How to Create a Tech Help Site With Google Forms

This afternoon I hosted a free webinar titled Strategies for Remote Instructional Technology Support (the recording will be available later this evening). One of the strategies that I talked about and demonstrated in the webinar was using Google Forms to create a tech help resource to share with your colleagues. This can be done by using branching logic otherwise known as "go to section based on answer" in Google Forms.

Create a tech help site with Google Forms start by adding an opening multiple choice question that asks people to pick the topic that they need help with. Then create a section in the Google Form for each topic that is listed in the opening question. Within each section you can include video tutorials and links to additional resources. At the end of each section put in another question that lets visitors return to the home screen or exit from the Form. The "go to section based on answer" feature of Google Forms will let you direct people to the appropriate section based on how they answer the first question on the Form. Watch my video below to see how the whole process works. You can see my demo Form right here.



Once you've built your tech help Google Form you can embed it into your existing website or simply email it to people who could benefit from using it.

You'll notice in the video above that I included a section in my Form for "something else" in which people can book an appointment with me via Google Calendar. That is done with Google Calendar appointment pages. This video can show you how to do that.

Save Time With This Google Calendar Scheduling Tip

Here's a little tip that I passed along to a colleague yesterday morning that might help some of you too. When you're scheduling meetings that are going to happen on a consistent schedule you can go into the "more options" for the event on your calendar and set a custom, repeating schedule. This saves you the step of having to manually add every event in a sequence.

I used this method to schedule all of my Google Hangout Meetings for my computer science students for the rest of the year. If you need to add video conferencing to your event, you can do that in the same place that you set your repeating schedule and have the meeting link automatically added to every event in the sequence. Watch my short video below to see how this works.