Revealing the Rank

As part of a student signup process for a room checking solution, my users (customers) wanted the students to be able to specify a choice of which ‘zone’ they were allocated. Each ‘zone’ includes a set of rooms and although a student could be allocated any zone, by letting us know their ranked order of preference, the lead user for the process had a great starting point.

The ‘ranking’ question type in Microsoft Forms looked like a perfect fit so I set up a basic question as a test;

Ranking Question setup in Microsoft Forms

Here’s where it got interesting. I set the question as ‘required’. Next, I went to preview the Form and I didn’t make a change to the question ranking. I tried to submit the Form and was met with the ‘This question is required’ message.

'This question is required' prompt when user makes no change to the default ranking

Discovery 1: If a ranking question type is set to ‘required’, the respondent must make at least one change to the ranked options, otherwise the question appears “unanswered” and the form can't be submitted. Not a great user experience if the default ranking as presented is what the user wants.

I changed the question to not required, previewed the form and again I made no change to the default ranking. The form submitted OK, but here’s the gotcha:

Discovery 2: If the ranking question is set to optional, and the user doesn't make a change, the captured field is empty – nothing (including the default ranking as displayed on the form) is collected from the form for this question.

Here's what is seen in the output in a simple Flow:

Empty field collected in Flow when the user made no change to the default ranking on the form

In our case, if the student was happy with the default ranking and submitted the form, we’d have an empty field which is not helpful for our lead user who needs a list of the student’s preferences – whether they are the default ranking as it appears in the form, or, a bespoke choice of ranking from the list.

Solution

The user experience for both the student form respondent or the lead admin would have been poor: to address this we can add some business logic in to a connected Flow.

I’ll leave the ranking question as not required (optional). In the Flow, I’ve set up the standard trigger of ‘When a new response is submitted’ for Microsoft Forms (and selected our form), and ‘Get response details’ (select our form again).

Next I’ve set up a variable, varQ1, which is a string. This variable will contain the ranking for Q1 from the form – either the user-specified ranking or the default ranking to match the form.

Basic Flow configuration: Trigger, Get response details and initialising a string variable named varQ1

The next step is to set a Condition to test if the output of the form question was empty or not.

Condition to test if the field from the Form was empty (user made no change to the default ranking) or not

If empty: the user didn’t change the default ranking as it appears on the form. This will execute the yes branch of the condition. The variable (varQ1) will be populated with manual text that matches the ranking order of the default ranking on the form.

If not empty: the user has provided a bespoke ranking. This will execute the no branch of the condition and the variable (varQ1) will be populated with the output of the question from the Form response.

The handy part of having the variable, varQ1, is that no matter whether the default ranking of the form is set or the user specified ranking is set, varQ1 contains the correct ranked data and can be used anywhere else in the Flow.

I submitted the Form again, making no changes to the default ranking on the form. The Condition tested the response from the Form, found it was empty, so executed the Yes branch. varQ1 was set with the default text accordingly.

Flow Run outcome: User didn't change the ranking on the Form so the field is empty; yes branch executes and varQ1 is manually populated with the default ranking

Don’t forget – if you were to make a change to the text on the form for the ranked options (such as you added another option, Zone 4), you’d need to remember to make the same change to the text in the Set varQ1 action in the no branch.

I hope this was helpful – it was the first time I’d noticed this issue so the workaround proved quite handy. This was a simple yet meaningful way to leverage automation to retain focus on our students and staff as key partners, ensuring an excellent process for both. Let me know any comments or questions. Apologies for the low quality screenshots in this post - normal service will be resumed in the next one!