How to create surveys in OneDrive and view the results in Power BI

So, this blog post is the result of the pestering request of one Jen Underwood, who I mentioned this to previously as something I’d done for some internal work at Microsoft.  Apparently, a number of people aren’t aware there is an easy way to create surveys using OneDrive and Excel Online.  It’s a great way to quickly create an anonymous survey that you can share a public link to.  And because the results are immediately saved in an Excel document in OneDrive, you can use PowerBI to view those results as they come in!  Here’s how you do it –

1. Sign up for OneDrive (duh).

2. Once you’ve signed up/in, go to the new menu.  Here you’ll see the option to create a number of new documents, including an Excel survey.  Choose that.

3. A new browser window will open and you can create your survey by giving it a title, description, and begin entering your questions by clicking on the little gear that appears as click in the area to enter.

4.  The questions can be multiple choice, true/false, text responses, etc.  You can also make them required or mark if they have a default answer.

Once you’ve finished, your question will appear in the list you’ve added to your survey in the order you create each one.

5. Continue adding questions until you are finished.  You can move the order they appear in around at any time by simply hovering over a question, clicking it, and then dragging it to the place you wish it listed.

6. Once you’ve finished, if you hit “Save and View”, you can preview what your survey will look like for those using it.

If everything looks good, you can hit the “Share Survey” button, and a link will be generated that you can share so users can fill out the survey.

There, my survey is done.  I invite you to fill it out here – http://1drv.ms/1SXqFt5

Now that my survey is finished, I’ll want to report on the results using Power BI.  I can do that right from the Power BI site.

1. Go to PowerBI.com and login to your Power BI site (or sign up if you haven’t already).

2. Once you’ve done that, go to Get Data, and then choose Files

3. Choose OneDrive-Personal and select the survey you just created

And that’s it – you can now create your report to show the results as they come in from the survey.  Simply design it, name it and save it.

And now with the new Power BI public embedding, everyone can see the results that come into my report.  So fill out the survey here – http://1drv.ms/1SXqFt5

And view the results here – Survey Results

Thanks for reading, and I can finally tell Jen to quit bugging me to write this post.