Microsoft Forms: The little Wonder Weapon
with which you can organize
your professional Everyday Life

Become a talented Organizer with just a few Clicks

Coordinating with colleagues by email can take up a lot of time in the working day. Especially when it comes to “important” things, such as the joint lunch break. One colleague suggests option A, another suggests B because A is too expensive and yet another likes C best. This can quickly turn into a kind of “email ping pong”.

Such an arrangement doesn’t have to be complicated at all. It’s really easy, especially in Outlook, if you know how to do this. Let’s find out how you can become the organizational talent of the office with just a few clicks and without having stress.

There are two variants of how you can set up a poll easily in Outlook. And that’s exactly what you’re going to take a closer look at now.

Create Polls easily with Microsoft Forms

Polls are created and managed in Outlook via Microsoft Forms. The first step is to search for “Forms” in all Outlook apps. It may be that the app is not displayed directly in the quick view. Simply select “All Apps” and you should find “Forms”. To conveniently set up a poll, click on “+ New Form”.

A new tab will then open in your browser. Give the form a name and perhaps even a description. Then the only thing missing is the question, right? You can ask it by clicking on “+ Add new question”.

Here you are faced with your first small challenge but one that you can easily overcome. You have to decide how your colleagues should answer the question. Below you can find all the possibilities so that you get a quick overview of all the options. We’ll use the question about today’s lunch as an example.

• Choice

  You and your colleagues have often been out together in the lunch break and have a handful of favorite restaurants. So create the choices yourself with the usual ones and simply let your colleagues decide what they fancy today.

• Text

  You can use this option to collect suggestions first. Perhaps someone ate at a delicious Italian restaurant at the weekend that they would like to go to with their colleagues.

• Rating

  As the name suggests, a visit to a restaurant of your choice during your lunch break could be evaluated afterwards. This would give you the opportunity to collect feedback, for example.

• Date

  Plan ahead by asking your colleagues when they all have time.

Several answers can be selected in this poll:

Once you have created your poll, you can change the “Design” if you wish, or display it in the “Preview”.

Now all you need to do is click on “Share”. A small menu will open in which you have lots of different options for sharing.

First of all, you can simply copy and even shorten the link available there, in order to send it to your colleagues conveniently via Teams, for example. Of course, there is also an “Email” button, which you can use to send an email. Other options include a QR code and embedding your poll in code. Quite a lot of choice, isn’t it?

You can find out how to proceed once you have received your answers a little further down.

Save Time with quick Polls

This second option is a little quicker because you will now learn how to embed a poll directly into an email by opening a “New Mail” in Outlook. Formulate a few nice words and perhaps explain what this message is for. Then open the advanced options in the lower menu bar (the button with the three dots) and then click on “Poll”.

A small menu should now appear on the right, in which you may have to log in again with your Office 365 data.

Now you can create a poll using the example of planning the next lunch break described above. For this, you can give certain choices and allow your colleagues to give several answers.

Then click on “Next”. Take one last look at the quick poll you have created before attaching it to the email using the corresponding button. That was the most difficult part. Now just send the email and wait patiently.

One or more Answers to each Question

Last but not least, you will learn how to analyze the responses to your poll, which is also very easy to do when your colleagues receive your e-mail:

Now everyone can start voting. As soon as the deadline for the poll has passed, you can select it in Microsoft Forms. Under “Answers” you will see a neat list.

But who answered what? You can find out by clicking on “Show results”. All email addresses are listed there and you already know who sent which reply.

As you have now seen, it doesn’t always have to be an “email ping-pong” to coordinate with your colleagues. With a poll in Microsoft Forms everything is much quicker and more convenient. So what are you waiting for? Snatch the title of organizational talent with the help of Microsoft Forms!