Microsoft Forms

The Academic Researcher

Branching logic, multilingual forms and quiz-style auto-grading are documented across all plan segments, but the pages describe no randomisation, piping, hidden fields, calculations or reusable question libraries — exactly what an ethics-board-approved instrument needs — and branding customisation is documented as limited to changing the image. I found no public information on the range of question types, multi-page structure, template libraries or accessibility standards for respondents. 1 2

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The Academic Researcher

Anonymous and external sharing, embedding in SharePoint, Teams and OneNote, email notifications, and automated workflows through Power Automate are all documented, which is enough to invite a convenience sample through institutional channels. I found no public information on managed invitation lists with reminders, response quotas and closing rules, offline collection, file uploads or QR codes, so research-grade distribution is not in evidence. 1 2 3

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The Academic Researcher

Real-time results, response summaries, word clouds, an externally shareable results summary and export to Excel are documented. I found no public information on filters, cross-tabulation, significance testing, standard scores such as NPS, or exports to SPSS or R with labels intact — on the documented evidence I could not reproduce an analysis in the formats my faculty publishes in. 1 2 3

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The Academic Researcher

A downloadable data processing addendum, a statement of GDPR compliance since May 2018, anonymous sharing, and required pseudonymisation of system-generated logs are documented. The pages give me nothing on consent or privacy-notice fields inside the instrument, retention with automatic deletion, per-respondent erasure tools or encryption of responses, and one default administrator setting records the names of people in the organisation — something my ethics board would query before sign-off. 1 3 4 5

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The Academic Researcher

The EU Data Boundary documentation names the EU and EFTA countries and the specific European datacenters, with Microsoft 365 tenants in scope by sign-up location — enough for a faculty to argue residency — though transfers outside the boundary continue in limited documented circumstances and Multi-Geo customers are excluded. Administration runs through a Microsoft admin portal with organisation-wide and per-user switches plus eDiscovery; I found no public information on team roles, single sign-on, audit logs or white-labelling, and branding customisation is documented as limited to the image. 4 3 1

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The Academic Researcher

Microsoft is a US company, but the captured pages document a genuine EU Data Boundary — named EU and EFTA countries, named European datacenters, and Microsoft 365 in scope for tenants signed up in the region — alongside a downloadable data protection addendum. The contracting entity's jurisdiction, the subcontractors for anything beyond Microsoft's own datacenters, and any ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification are unknown to me from these pages, and the boundary documentation itself allows continued transfers outside the EU in limited circumstances. 4 5

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The Academic Researcher

Forms is included in a long list of named Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans and is generally available with a free Microsoft account, but none of the captured pages quote an actual price, a response limit or an overage. A faculty cannot compute the annual cost of running a study from the public information captured here, and the feature table itself may change without notice. 1 2

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