so then could the form he filled in previously appear and allow him to make changes before placing the final order?

Ideally again if possible any changes to the form would update his real time quote.

Once he places that order then I would have all the information I need to process it and would allow a junior to take receipt and get on with the order.

Perhaps wishful thinking, at the very least I would like two forms one to create a quote and one to capture info for orders if my above idea is not achievable.

If anyone has a good resource for learning the detailed ins and outs of forms I would be grateful if you can share the link so I can educate myself.

Other than that I sincerely hope someone can help! Thanks in advance.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

You can't really do much of this with Forms. It's too basic of a program. What you would need is PowerApps connected to a SharePoint list. The problem is you can't collect data anonymously over the internet with Powerapps.

If this is someone you work with a lot thou. You might be able to look into Setting up a SharePoint site to collect this information, then inviting them as external guest to your site. They would require a Microsoft account to gain access but "I think" they will be able to then go to an orders list, to place an order using PowerApps customized attached SharePoint form. Def. not something that is going to be easy but it's doable if it's a close partner you work with all the time.

If it's something that could be random customers over time that processes would be problematic and I would suggest the SharePoint idea, but possibly look at K2, or Nintex Forms which can give you anonymous form functions and are highly customization.

[#3]

Christopher, Firstly Thank you for your response it is very much appreciated.

About 20 minutes after my post I started messing around with powerapps and the same realisation dawned on me.

It is a loyal customer and it is only for them that I wanted to introduce a system as they order from us several times a week.

Thank You for the suggestions of K2 and Nintex I will have a look into them.

I guess I could build a powerapp for myself to pump out the quotes, and just get them to fill in a form made in forms as a work around.

Would I be able to send them a form once which they could fill in for each enquiry? 

OR 

Should I make up a form on word or similar that they can just fill save as and send across each time?

[#4]

Well you can have Microsoft Flow handle the invoice instead of powerapps if that is the case, because you can have forms kick off a Flow when someone submits the form. Then you can have that do some magic, then turn around and spin up an invoice via e-mail.

But yeah if you create a form. They can just keep using the same link to fill it out. The data will just keep going to the back end in forms, OR if you connect it to a Flow, you can **bleep** it to a SharePoint list or a whole host of other systems using a connector.

[#5]

Christopher, Thank You again!

That is a very good suggestion...the trouble with 365 and other similar ecosystems is that there are 10 ways to do everything so thanks for suggesting a less manual way forward.

Are you suggesting that I create a flow which triggers the powerapp to run once the form is submitted and produce and email the quote?

SharePoint...connectors...I have yet to get very far in my learning!

I am still wondering whether to use one drive to store and access files, or use sharepoint.

I created a sharepoint site today just to have a play around with it, but I am unsure if I should create one per customer and then have the project files / task lists etc within that or whether to just have the one main share point and create a document folder for each customer (mirroring my current file explorer one)

[#6]

Powerapps is really just for user interaction so you wouldn't send it to powerapps unless you are using it to make changes or calculate the invoice manually. If it's basic math stuff etc. you can set rules etc. and actions/conditions in flow, you don't need powerapps at all. Use forms to collect the data, then a flow that has "When new form submission happens" take that data and do x with it using the functions etc. in flow, then you can take those variables etc. and use an action to send an e-mail back to the person submitting it using the variables you generated from taking that data in.

[#7]

Thanks again Chris I will have a play around with it as per your advice