News

Microsoft Renames Forms Pro Product to 'Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice'

• By Kurt Mackie
• 08/19/2020

Microsoft has renamed Microsoft Forms Pro, a product for sending surveys, to "Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice."

Public notice of the product name change came in the form of an Aug. 17 Twitter post by Karoliina Kettukari, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional. Otherwise, there's not been much publicity. Update 8/20: The name change actually took place in July, according to a "Message Center" online talk by Daniel Glenn and Darrell Webster, both Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals. Their insights, including arrival of the renamed product at the "end of August," are not to be missed in this video segment.

There's a new landing page for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, and the renaming apparently happened last month, according to this Microsoft "Overview" document page. The "Overview" document described Dynamics 365 Customer Voice as an "enterprise feedback management application" and as "the next product evolution from Microsoft Forms Pro."

Possibly, Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is available now. Microsoft only clarified that Government users won't see it until the fall, though, as "Dynamics 365 Customer Voice will be available on US Government Community Cloud by October 2020," per a "What's New in Microsoft Forms Pro" document.

Goodbye, Microsoft Forms Pro?
Microsoft had billed Microsoft Forms Pro as "an enterprise survey solution" for polling customers and employees, and indicated that the product was originally released on July 1, 2019, according to a  Microsoft Dynamics "2020 Release Wave 1 Overview Guide" document, dated April 3, 2020, which is available for download at this page.

Microsoft had planned to add a template solution to Microsoft Forms Pro that would combine "survey questions and business process workflows," making it easier to conduct "voice of the customer" surveys, according to that document.

Here's how that template would work, per the "Overview Guide":

Using the customer service feedback template, you can automate sending surveys when a case is resolved in Dynamics 365. You can then use Power BI to get customer satisfaction insights that integrate survey results with product and customer service agent performance.

Microsoft's documents don't seem to state that Microsoft Forms Pro will be ending as a product, so that circumstance remains as an open question.

Goodbye, Voice of the Customer!
Surprisingly, it was only last year that Microsoft announced the deprecation of Dynamics 365 Voice of the Customer in favor of Microsoft Forms Pro. The announcement had indicated that "moving forward, Forms Pro will provide seamless integration for surveys within Microsoft Business Applications, including Dynamics 365 and Office 365."

Voice of the Customer, another Microsoft solution for creating surveys, lost that ability on July 1, 2020, its deprecation date. Organizations were told to switch to Microsoft Forms Pro before that end-of-life date. The case for making a switch was argued by Megan Walker, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, in a video dated April 29, 2020.

Hello, Dynamics 365 Customer Voice!
How Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is any different from Microsoft Forms Pro wasn't elucidated by Microsoft, or it couldn't be found.

Right now, Microsoft's licensing document appears to be just using the old Microsoft Forms Pro name, which can be used by both Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 enterprise licensees. There's actually a difference in what you get, depending on the license type. Dynamics 365 enterprise subscribers get the first 2,000 responses for free, whereas Microsoft 365 subscribers have to pay $100 up front for "2,000 responses per month."

That nuance on having to pay in advance for responses recently tripped up one Office 365 licensee, per this June 16 Microsoft Tech Community post.

Another difference is that Microsoft includes Microsoft Forms Pro with various Dynamics 365 products, as described in the licensing document. However, for Office 365 subscribers, using Microsoft Forms Pro is an extra cost and the product has to be added. It's not clear if the option to use Microsoft Forms Pro will go away for Office 365 users now that "Dynamics 365" is part of the product's name.

It's also unclear if the licensing circumstances will change now that Microsoft Forms Pro has been renamed to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice.

Microsoft renames its products all of the time. However, even some of Microsoft's employees considered this product renaming to be a bit of a contortion act.

"Stop this nonsense already! Stop flexing," declared Jeremy Thake, a principal program manager on the Microsoft Graph team, in an Aug. 18 Twitter post regarding the product name change.

Thake likely was referring to Microsoft's apparent quick dash to rename "Dataflex Pro," a rename of the Microsoft Common Data Service, because of a possible trademark infringement, as reported in this Aug. 11 ZDNet article by veteran Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley.