With PowerApps nearing its first birthday (though still in preview), some people are asking whether it is ready for prime time and if not, what are the options. In this article, I’m presenting some common forms requirements and look at solutions that are available for free to build these forms.
Common Forms Requirements
If you have developed many forms in the past, you will probably agree that after finishing the first few, the ones that followed were permutations of the same requirements. Sure, all forms include some controls for data entry, field validation, and maybe some basic logic. The following categories represent these requirements:
Look & Feel
Who doesn’t like their website to look beautiful? The importance of the look and feel also holds true for the forms, particularly on public-facing websites and large intranets as they represent the brand of your organization. Some of the requirements that fall into this category are text fonts, colours of controls and other components, and general layout of the form.
Mobile Access
Working anywhere on any device is the new norm. With the massive increase in mobile device usage globally in the last decade, your users are expecting to do more and more on their mobile devices. Filling out forms falls into this category as well, particularly for users whose job is to work in the field. Imagine having a safety inspection worker filling out safety checklists on-site. Could you imagine them completing the lists on paper and then transcribing the information when their back in the office? Not likely.
Conditional Formatting
Injecting logic is one of the of the great benefits of digital forms. A form can request various type of information from the user based on some criteria, such as data that the user previously entered or information acquired indirectly, such as the user name and other information about them. Conditional Formatting can be used to reduce the size of the form to be completed by automatically ruling out additional questions.
Lookups
Another way to lessen the amount of user data entry is with lookups. Lookups let you query for specific information from SharePoint or other systems (e.g. SQL, Exchange, Active Directory, etc.). The fact that the user doesn’t need to enter the data also reduces the risk of incorrect data entries where corresponding field values don’t match (for example a person’s name, social security number, and address in the case of an insurance renewal).
Repeating Sections
Repeating sections are used to capture sets of fields when you don’t know how many sets will be filled-in. Paper forms usually contain a fixed number of fields or suggest attaching additional documents as needed. Properly built forms will let your users enter a variable number of values.
Available Solutions
Depending on your form needs listed above, you have a few options to choose. Here’s a quick summary of the various tools provided by Microsoft.
SharePoint List Form
These are the forms that are built directly into the different SharePoint lists and libraries. They get generated automatically by SharePoint when you create the lists. You can configure the lists to display the fields in particular orders and have validation through the SharePoint user interface. You want to further enhance the look and feel and functionality using client-side scripting.
SharePoint Designer
SharePoint Designer lets you modify the existing SharePoint list forms and also create new ones. Using SharePoint Designer provides you more flexibility than the default list forms but requires knowledge of HTML and client-side scripting. Look and Feel can be more easily configured using SharePoint Designer than the native lists.
InfoPath
InfoPath is a separate application that has been the preferred forms development tools for SharePoint by many developers for many years. It has a rich feature set that addresses all requirement categories listed above.
PowerApps
PowerApps is new forms visual forms development app that lets you create forms from SharePoint and numerous other apps from within the Office 365 apps family and outside. PowerApps allows you to select the layout you want to use for your forms app, and there is a definite focus on mobile access. As PowerApps is not a SharePoint-only forms solution, it requires you to install the PowerApps app on the device you want to use the forms on before being able to open them.
Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms is a survey-like education tool that as developed for creating quizzes and provide feedback. Its functionality is mainly geared around building forms that have branching, multiple choice, and short text answers. This app is only available to Office 365 Education tenants.
3rd Party tools
There are also some 3rd party tools available on the market the focus specifically on forms creation. Many of them use a visual interface and are very feature rich to meet all your forms needs. Such tools usually carry an additional cost with them, but before dismissing them as a viable option, you should assess your specific requirements around how many forms you need and how long it would take to build them using some of the other available tools.
With all these requirements and tools available to you, which is the best option? To derive the answer, you need to consider a few things for our organization, such as:
- How many forms will you need?
- Are they simple forms fields or complex requiring lookups, repeating sections, and other possible customizations?
- How often do the forms change?
- Do you own any of these tools and have staff that knows how to use them? If you’re looking to procure new tools, do you have the budget for the licenses and training?
- Is there staff in your organization that can build any necessary customizations?
- How long will the forms be used?
If you’re thinking of using SharePoint Designer or InfoPath, then you need to consider that both of these products are being phased out. According to Microsoft, InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 will be the last versions of those products. SharePoint Designer is not being re-released with SharePoint Server 2016, although we will continue to support custom workflows built with SharePoint Designer and hosted on SharePoint Server 2016 and Office 365. Support for InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 will match the support lifecycle for SharePoint Server 2016, running until 2026.
Here’s a quick summary of the available options.
Requirement | SharePoint List Form | SharePoint Designer | InfoPath | PowerApps | Microsoft Forms |
Look & Feel | Yes* | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Mobile Accessible | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Conditional Formatting | Yes* | Yes* | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Lookups | Yes* | Yes* | Yes | Yes | No |
Repeating Sections | No | No | Yes | No | No |
* Can be achieved through client-side scripting
