Q - How to automatically delete Microsoft Forms response after 90 days.

Question

Background

• I'm new to Power Automate and is using Microsoft Form to gather user personal information to perform a series of actions.
• Due to corporate data protection policy, the personal data that user submitted cannot be kept for more than 90 days.

Question:

• Instead of having to manually delete users' response , is there a way to automatically delete MS form user response based on Submission Time + 90 days ,
• Eg: A user submits MS form on 9-Nov-2022, the data needs to be deleted from MS Form responses on 9-Feb-2023?

Appreciate anyone's input and assistance on the above!

Answer 1

Dear Bobby,

Thanks for your updates and confirmation.

Based on my multiple tests, you can filter the specific response by using Uri formapi/api/forms('id')/responses?$filter=id eq responseid from Microsoft Forms. However, it is a just filter not the actual response. Currently I'm afraid that there is no Uri getting the specific response and we can only delete all responses from Microsoft Forms by the DELETE method.

As a possible workaround, you can use the SharePoint Online list to store and dramatically remove the responses automatically by a flow and remove all the responses in Microsoft Forms after each run of the flow.

For example, you can create a calculated column ExpireTime in the list to calculate the expiration time automatically by just using the formula =SubmitTime+90.

You can create the flow as follows.

Filter array: utcNow()

Compose: items('Apply_to_each_2')?['id']

Result:

As our product developers are willing to hear the users' suggestions, I kindly suggest you submit your feedback on the Feedback platformto our product developers so that they can know your requirements and ideas for product improvements. I hope that there will be a corresponding API call letting users remove the specific response in the future.

Thanks for your understanding and have a nice day!

Sincerely,

Cliff | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Dear Bobby,

Welcome to the forum here.

You can create a schedule flow to run every 3 months and delete all responses in the 3 months in Microsoft Forms.

You can automatically delete the responses by Rest API.

Site Address: https://forms.office.com

Method: DELETE

Uri: formapi/api/forms('formid')/responses

Thanks for your effort and time!

Sincerely,

Cliff | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 3

Hi @Cliff,

Appreciate your prompt respond! Using the REST API sounds like a really handy tool!

I'm also wondering if there the REST API logic can be leveraged to delete a single Form response? Instead of Mass Form response deletion after 90 days.

The business reason behind that is that we hope to store user data for 90 days before deletion.

Let me share a quick scenario:

1. Ben submits MS form on the 9-Nov-2022
2. Tom submits MS form on the 20-Nov-2022.
3. Ben's MS Form response is stored and gets deleted on 9-Feb-2023.
4. Tom's MS Form response is stored and gets deleted on 20-Feb-2023.

*Every user's MS Form response is stored for 90 days before deletion*

Answer 4

@Cliff, any idea how to fix the error message below? Site address is not listed, it was entered as custom value. We are also on Government Community Cloud (GCC). We are using MS Forms to submit employee suggestions anonymously and would like to delete the response in Forms after the suggestion is sent via email.

Answer 5

Dear Aethyta,

Welcome to the forum here.

You are using the correct site address https://forms.office.com.

You can just ignore the error and save the flow to do a test to see the result.

Thanks for your effort and time!

Sincerely,

Cliff | Microsoft Community Moderator