Power Automate Tutorial: Entering Multi-Choice Responses from Microsoft Forms to SharePoint

In this tutorial, Jonathon Silva walks through a practical use case in Power Automate, demonstrating how to properly handle multi-choice responses from Microsoft Forms and store them in SharePoint. This scenario highlights a common issue many users encounter when working with dynamic data—especially when dealing with multi-select fields—and provides a clean, scalable solution using JSON formatting and the Select action.

Understanding the Use Case

Jonathon Silva begins by outlining the objective: capturing responses from a Microsoft Form and storing them in a SharePoint list. The form includes three fields:

• A text field for name
• A single-choice field for age group
• A multi-choice field for favorite colors

While text and single-choice fields transfer smoothly into SharePoint, the multi-choice field introduces formatting challenges. Instead of storing clean, readable values, SharePoint displays the data in a JSON-like format with unwanted characters such as backslashes.

The Problem with Multi-Choice Fields

When Jonathon Silva runs the initial Power Automate flow, the multi-select responses are stored incorrectly. Instead of seeing individual values like “Red” and “Blue,” the output appears as a structured JSON string. This happens because SharePoint expects data in a specific array format, but Power Automate passes it as raw JSON text.

This mismatch creates issues not only for readability but also for future reporting and data analysis, especially when integrating with tools like Power BI.

Building the Power Automate Flow

The tutorial walks through the foundational steps of building the flow:

1. Trigger: When a new response is submitted in Microsoft Forms
2. Action: Get response details using the response ID
3. Action: Create item in SharePoint

For standard fields like name and age group, dynamic content can be directly mapped into SharePoint columns. However, the multi-choice field requires additional transformation before it can be stored correctly.

Using JSON Formatting to Fix the Issue

To resolve the formatting problem, Jonathon Silva introduces JSON transformation within Power Automate. By analyzing the output of the “Get response details” step, he identifies that the multi-select data must be reshaped into a proper array format.

The key is to remove unnecessary escape characters and structure the data in a way SharePoint can interpret correctly.

Introducing the Select Action

The solution involves adding a Select data operation before the SharePoint “Create item” step. This action allows users to transform the structure of the incoming data.

The process includes:

• Converting the multi-select response into JSON format
• Mapping each selected value into a structured array
• Assigning each item a key (typically “value”)

By doing this, each selected option (e.g., Red, Blue) is treated as an individual entry rather than part of a single string.

Configuring the Select Action

Jonathon Silva demonstrates how to configure the Select action step-by-step:

• Use the json() expression to convert the multi-choice response
• Reference the “favorite colors” dynamic content from the form
• Map each item using the expression item()
• Assign the key “value” for SharePoint compatibility

This transformation ensures that the output matches the format expected by SharePoint’s multi-choice column.

Updating the SharePoint Action

Once the Select action is configured, its output is used as the input for the SharePoint “Create item” step. Instead of manually entering values or relying on raw dynamic content, the flow now pulls structured data directly from the Select action.

This results in clean, properly formatted entries within the SharePoint list.

Validating the Results

After implementing the solution, Jonathon Silva tests the flow multiple times. The results confirm that:

• Multi-select responses are stored as separate values
• No unnecessary JSON formatting or escape characters appear
• Data aligns with how it would be manually entered in SharePoint

This improved structure makes the data easier to work with for reporting, filtering, and integration with other tools.

Why This Approach Matters

Properly formatting multi-choice data is critical for maintaining data integrity and usability. By leveraging Power Automate’s Select action and JSON transformation capabilities, users can:

• Ensure consistency across data sources
• Simplify reporting in Power BI
• Enable smoother automation workflows
• Avoid common formatting errors

Final Thoughts

Jonathon Silva’s tutorial provides a clear and practical solution to a common Power Automate challenge. By understanding how data is structured and using built-in transformation tools, users can significantly improve how information flows between Microsoft Forms and SharePoint.

This approach not only solves immediate formatting issues but also sets a strong foundation for scalable and reliable data automation processes.

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