MS Forms & Power Automate question

[mdrabble]

I have been asked if it is possible to come up with a voting form where outside people can complete but ensuring they can only complete the form once.

 

Can Power Automate check completed forms for a certain field (such as email address) and if already found on a previously completed form then not allow the form to be submitted?

 

Cheers

[Vetinari]

Hi mdrabble. I wouldn't want to insist on this as I may be proven wrong, but I've had to do a lot of Forms/Power Automate combinations this year and I'm pretty certain you can't do this... at least not with the standard getup of Forms. The power automations are triggered at the point a submission is made so it can only ever take action after the fact, not during (i.e. tell them on screen that it's rejected and not create a submission)

 

I can't test this myself right now so this may not work depending on what options Power Automate/Flow offers, but one idea in my head would be:

 

 

• Form gets submitted
  
• Flow/automate is triggered
  
• Get all responses from said form
  
• Conditional check if e-mail address already exists from any of them
  
  • If yes: send an e-mail to recipient that the submission was rejected, then delete said submission
    
  • If no: carry on!
    

 

That might be pure wishful thinking/easy to say on paper of course!

 

As a side, it might be worth investigating Microsoft 365 Dynamics - Customer Voice. This was formerly "Microsoft Forms Pro" and I've had a few occasions where a feature I would have wanted for our forms here is possible with that product. I don't know if this specific scenario would be covered (checking public responses for duplicates/e-mail field) but if I were in your shoes I'd certainly give it a look. It appears to be per-user licensing so the cost implication wouldn't be too bad I imagine, depending on how desperate they/you are to have this.

 

Hopefully this is of some help, apologies if not!