Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. Zoho Survey

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.

Zoho Survey is everything you need in a survey platform. If you already have the Zoho One suite, it makes a complete replacement for Survey Monkey. I don't think anyone would need this app on a standalone basis, however, mainly because Zoho has a full suite of other apps you should be using on top of Survey.

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.

• Zoho Survey comes with a simple UI and the builder offers many different question types. Its strength may be in simpler or more basic surveys, but it is definitely intuitive enough to design a very in-depth survey. Publishing surveys is again a straightforward process and is easy to do.
• The piping and logic features provide a better user experience for survey respondents, and are easy to configure within Zoho Survey. New features are always being added to Survey and the resources pages offer great detailed info on how to use the features of Zoho Survey.
• The integration with other Zoho apps (Zoho CRM, Zoho Analytics, etc.) is a real strength. Zoho has ingeniously created an entire "operating system" for business that integrates all their apps so perfectly. For example, if you send a project survey to a contact you can view their response contextually within the CRM system. So basically, project managers can stay in the CRM and see all Zoho Survey responses from their customers.
• Survey scoring is a great feature as well!

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.

• I honestly can't think of anything wrong with it (on our end). It does what it needs, and I've never had any issues retrieving surveys received.

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.

Zoho Survey is really easy to use. We've used Doodle and Survey Monkey in the past, and Zoho Social is just as easy, if not easier to use.

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.

Zoho's support is always quick to respond and troubleshoot any issues

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.

We went with Zoho Survey largely because we use other Zoho products. I did try SurveyMonkey and actually found it a little overwhelming in terms of how much customization you could do with it. Once back with Zoho Survey, having used other Zoho products, I was more comfortable with the way it worked (although Zoho's UI does have its quirks to get used to). Recommended for Zoho Users especially.

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.

• The results obtained have been great in relation to the saving of time and money that we have saved.
• It's so simple to use, has allowed everyone in the organization to use it, which is great for the contribution that each partner offers.

Incentivized