Create a MCLA Form

MCLA Supported Form Platforms

If your department is looking to create a form to collect information, its helpful to understand which MCLA supported options are available to you. This brief description will help to illustrate what those supported options are and can be used as a guide to help find the right platform to suit your needs.

Microsoft Forms through Office 365

Microsoft Forms is now available through Office 365. This option enables users to create and distribute their own forms using their own accounts. Designing a form with Microsoft Forms is very simple but has limited options. Distribution is restricted to internal users only. Since the forms and collected data from that form is stored on individual accounts, the retention of that information is also limited. This option would be recommended for short one-time surveys or polls but should not be used as a departmental form that requires long term availability. For an overview on how to use Microsoft Forms, please visit https://support.office.com/en-us/forms

Event Sign Ups through Microsoft Teams

If your organizing an event and would like attendees to sign up and reserve their seat, you may consider looking at creating a Microsoft Teams event with the attendee registration. This feature uses both MS Teams and Forms together so you can customize a registration form so you can gather whatever information in need from an attendee in advance. For information on how to setup a Teams meeting with attendee registration, please check out this guide.

Dynamic Forms

MCLA has adopted Dynamic Forms as its official paperless workflow solution. Dynamic Forms is a fully hosted, powerful web application which also allows non-technical users to take any paper-based form and quickly build a sophisticated interactive form that can be published to the internet. Dynamic Forms provides single and multiple electronic signature functionality along with a basic workflow feature to enable document processing.

Dynamic Forms vs Microsoft Forms – Which one should I choose?

Microsoft Forms are useful when there is a need to self-publish a form. We usually recommend it for quick ‘one-off’ needs that have a limited lifespan. Examples include event sign-ups, quick surveys that have an end date, or polls. Its also important to note that although form creators have the ability to share control of the form, the form is always associated with the form designer’s Microsoft account. We do not have as much granular control with transitioning a form from one owner to the other, especially if the form owner’s account is disabled due to a staff transition.

If your need has a more official nature to it where it’s part of a ‘business process’ its important to consider Dynamic Forms. The form is stored in a dynamic forms ‘organization’ that can be administered centrally. We also have a toolset that enables data to be captured and automatically stored in a Banner record. DF is really good for forms that require a workflow, custom email notifications, and/or digital signatures (internal and external users). IT will also help with the form design where you can submit your design via this form:

If you have a significant amount of forms to design, there is training available so you can self publish your own DF forms. Many departments just opt to submit their requests through this form or edit requests to the helpdesk.

What about PDF Forms?

MCLA no longer encourages the use of self-published PDF forms since we do not use Adobe services for digital signatures. If you have an old PDF form, please consider converting it to a Dynamic Form.