Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. TINYpulse

Overall, there are many use cases for which Lightning Forms provides a slick, easy to develop and extremely useful solution. Request forms that need to be actioned and inspection forms are the scenarios that we have used them for so far, which have seen a lot of success. We have decided that other scenarios that are perhaps more sensitive, for instance forms that may contain special category data relating to our customers, are less appropriate given the permissions/licensing constraints of both SharePoint and Lightning Forms.

Well-suited for companies looking to get better feedback from employees. It's probably perfect for my organization (around 80 employees) because our COO can respond directly to our concerns. It might be less effective for larger organizations, but I can't speak much to that.

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.

• TINYpulse provides a nice, prepackaged survey platform with a library of suggested questions to use and hard-coded timelines and processes... so it is truly a "plug and play" tool.
• The platform produces some graphics and other methodology for assisting HR in delivering survey results to the rest of the executive team and/or to share with employees.
• TINYpulse does a DYNAMIC job in selling the message that the employee's responses are anonymous. Not sure if it is a generational issue or the result of younger generations watching a parent go thru a RIF or other job elimination, but the notion of radically-candid feedback is not one which I've found to be present with many Millennials (here or in past organizations), so this is a big selling point for TINYpulse.
• The TINYpulse platform offers a "Cheers for Peers" program, allowing the company to promote another form of peer-to-peer recognition which can even be linked to Slack (or nearly any business-based instant messaging system) to create a constant feed for all to see those receiving recognition for going above-and-beyond.

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.

• TINYpulse sometimes makes updates to their app and website, and when navigating as an admin, I have found some of the links to be broken after an update.
• The pricing structure of TINYpulse has changed since we first began using it, changing from a pay per user amount to a bulk-buy amount. This led to some confusion when we went to add more users.

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.

Self explanatory and easy to use. Email notifications help to remind users what they have to do. Very simple and straightforward user interface.

Incentivized

I have never experienced an outage or technical problem with TinyPluse.

Incentivized

Site always loads properly and running efficiently

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 have not interacted with the support team.

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.

TINYpulse provided the most-competitive pricing of all vendors considered, with the greatest flexibility of use with desktop, mobile app, and operating system. While customer support proposed by others appeared to be closer to "live" or real-time, with closer to the 24/7 kind of environment in which we live/work in today, budget was a driving factor for us.

Incentivized

Easy to deploy, create and add accounts.

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.

• It's an easy way to get feedback and suggestions. I think it contributes to the team culture of wanting to always question and improve.
• It's an easy way to build rapport among teammates and I think contributes to overall sense of team building (especially for a dispersed team).
• It's an easy way to keep your finger on the overall pulse of the team and allows management to be able to quickly address any frustrations or issues before they become bigger concerns.

Incentivized