Google Surveys vs. Lightning Tools Lightning Forms

I do appreciate the ease of use and connection Google Surveys has with other Google products - that's a huge plus. While I'm a fairly digitally-minded user, some of our users are not, so that becomes a challenge if you want them to see the Data Studio reports or be able to print something for them. But if you're completely digital, gaining insight from the reports is very valuable. We've mostly used Google Surveys to generate answers to questions we have on how things are running or to collect information from our users/members/students on how they "feel" about particular topics, situations, or their work, in general. For that, it's been a breeze. But we're finding for more specific surveys that may have decision trees associated with the answers (if they answer "this" then send them to "that") we work more with Qualtrics. But you can't beat the price of Google Surveys when you can begin one for $50.

Incentivized

We've used lightning forms on literally dozens of our SharePoint sites now and it's just excellent, especially because it doesn't interfere with our ability to governance and administer the sites

• The way the data comes out on a spreadsheet is very helpful, easy to see separate answers.
• Very intuitive, easy to use, and learn how to use.
• Versatile, can be used for many things, and has a variety of types of questions that you can add to your survey.

Incentivized

• Simple user interface - users of the forms intuitively aware of how/where to input information. This is in part due to being able to show or hide different questions or areas of the form, and making them required or not, based on previous answers.
• Low/simple code - building complex forms with automation and multiple dependencies or lookups is relatively easy once you get started. You have the power of JavaScript to use and do some quite clever things if you can get to grips with it - a lot of solutions are only a Google away.
• As it is based on SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with the rest of the M365 suite. Things like PowerAutomate enhance its functionality even further.

• Background design, I think it would be better if we could personalize the background design.
• I haven't encountered attaching video clips on it. I think it's great if we can attach video clips or voice clips since image can be attached.
• Cute fonts will do.

Incentivized

• The styling of the form can sometimes be slightly awkward to use depending on what you're looking to do. For instance, if I was looking to highlight fields that users have missed (left empty), I would need to set up a validation for that question and then set a style for that particular field for when it is invalid. When you have a large and complex form with lots of dependencies, this is awkward.
• Support for complex and niche issues is slightly lacking in my experience. I submitted a helpdesk ticket for help with a strange issue I couldn't figure out, which took several weeks to get a response to. Because it is niche, it's more difficult to find an answer by searching the internet. Luckily, knowing there is likely to always be a fix if you find the right place/use the right formula, I manage to resolve the issue with some trial and error.
• It is disappointing that Lightning Forms does not integrate with the MS Lists app. Having the ability to access the form through the list app would add in a lot of useful functionality, including a better experience for users when taking photos to add as attachments.

Relatively simple so that those who are less than familiar with computers can figure it out. User friendly and already embedded with other Google products. Receives an 8 because many features available with Google Surveys are also available with similar, free products on the internet today. Good, but not stellar.

Incentivized

It is very user friendly both to me who is building the content (with little background knowledge of coding etc., other than what I have picked up from using products like PowerAutomate, PowerBI, a bit of html etc.) and to end users of varying levels of IT proficiency. This has been extremely important as we have used the forms to make relatively large process changes, and need to have our users on board and seeing that it is actually easier than it was before.

Google Surveys has a world-class support team. If you have any questions you can reach out to support and gain additional insight on how the product can meet your needs. As part of Google, the support team is very reliable. Our team has not had any issues reaching support and having a quick resolution turnaround.

Incentivized

Some support has been okay, but in one instance of a fairly complex problem, the support team were not able to provide me with a fix within a few weeks, before I was able to find a workaround myself.

I use Google Analytics periodically to see how our website is performing. It's so slick to be able to see how many visitors we've had from month to month and year to year, where the visitors are coming from, what search terms are most potent, the effectiveness of organic vs. paid advertisements.

Incentivized

We were using Microsoft Forms, SharePoint Lists and PowerAutomate to attempt to do much of what we are currently doing. Functionality is very limited in comparison. The ability to make questions required based on previous answers was a massive improvement from normal SharePoint List forms and has greatly improved the quality of data. Also just the very visual display and customisation is much better.

• Google Surveys has had a positive impact on my Google Classroom.
• While using Google Surveys I am able to see how my students feel about a certain topic or subject.
• Google Surveys is highly recommended because it provides a way to measure student progress by using polls.

Incentivized

• We changed the process by which site colleagues report repairs on behalf of customers. Instead of emailing them into a shared inbox, they now report them using a lightning form. We have seen a great improvement in the time taken for our team to log the repair issue from the time is arrives with them.
• We anticipate that streamlining our void property reletting process by using a SharePoint kanban board view with lightning forms (providing a single platform for all things void) will reduce avoidable days vacant and therefore reduce our void loss.