Google forms: Who knew?

I submitted an online form today, you know the kind please leave your name and email address and somebody may get back to you. The surprise came at the bottom of the page – powered by Google Docs. Now, I consider myself a bit of a Google fan boy – why didn’t I know? So I decided to have a look for myself. Turns out that anybody with a Google documents account can create web forms that can be completed in an email client, or online, and even embedded directly into your own website. I suppose this in itself is nothing particularly new, SurveyMonkey have been offering similar functionality for some time. What blew me away was the immediacy of the process and the fact that all results get collated into a spreadsheet in my Google Docs account.

The applications range from organizing the office party, to customer satisfaction surveys, to whatever takes your fancy. You can choose whether to let the respondent see the results or keep them private. The only downside I can see is that, as the form’s creator, there appears to be no option for receiving notifications when there is new content. But hey, did I mention the price?

So here it is, please complete the form below to help in my important research: