Linking a Form to a Stream Video

Add a Quiz or Survey to Track Viewer Interest

If you haven’t looked at Microsoft Stream for a while, you might have missed the introduction of the Interactivity tab, which was introduced to the product in early 2019. As the word implies, the tab exists as an entry point to interaction between the people who own video content and those who watch or consume the content. By adding a quiz, survey, or poll to a video, you drive viewer interest in the content and have the chance to collect information based on what they just watched.

In fact, because each form is tied to a certain point in the video timeline, you can have multiple forms exposed at different parts of a video. You can see how this would be valuable in learning situations (to measure how well the watcher understands the material being discussed) or corporate video portal (to gather feedback from employees about new programs or other initiatives).

It’s All Forms for Now

Right now, Microsoft Forms is the only application you can link to the Interactivity tab, but it’s a useful one because it illustrates how useful the concept is. It’s also another nice example of how Microsoft adds value to Office 365 by linking different components together in a way that’s simply impossible on-premises.

Take the video I recorded with Paul Thurrott in Washington DC recently. During the discussion, we talk about whether Teams is the new Outlook. Here’s how we could add a poll to the video to see if viewers agree with the assertion. First, go to Microsoft Forms and create a simple form. Figure 1 is really simple – just one question to answer (but that’s OK, because viewers don’t want their watching disturbed by lots of questions).

Using the Interactivity Tab

Use the Send button in Forms to generate a URL that can be used for sharing. It will be something like:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=DQSIkWdsW0yxEjajBLZtrQAAAAAAAAAAAAMAAJbcncJUN0hSQTMzUjNEUzZOV0I5N0RCQzFHNlhMSS4x

Go to Stream and open the video you want to use with the form. Find the best point in the video to display the form (use one of those pregnant pauses that often occur in discussions) and note the timeline data (in minutes and seconds, like 06:30 for six minutes and 30 seconds into the video). Remember that you can link several forms to a video so it’s important not to select the same time for multiple forms and to space the forms out within the video.

Now click the Interactivity tab and then Add New. Paste the URL of the form, give the form a name, and make sure that the timeline point is correct. Then click Add to timeline to create the link between the form and video.

Displaying a Form in a Stream Video

With the link in place, when Stream reaches the set point in the timeline while playing the video, it pauses playback and invokes the URL for the form. The form displays in the frame used for video playback (Figure 3). The user can interact with the form and submit it for processing before resuming video playback.

Generally, everything works nicely (although I’ve seen a few warnings that my changes will be lost when I leave the site; I assume the warning comes from Forms, but it doesn’t seem to affect anything).

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Stream is covered in the main book of Office 365 for IT Pros. We cover Forms in the companion volume.