Lead generation with webforms part 1/3: Creating the form

Task: Create a lead in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales from a web form submission
Difficulty: Easy
Total time to implement: 1-2 hours

Content

1. Creating the form
   1. The tools
   2. Creating the web form
2. Embedding the form on a webpage (read post)
3. Connecting the form with Dynamics 365 (read post)

In this three-part blog series, I’ll show how you, as a Dynamics 365 user, can leverage a set of tools that are part of your arsenal to automate a common task performed by marketing and sales professionals: creating a lead record from a form submission. In this first post we start by creating a web form that will be placed on our website and used to generate our leads.

The tools

The tools I’ll be covering in these three posts are Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Power Automate.

If you don’t already have access, I recommend you signup for these apps:

• Microsoft Forms: A form builder tool similar to Google Forms. It’s free but requires a Microsoft account.
• Microsoft Power Automate: A service for connecting different apps. The basic plan is for free but to use it with Dynamics 365 you’ll need a subscription plan. You can also sign up for a 30 day free trial.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales: Commonly referred to as Dynamics CRM, it is a CRM app that belongs to the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement platform.

Creating the web form

In this post we will create a simple sign-up form using Microsoft Forms. Dynamics 365 Sales users can access Forms through forms.office.com.

1. Under the My Forms tab click New Form. See first screenshot.

2. Give your form a name and add the following fields: First Name*, Last Name*, Email*, Phone number, Organization, and Comment (* represents a required field). See second screenshot.

You can also watch how this is done by checking out the video below:

In the next posts of this three-part blog series, I’ll show you how a form is embedded on a website. In the final post in the series, I’ll create a Power Automate flow with the purpose of (1) creating a lead record in Dynamics 365 Sales and (2) sending an automatic email to the prospect.