How to create an automated workflow for Microsoft Forms

Many businesses are used to performing all their operations manually — whether that’s approving purchase orders, reviewing vacation requests, or scheduling meetings. But as your business grows and scales, an automated system can help keep processes streamlined, efficient, transparent, and compliant and save your team valuable time.

Workflow automation platforms, like Microsoft Power Automate, can help you design custom workflows that lay out project steps and stakeholders and automate tedious tasks, like sending emails, notifying reviewers, and confirming approvals. They can keep tasks, projects, and approvals organized and on track, so you never have to guess what’s next in the pipeline.

If your company relies on forms for data collection, scheduling events, or other purposes, you might be wondering how to integrate workflow automation with your form-based processes. Microsoft Power Automate integrates with Microsoft Forms to help you do that. This article will explain how.

We’ll also explain how Jotform offers a powerful, simple alternative to automating form-based workflows.

How to create a Power Automate flow for Microsoft Forms

Here’s how to use Power Automate to automate certain tasks after a form is submitted through Microsoft Forms. (You’ll need to have created a survey or form in Microsoft Forms before creating this flow.)

1. In Microsoft Power Automate, click Create and then select Automated flow.
2. Enter your flow name in the Flow name field.
3. Search for “forms” in the Choose your flow’s trigger field.
4. Check the box next to When a new response is submitted and click Create.
5. Select the form you’d like to use for this workflow under the Form Id dropdown menu.
6. Click New step.
7. Search for “forms” in the Choose an action field.
8. Choose Get response details under the Actions tab.
9. Select the form you’d like to use for this workflow under the Form Id dropdown menu.
10. Select Response Id.
11. Click New step.
12. Click in the Search connectors and actions field under the Choose an action box and search for the type of action you’d like to automate — for example “email” for sending an email.
13. Select the action you’re looking for and enter the details in the relevant menu that appears.
14. When you’re done, click Save.

To test your automated workflow, click Test.

While you can use Microsoft Power Automate to automate form-based workflows in Microsoft Forms, it isn’t the only solution on the market able to create powerful, streamlined approval workflows.

How to create a workflow with Jotform

With Jotform, a powerful form-based platform, you can build forms, create no-code apps, automatically populate databases, generate reports, and more. You can build forms from scratch or use one of 10,000-plus templates. Jotform is easy to navigate, user-friendly, robust, and more than equipped to handle all your business needs, regardless of size or industry.

Jotform Approvals also lets you design automated workflows for your forms with a visual, drag-and-drop interface. Simply choose the form you’d like to build a workflow for and use the workflow builder to add steps, like sending emails, gathering e-signatures, requesting approvals, and even automatically triggering actions in integrated software platforms, like Asana.

You can easily assign team members to each step and control the notifications they receive. You can also use conditional logic to make complex flows dependent on specific actions occurring and control task completion rules.

You can use Jotform to build dynamic, automated workflows to make your business more efficient. So, say goodbye to tedious manual tasks that eat up your time and hello to automated processes that keep everyone organized and in agreement.

Photo by Antoni Shkraba