Google Workspace: Forms

Forms is Google’s answer to SurveyMonkey, but free. It is an online, collaborative survey program that is part of Google Drive and Google Workspace. As long as you are connected to the internet, all your changes are saved instantly.

You can access Forms by going to forms.google.com or you will see your Forms files in your Drive.

Create a new form

You can create a new form from either Google Drive or from Google Forms.

In Drive, you can click the + New button in the top left corner.

In Forms, you’ll be given a few templates and a Blank option to start from, click Template gallery to find more options.

Alternatively as we learned in The Basics, you can just type in forms.new in to your browser.

Basic Options

The image below shows the first opening of a blank form along with quick description of each thing you will see.

You can set the name for your form as well as change the main colour or theme of the form, use the small toolbar on the right to add questions, titles, images and more.

Questions & Answers

There is no limit to how long a question can be and you can add an image in to accompany a question.

There are 11 different options for the type of answer that is acceptable for the question, based on your question you can select exactly what type of answer you want in return. If you look at the image below, you’ll just need to click the Multiple choice button to see the list of options. Below the picture we will go through each type of answer and what they mean. One thing to note, you can change the settings of some questions by clicking the More icon in the bottom right of the question.

Type an answer

Short answer – People can write answers in a few words.

Paragraph – People can write long answers over one or more paragraphs.

Choose from a list

Multiple choice – You provide options, people can select just one option. Add ‘Other’ to allow users to type a short answer.

Checkboxes – You provide a number of options, people can select more than one option. Add ‘Other’ to allow users to type a short answer.

Dropdown – You provide a number of options, people can select one option.

Upload files

File upload – People can upload files as an answer. You can select the maximum file size and restrict what type of file is uploaded. Not available if form is create in a Team Drive.

Choose from a grid

Linear scale – People can provide an answer between 0 and 10 on a scale. You can change it to between other options such as between 1 and 5.

Multiple choice grid – You provide many options, people can select an answer in each row or column.

Checkbox grid – You provide many options, people can select more than one option per row or column

Select a date and time

Date – People can enter a date as an answer.

Time – People can select a time or duration as an answer.

Sections & Logic Branching

Sections allow you to separate questions so the user isn’t just seeing a long endless page with tonnes of questions but short and quick pages.

A good example of this would be the Barton Facilities Booking Form, the first section asks for the details of the person submitting the request, the second section asks for the details of who to send an invoice to, the third section asks for details on the event that is being booked then the fourth section asks what room/s the person would like to book.

Using Sections means you can also use Logic Branching which isn’t as scary as it seems!

Logic Branching

In simple terms – Show questions based on answers

This is where you can set for the user to answer a question then get routed to a specific question based on their answer.

So for example, in the screenshot on the right, you can see that in the Facilities Booking Form there is a question that asks the user what type of room they want to book. When the user selects their desired room they will then go to the section for that specific room.

This can only be used on 3 types of questions:

Drop-down
Checkboxes
Multiple Choice

You’ll need to turn this option on for your question, to do that follow the steps below:

At the bottom right, click More ••• > and then Go to section based on answer. You can also choose Submit form if you want the survey to end based on an answer.
Choose specific sections to send people to. It’s best if you have already named your sections.

Responses

At the top of your edit view of your form you will see the Responses tab, it will display the number of responses once people have submitted responses for it. Once you click on this tab, you will see all the responses and can view either the individual responses or a summary of all responses.

You can also export all the responses into a Google Sheets document, by clicking the Sheets icon, which is then automatically updated if anyone else submits responses later on.

You can edit some settings of the responses using the More button and use the Accepting responses toggle to turn off the ability for users to send responses.

Google Sheets Responses

Google Forms can automatically send all responses to a Google Sheets document so you can easily view and filter the data you are receiving. This means you can easily make your own tables and charts with the information you have. It’s updated instantly when someone submits a response to a form, you just need to turn it on.

To do that, open your form and click on to the Responses tab. You can turn it on at any point in a form and all the data will be added in even if people have already responded. On this page there will be a green Sheets icon, if you click this icon it will ask if you want to create a new spreadsheet or send the responses to a new spreadsheet. Select which one you would prefer and click Create.

Self Grading Quizzes

With a little bit of time and effort, you can create a Google Form that automatically grades itself and share it with your class in Google Classroom.

You set the answers once, share it to your class and then Forms & Sheets collate and mark the answers for you allowing you to focus on teaching and support rather than spending time marking each students quiz.

Reuse a question

To save time you can duplicate a question or section, so if the question or answers are similar to one that you’ve already done just click the three dots on the question or section and click Duplicate.

Printing

If for any reason you need to have the form filled in on a physical piece of paper, Google Forms has you covered! In your form, click the three dots in the top right of the page (next to the SEND button). Then click Print and Google will quickly turn the form into a printable version that will include lines for people to write short or long answers, tick boxes and circles for multiple choice answers.

You can also print a summary of responses or each individual response separately.

Settings

The overall settings of a form can change a lot about how users can access or interact with it. You can set the form to automatically collect users email addresses so it’s not anonymous and stop users from outside of Barton from accessing it.

Two of the key features that you may want to use are the Limit to 1 response option so users can only submit the form once, this ensures that data isn’t skewed by someone sending the same response in multiple times. The other feature is the Edit after submit option so users can’t submit a response then go back and change their answer afterwards.

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