If you’re still using spreadsheets, email chains, or manual data entry to manage business processes, you’re working harder than you need to. The combination of SharePoint Lists and Microsoft Forms creates a powerful foundation for automation that most organizations already have access to—but aren’t fully utilizing.
Let me show you how these two tools work together to eliminate manual work and streamline your operations.
What Makes This Combination So Powerful?
SharePoint Lists provide structured data storage with robust permissions, versioning, and integration capabilities. Microsoft Forms offers an easy way to collect information from anyone—inside or outside your organization. When you connect them, you create a system where data flows automatically from collection to storage to action.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Without automation: Someone fills out a paper form or sends an email. Another person manually enters that data into a spreadsheet. A third person reviews it, makes updates, and sends follow-up emails. The process is slow, prone to errors, and requires constant attention.
With SharePoint Lists + Microsoft Forms: A form is submitted. Data automatically populates a SharePoint List. Workflows trigger notifications, approvals, or next steps. Everything is tracked, auditable, and requires zero manual data entry.
Real-World Use Cases
Employee Onboarding
Create a Microsoft Form for new hire information. When submitted, the data automatically creates a new item in a SharePoint List. From there, Power Automate can trigger tasks like creating accounts, sending welcome emails, assigning training modules, and notifying the IT team—all without anyone lifting a finger.
IT Help Desk Requests
Users submit support tickets through a form. Each submission creates a SharePoint List item with automatic categorization, priority assignment, and notification to the appropriate team. Status updates flow back to users automatically, and you gain full visibility into request volumes and resolution times.
Purchase Requests and Approvals
Employees submit purchase requests via a form. The data lands in SharePoint, triggering an approval workflow based on amount thresholds or department rules. Approvers get notified, make decisions with one click, and the requester receives instant updates—all tracked in one central location.
Customer Feedback and Issue Tracking
Collect customer feedback through a public form. Responses automatically populate a SharePoint List where your team can categorize, prioritize, and assign issues. Follow-up workflows ensure nothing falls through the cracks, and you can analyze trends over time.
Event Registration and Management
Attendees register through a form. Their information flows into SharePoint, triggering confirmation emails, calendar invites, and pre-event reminders. You get real-time visibility into registration numbers and can segment attendees for targeted communications.
Why This Approach Works
Low barrier to entry: Most Microsoft 365 organizations already have access to these tools. No additional licensing or complex setup required.
No coding necessary: Microsoft Forms is drag-and-drop simple. SharePoint Lists require minimal configuration. Power Automate connects them with visual workflows—no programming skills needed.
Scalable from day one: Start with a simple form-to-list connection. Add complexity as you need it: approvals, conditional logic, notifications, integrations with other systems.
Secure and compliant: Built on Microsoft’s enterprise platform with robust permissions, audit logs, and compliance features already in place.
Getting Started: A Simple Example
Let’s say you want to automate expense report submissions. Here’s how you’d set it up:
Step 1: Create a SharePoint List with columns for employee name, date, amount, category, receipt attachment, and approval status.
Step 2: Build a Microsoft Form asking for the same information. Add logic to make certain fields required or conditional.
Step 3: Connect the form to your SharePoint List so responses automatically create new list items.
Step 4: Use Power Automate to send an approval request to the manager when a new expense is submitted.
Step 5: Once approved, trigger another flow to notify accounting and update the list item status.
Total setup time? Maybe 30 minutes. Time saved per expense report? 10-15 minutes of manual data entry, email chains, and status updates.
Taking It Further
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can layer on additional capabilities:
- Conditional workflows: Route approvals to different people based on amount, department, or other criteria
- Data validation: Prevent duplicate submissions or flag unusual entries for review
- Notifications and reminders: Keep stakeholders informed without manual follow-up
- Analytics and reporting: Use Power BI to visualize trends and identify bottlenecks
- Integration with other systems: Connect to Teams, Outlook, Dynamics 365, or third-party applications
The Bottom Line
SharePoint Lists and Microsoft Forms aren’t flashy. They’re not going to wow anyone with cutting-edge AI or complex dashboards. But they solve a fundamental problem that plagues most organizations: too much time spent on manual, repetitive data work.
By automating data collection and routing, you free your team to focus on analysis, decision-making, and meaningful work—not data entry and email tag.
If you’re looking for a quick win in your automation journey, this is it. Start small, prove the value, and expand from there.
Ready to automate your processes? The tools are already in your Microsoft 365 subscription. The only question is: what manual process are you going to eliminate first?
If you need help identifying automation opportunities or building your first workflow, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to point you in the right direction.
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