How To Use Forms In Confluence: Best Use Cases

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Confluence is a well-known Atlassian solution of choice for many businesses to collaborate, create knowledge bases, develop corporate documentation, etc. But users may get even more out of it with different product integrations. In this article, I would like to describe how you can use the Confluence form plugin to add polls, surveys, and quizzes to your pages and, thus, work even more effectively on your projects.

Who Can Benefit From Using Forms In Confluence

Microsoft Forms is an easy-to-use tool that allows companies to quickly create polls, quizzes, and surveys, share them with all the interested parties, view results in real-time, and analyze the data received with different business tools. You can use multiple-choice or text questions, ratings, dates, rankings, likes, and a Net Promoter Score® tool to find out how likely someone is to do something. What is more, it is possible to personalize your forms with a unique design: you can either choose a pre-built one, or create your own from scratch, and even add your picture, business logo, etc. Sharing options include sending direct links, QR Codes for downloading, embedding into a webpage, and inviting to join by email. You can further analyze valuable data like the average time to complete the form and read each response in detail. Information may also be downloaded in Excel to facilitate processing.

That functionality may be used to study customer satisfaction, employee awareness training, getting to know team and user opinions on different matters from evaluating change readiness to availability of access to specific services, etc.

As most business processes nowadays happen online, teams work remotely and customers are serviced online, forms in Confluence might be used by IT companies for developing requirements (to understand if everyone is happy with the interim or final version), by support firms for people management and feedback collection, as well as any other organizations to optimize processes within various operations.

Microsoft Forms For Confluence — Best Way To Create Forms In Confluence

As Сonfluence doesn't have built-in forms, third-party apps and integrations are the wisest solutions to add polls, surveys, and quizzes to your pages. And Microsoft Forms for Confluence plugin developed by Alpha Serve is one of the most popular add-ons and the best one to consider. 

This Confluence forms macro is a tool suitable for any goals as it allows teams to add any Microsoft Forms in Confluence simply with an URL, reshape them according to the document structure and design, manage polls and surveys and collect feedback from customers, partners, or employers (both Confluence users and unauthorized Internet users) without leaving the main workspace, and share the responses with all the authorized stakeholders.

As all Cloud apps, Microsoft Forms for Confluence has a free trial. Moreover, the app is always free for small teams as it participates in a corresponding Atlassian program.

So, let’s see how you can easily create forms in Microsoft forms and use them in Confluence.

Create A Form With Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is one of the products included in the Microsoft 365 pack, so to use it you need a valid subscription. Once you have logged into a system, go to the Service’s Page and click the + New Form button.

You will be asked to add a title to your form. It may have up to 90 characters. Then add a description of up to 1,000 characters if you need one. All the changes will be saved automatically.

When you are ready to add your questions, just hit the Add New button and select the appropriate type. Choice, Text, Rating or Date questions are available in the quick access menu. If you need Ranking, Likert, File upload, or Net Promoter Score®, choose the More question types option. In Section, you can organize sections for your questions.

 Use keyboard shortcuts to format your text. First, highlight the words you need to modify. Enter CTRL/Cmd+B to make the text Bold. CTRL/Cmd+I is for Italic. And CTRL/Cmd+U command will Underline the words selected. You can also customize the Font color, Font size, or opt for Numbering, or Bullets.

 Before publishing, you can check how your form will look on a PC or Smartphone. For this, select the Preview option. You can also test the questions in Preview mode. Simply answer it and then choose Submit.

If you want to continue editing your form, press the Back button.

You can delete questions you do not need, but bear in mind that by deleting a question, you will also delete any corresponding response data.

Install Microsoft Forms For Confluence Plugin

When ready with your forms, install our Microsoft Forms For Confluence add-on. You can do it in only four steps.

 First, navigate to the Confluence Cloud Find new apps section.

Then type “Microsoft Forms for Confluence” in the search field and press Enter. Tap on the suitable search result.

Select Try it free if you want to test an app for 30 days absolutely for free. Solution partners are invited to request free licences for internal use or testing.

Finally, hit the Start free trial button in the window that appears and then follow the installation instructions.

 Alternatively, you can access and install Microsoft Forms for Confluence directly from Atlassian Marketplace. Here you can find the product page.

Embed Microsoft Form Into The Confluence Page

Now you are prepared to add polls, quizzes, and surveys to your Confluence page. But before you start, ask your Jira Cloud administrator to install the Microsoft Forms for Confluence app into the Confluence instance.

 Then go to your Confluence and open the page you need in Edit mode. Tap the Insert icon and then select the View more option.

Go to the Select macro window and find the Microsoft Forms with the search box. Select the Microsoft Forms macro among the results and tap it.

 When the Insert ‘Microsoft Forms’ Macro window opens, insert the URL of the form you want to embed. You can find it in the Microsoft Forms application under the Share options in the right upper corner of the form you need.

Click Preview to see how it will look on the Confluence page.

If you want to publish the results of the survey or the poll on your Confluence page, then go to your Microsoft Forms, open the form and select the Responses tab.

Hit the 3 dots aka the More options button and proceed with the option Create a summary link. Then select Copy.

Insert the URL you’ve got into the Confluence Insert ‘Microsoft Forms’ Macro window.

If you wish, you can customize your Microsoft forms anв make them look appropriate to the design and structure of your Confluence page. You can adjust the width by choosing the number of pixels or a certain percentage of the page width. You can also specify the exact number of pixels you need for the height. Also, the Border style may be modified with the extra CSS border-style properties. 

Select option No print if you don't want your form to be viewed on a page after printing out or exporting to pdf.

If you need to collect the answer from anonymous users, select the Anonymous Access option.

Best Use Cases For Microsoft Forms For Confluence

Now let me show you how you can benefit from Microsoft Forms For Confluence in practice. Below you will find several cases of using the app by different companies to leverage their business efficacy and improve customer support and collaboration within the team.

Use Case 1 — Collect feedback from teammates/customers

 In today's highly competitive environment, it may not be that easy to keep a highly qualified workforce and attract more loyal customers. But, on the other hand, new technologies make it possible to find the right solution. The most important thing when dealing with people, whether they are your employees or clients, is their needs and satisfaction. Fortunately, you can always measure these indicators and ask for feedback using your Confluence spaces. The easiest way to do this is to create a Confluence feedback form. It is possible with Microsoft Forms For Confluence. You can simply develop a survey with Microsoft Forms, add your questions depending on the data you wish to receive, and share the form and/or the results on the dedicated Confluence page to share them with your team. You can use the Net Promoter Score® question type to know the person’s satisfaction with the product, task, or any other thing you are offering.

It is easy to collect feedback not only from your team having access as internal Confluence users, but also from your customers, investors, or partners, as the plugin allows people not authorized with your system to take part in the survey. It is also convenient to share the form with your colleagues if you would like to make an in-house survey and get feedback from the team members.

Use Case 2 — Polls for decision making

Before making a decision, it is always a good idea to collect as many opinions and points of view from all the stakeholders as possible. That’s why the change to conduct a poll within your project is a great bonus. You can easily add your burning issues to the Microsoft Form and then share the link with all the persons involved in the indecision-making process. Using Confluence for this allows you to create a poll document with all necessary information not being limited by form interface and in your corporate design, thus it will be easily recognisable which will increase your reply rate. You can create a needed poll page in Confluence and customize it according to your needs, and then collect opinions just by embedding a Microsoft Form in this page.

Once you have got the answers, you can easily share the results with the team - just embed MS Forms poll results into the relevant Confluence page and make it accessible to relevant users. You can also widen the results with comments, takeaways or possible decisions. 

If there is a solution most of you are happy with, you will be able to adjust your project or work appropriately. If the matter is still not clear you can always repeat the procedure until you all find the right decision.

Use Case 3 — Employee Recruitment Form

There is no doubt that the personnel is all-important, that's why hiring is one of the most critical processes for any business. With Microsoft Forms For Confluence, you can easily develop a customized form for candidates to know better their work experience, education and skills. What is most important is that it is possible to add specific fields that are critical to finding the right person for the particular role and use different types of questions like Choice, Text, Rating, Date, Ranking, and File upload to get the detailed information. 

The HR team will have the opportunity to see all the responses and, finally, even make a poll to vote for the most suitable candidate (See Use Case 2).

Use Case 4 — Employee Data Form (Onboarding) 

When hiring new employees, onboarding is one of the fundamental things a company should do to make the new person feel welcomed and integrate easily into the work team. You can use a special form to know if the new hires understand their roles, the corporate culture, the company’s structure, goals, and policies, as well as to collect some personal information, learn job expectations, ask what hardware and software they prefer to use, which additional skills they need to acquire, get other general orientation information. There are lots of templates on the Internet but it’s always better to customize the questions in accordance with your business requirements. 

 Similarly, you can create templates for collecting any other employee information and develop corporate forms for measuring employment satisfaction, CV submissions, job applications, vacation and time-off requests, etc. 

Use Case 5 — Event Registration Form

Whether it’s a meeting, a training session, or a corporate party, online registration forms will help to better plan your event. You can simply create a simple questionnaire to collect some basic information about the visitors or use a broad spectrum of questions and other Microsoft Forms functionality to customize your form to fit your business and aesthetic needs. For example, you can ask conference participants to leave their questions to the speaker or collect information about the skills of the people attending the training to better prepare for the program. 

Using Confluence with embedded MS Forms will allow you to use corporate design and thus promote your company or product during such event activities, increase your brand awareness and build trust by communicating with the audience. 

Use Case 6 — Internal Support Form

Forms is also a perfect tool to improve services for your clients or provide better technical support for your team. You can add an Internal Support Form to your help section and ask persons that need support to fill in all the necessary information before contacting an expert. In such a way, a support team member will have all the necessary data beforehand and be prepared to provide the most appropriate solution in that particular situation.

Use Case 7 - Confluence Knowledge Base Feedback

Confluence is widely used as a corporate knowledge base, both internal and public. When such a base is big enough, it becomes important to know how useful and understandable the information is. Using a relevant Microsoft Form for your knowledge base articles with stars or other ratings can provide more visibility of how useful each page is, thus you will archive the obsolete pages without regret. 

Conclusion

If you use Confluence for developing knowledge bases, facilitating team communication, or providing support for your customers, it’s great! But you should also know that you can use Confluence for capturing data with forms. You can quickly and easily create surveys, polls, or quizzes necessary for your business in Microsoft Forms using all the functionality of the service and then utilize third-party add-ons to embed the forms themselves as well as the answers received on the dedicated Confluence pages for further data processing. With our Microsoft Forms For Confluence app, you can get even more. For example, it allows reshaping your forms if you need to fit them to your Confluence document design and structure. Otherwise, you can hide the survey results from the page when printing if you need that information only for technical matters. Support teams can especially benefit from anonymous access to collect data from a wide audience of unauthorized Confluence users.