No Code / Low Code apps using Office 365 / Microsoft 365 license

In this blog, we are going to see, how to create Low Code / No Code Apps with your existing Office 365 / Microsoft 365 licenses.

If your organization already has any of the below licenses, you can make use of the Microsoft’s Low Code / No Code platform to create useful apps for your organization.

·       Office 365 E1 / E3 / E5  

·       Microsoft 365 E3 / E5 / F3

PowerApps:

Canvas apps in Power Apps can be built using standard connectors, which allow you to connect to various data sources like Excel sheets stored in SharePoint/OneDrive, Microsoft Lists, SharePoint Lists / Libraries etc.,

Below list of Apps can be created using Canvas App.

• 1.      Task Management App
• 2.      Employee Onboarding App
• 3.      Timesheet App
• 4.      Inventory Management App
• 5.      Survey and Feedback app
• 6.      Assessment App

Power Automate:

In any organization, there would be areas which needs automation. Here are few areas where automation is needed.

• 1.      Content approvals
• 2.      Document management (archival)
• 3.      Data synchronization
• 4.      Automatic Reminders and Notifications

Copilot Studio:

Chatbot can be created using Copilot Studio that can targeted to fetch data from your organization’s FAQ page or Knowledge base.

Microsoft Forms:

There are scenarios to collect few basic information from the employees within organization or public. Microsoft Forms will be suitable option for those scenarios, few examples are given below:

• 1.      Surveys and Feedback
• 2.      Quizzes and Assessments
• 3.      HR Employee Feedback
• 4.      Onboarding Experience
• 5.      Performance Evaluation

Limitations:

There are limitations while using the PowerApps, Power Automate, Copilot Studio using the above-mentioned Office 365 / Microsoft 365 licenses, they are:

1. No Premium Connectors:
• You won’t have access to premium connectors (e.g., Salesforce, Dataverse) in your canvas apps.
• Stick to standard connectors available with those above licenses.
2. No Custom Connectors:
• Creating custom connectors is not possible with those above licenses.
• You’ll need a different license for custom connectors.
3. No Model-Driven Apps:
• Above licenses don’t allow you to build model-driven apps.
• These licenses focus on canvas apps and basic productivity tools.

Hope this blog would have given you overview of utilizing the Office 365/ Microsoft 365 licenses effectively.

Event Registration Form using Microsoft Forms

 In this article, I have tried to give the steps to create the sample Event Registration form. It does not require any code. Without any coding knowledge this can be done.

Pre-requisites: You need to have Office 365 subscription and there is no license needed for Forms, it’s free.

When you login to the Office 365, you have thisicon in the left top corner of the page. It’s called waffle icon. On clicking it you can see all the app that you have permission. In that you will find the Forms (highlighted in the below image).

 To load the Forms click on it. Now you will see the below screen that has “+ New Form” button. Use the new form button to create the Event Registration Form.

Once click the New Form button you will see the blank form with options to create questions and header for the form as shown below.

You need to create as much question as you want to know about the person who wants to enroll themselves for the Event. In this example, I have just created 4 questions like Full name, Email address, Organization and Job Title.

It’s easy to add questions, just you need to click the “+Add Row” button as shown in the below picture.

 

There are some suggestions shown while you are trying to create questions. That’s cool isn’t. You can select from the suggestions list and click “Add selected”. It will be added to your form.

You also have provisions to change the response (Answer) type like choice, text or date etc.

Once you are done with the questions, you need to share it. Before that if you would like to change some setting like who are allowed to enroll for this event, For example: people within the organization or outsiders can also enroll for it. In the right top corner of the page you have Preview, Theme and Share Options also. On clicking the “…” you will the menu that contains Settings.

Preview Mode: You can see how the Form looks in Mobile and Desktop view.

Settings: When you go to settings, there are options given for “Who can fill out this form”, there you can select the options according to your need.  Anyone can respond can selected if you are expecting the responses from outsiders also (not part of your organization, they don’t need to login). Anyone from your organization can enroll (respond) if you select “Only people in my organization can respond”. You can also set “only specific people within your organization” can enroll (respond) for it.

Start and End date: You can also set duration from when we can start getting the enrollment (responses) till which date (last date to get the responses).

Theme: There are some list of themes available, you can select anything from the available themes.

Share: After all these, now it’s time to share the Event Registration for to targeted audience. Click on the “Share” button. You have different options like sharing it as short url, QR code, Embedded HTML tag, Email.

 

Responses: Finally now you wish to see how of them enrolled for the event. Check the below options you have for responses. You can also view the results one by one and export the results in Excel on clicking the “Open in Excel” link.

How does the Event Registration form look like?

 Here it is.

 

Now you learnt how to create enrollment form, same steps has to be followed if you wish to create Polling, Survey or Feedback.