Taking a Poll with Google Forms

Have you ever needed to collect information from a large group of people?  You probably sent out an email asking for responses, then waited as dozens of responses were emailed back.  Then you had to sort through all those responses and determine who responded how.

With Google Apps, there is a much easier way to do the same thing.  I have sent out several email based surveys to the firm asking about what people think about various policies.  When you get the email, you respond to the questions and hit the "send" button.  From there, all the responses get added automatically to a spreadsheet on Google Drive. There is an option for me to see a quick summary chart of all the responses or to look at each one individually.

Google calls this feature "Google Forms".  It can, of course, be used for far more than surveys.  You could use it to collect people's contact information, have people register for an event, ask your family where they want to go on vacation, ask a work group where they want to go to lunch or hold a party, administer a quiz, etc.  If you are sending an email that is going to require responses from more than five or six people, Google Forms is going to make it much easier to track the results.

To create a form, simply open Google Drive, Hit the "create" button and then select "forms."  Google will guide you through the process of setting up question types (e.g. multiple choice, write-in, select from list, etc.).  The document can be emailed to respondents or simply posted on a web site.  Recipients need not be in the firm nor even use Gmail, although you can restrict responses if you choose.  You then need only view the results in detail or summary form from your Google Drive spreadsheet.

Because of its ease of use, I recommend giving Google Forms a try.