The right survey at the right moment can do wonders for your team.
- It can help you proactively surface issues that would otherwise plague your team’s productivity for months.
- It can help you understand what your colleagues are going through and develop the best course of action.
- It can even make your team more united and collaborative.
But how do you ensure that every survey you create is timely and relevant? Conduct surveys directly in your favorite messenger.
In this article, we’ll share a step-by-step guide on how to conduct surveys in Microsoft Teams using Geekbot.
Tune in!
#1. Create a New Survey
Geekbot dashboard offers plenty of ready-to-use templates for most common types of meetings, polls, and surveys such as daily stand-ups, retrospectives, and well-being surveys.
To access the Geekbot dashboard in MS Teams simply type “Dashboard” or “login” and Geekbot will provide a link for you.
We want to make sure that your survey is tailored to the exact needs of your team. To achieve this let’s click the “Build your own” button to configure details of your survey.
The Custom Report screen will appear.
You can specify survey options in four key areas of Custom Reports, including:
- Basic. Name your survey, decide what channel will host it, and whether your survey is anonymous or not.
- Questions. Here you will decide what questions will be included with the survey and what types of responses you expect from participants.
- Participants. In this section, you decide who will take the survey, either all of your team or specific team members.
- Schedule. Decide how often this survey takes place. Is it a regular or a one-time thing?
In the following steps, we will focus on the main areas of creating a survey in MS Teams with Geekbot.
#2. Name Your Survey
Let’s give your survey a name and choose what MS Teams channel will broadcast survey questions. Teams usually create channels in MS Teams around specific discussions or projects. If your survey is closely related to a specific project, it’s a good idea to broadcast the survey on its MS channel, e.g. #developers or #UX.
If, however, you want to create a general survey for all of your team members, the #general channel will work just fine. You can also create surveys in closed channels for more sensitive topics.
At this point, you can also choose whether this is an anonymous survey or not.
Anonymous surveys are a great way to receive honest feedback in teams with low-trust issues or newly created teams where people are not yet comfortable providing frank feedback.
#3. Provide Survey Questions
The next step is to write the questions you want your team to answer. Different surveys serve different purposes, and questions that you choose to ask define whether your survey will be informative and successful.
Here are different types of surveys that you find questions for in our blog:
- Employee morale surveys let you analyze current employee morale and define its impact on your team’s productivity.
Learn more about this type of survey and suitable questions from How These 6 Types of Employee Morale Survey Get Actionable Data - Team-building surveys let you ask questions that provide opportunities for team bonding and can include icebreakers and trust-building questions.
Learn about team building surveys from 44 Team Building Questions and When to Use Them in Your Workplace - Monthly 1-on-1 surveys let you dive deep into every employee’s struggles, provide timely praise and establish a deep connection with team members.
Learn more about conducting productive 1-on-1 sessions using Geekbot from How to Run Effective 1-on-1s
After you decided on your survey purpose and decided on a set of questions to use, add the questions via the Geekbot dashboard.
Note: There is no limit to the number of questions you can add to your survey using Geekbot.
By clicking the “Answer Type” button, you will be able to select the different
types of responses you want from participants.
- Plain text. The users can freely type their answers.
- Numeric. Only numbers will be accepted for responses. Numeric-only responses might be useful if you need percentages or data that can be easily quantified, e.g. with questions that start “On a scale from 1-5…”
- Pre-defined. Surveys participants select from pre-defined responses that you provide.
- Random. A question is randomly selected from a list. This type of response is ideal for icebreakers or recurring team-building surveys to keep these surveys fresh and engaging.
In the image above, you can see what it looks like when you select “Pre-defined” as the type of response.
You can also write an intro message with Geekbot.
This is the first message your team sees in MS Teams, for example: “Welcome to our weekly progress survey”
You can also add a message at the end. An outro message can be as simple as, “Thank you for participating in our weekly survey.”
Note: With Geekbot, you can use emojis in your Intro and Outro message to make your Microsoft Teams surveys more fun, lively, and personable.
#4. Choose Your Participants
Geekbot lets you add participants manually or sync your survey to a specific Microsoft Teams channel and automatically add all channel users into the survey.
If you want to survey a unique group of people, simply add their names one by one. Geekbot will automatically pull all names from your MS Teams workspace.
Note: There is no maximum or minimum number of respondents needed to run a Microsoft Teams survey with Geekbot, so you can survey everyone at once or just one person.
#5. Schedule Your Microsoft Teams Survey
The next step is to schedule your survey in MS Teams. Do you want to run a regular survey and track response data over time or do you have some critical issue that you want to focus on during a one-time survey?
From the drop-down menu, you can pick the frequency at which Microsoft Teams surveys are sent, including:
- Once
- Every week
- Every two weeks
- Every three weeks
- Every four weeks
- Every first week of the month
- Every last week of the month
- Specific day and/or time
You can select the time you want (eg, 9:00 AM) and then Geekbot will factor in each of the participants’ time zones automatically. Thus, everyone receives the survey questions at a time that’s convenient for them, minimizing the interruption to their workflow.
#6. Send Out Your MS Teams Survey
After you have filled out all of the appropriate fields, you can schedule the survey to be sent out. Participants will receive a direct message in Microsoft Teams asking them to complete the survey.
For example:
There are two ways to view survey results.
First, you can view them directly in MS Teams. For example:
You can also view all responses in your Geekbot dashboard.
The above image shows that 73% of the team members have completed the survey and five respondents are missing. Moreover, the majority of team members prefer freshly squeezed juices to fresh veggies and yogurt dips.
Are you ready to make surveys an integral part of your MS Teams workflow?
Check out our free 10-person Geekbot plan and join the likes of Shopify and Github who already reinvented their productivity by conducting ultra=productive asynchronous meetings and surveys directly in MS Teams and Slack.
