If you use the Microsoft Forms app, you know you can use it to create questions for online surveys. This week, the Forms app rolled out a new update that lets users set up specific rules for how to answer questions to those surveys. The rules are enabled with drop down menus and text boxes below the question user interface.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated that one of the rules could be that people who answer certain questions must include a specific work in their answer. For example, you could write, "Describe your recent experience with our product. Please include the word "experience" in your response." The new drop-down menu and text boxes allow Forms users to set up those restrictions.
Another rule that can now be set up is requiring that an answer to a question must have either a minimal or maximum character length. Choosing a small character number for a maximum length may provide answers that are more precise and to the point, while a large number for a maximum length could ensure a much more detailed answer.
There is also a new "Required" toggle for Microsoft Forms questions. They can be used in a couple of different ways. One is that you can enable the toggle if you want the person receiving a survey to send you their email in case you need to ask some additional questions later. The toggle can also be used to get survey responders to answer questions in the correct format. If they don"t they will get an error message asking them to answer in the right format.
These new rules for answering questions in Forms are now available for anyone who accesses the app with a normal Microsoft account. Commercial users will get this feature in the very near future but there"s no word on when that will happen.