Pait Group Blog

Using Microsoft Forms for Anonymous Surveys

I recently had a friend ask me, “hey Allie, you Microsoft Guru, I have this need for an anonymous survey process, how should I use SharePoint with Power Platform to achieve this?” I started asking for more requirements and eventually said “well, you shouldn’t use SharePoint with Power Platform. You should use Microsoft Forms.”

Obviously, each scenario, use case, business or personal need is different, so there is rarely a “one form fits all” solution, but I wanted to provide some guidance on using a Microsoft Form for truly anonymous surveys.

Read more

Cascading Drop-downs in PowerApps

I probably don’t have to tell you this, but just in case, PowerApps are versatile no code or low code solutions you can create to simplify processes for your end users. One of the most common PowerApps is a personalized form for data entry or selection. PowerApps has a lot of built in controls that are a breeze to just click and add, but if you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty you can really tailor your app and make it easy for users to put in data with integrity. One of my favorite ways to do this is with a cascading drop-down, or basically two drop-downs that have related fields. Whatever you select in drop-down 1 impacts the choices available in drop-down 2. For example, if you’re building an order form, you might have a drop-down for category, then a second drop-down for product. Let’s look at how you might put that together. 

Read more

The Best Free Forms Solution for SharePoint

In all my years of working in SharePoint, there has been one consistent need from users: Forms… Better looking forms… more powerful forms… mobile friendly forms… There has ALWAYS been a need for a better forms experience in SharePoint. To help address this need, I created a forms solution for SharePoint several years ago called StratusForms. StratusForms allows you to create forms in SharePoint using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS and works for SharePoint 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, and Office 365. The goal of StratusForms was to remove limitations of form creation in SharePoint and to get developers off of InfoPath.

Read more