How to build a request tracker with Microsoft Forms and Lists (and when to stop)

If your business runs on Microsoft 365, you already own the parts for a basic request tracker: Microsoft Forms to collect requests, Microsoft Lists to track them and Power Automate to connect the two. Here's how to put it together, and an honest look at where it gets hard.

The do-it-yourself version

1. Build the form. In Microsoft Forms, create a form with the questions you need: name, location, what's wrong, urgency. Set who can respond (only people in your organization, or anyone with the link).

2. Build the list. In Microsoft Lists, start from the Issue tracker template or a blank list. Add a column for each form question, plus Status, Assigned to and Date closed.

3. Connect them with Power Automate. Create a flow: When a new response is submitted → Get response details → Create item in your list, mapping each answer to its column.

4. Add notifications. Add steps to email the person who's assigned, and optionally to send the requester a confirmation.

5. Share it. Post the form link, put it on your intranet, or make a QR code for it.

For a single team with simple requests, this works and costs nothing extra.

Where it gets hard

• Every change touches three places. Add a question, and you update the form, the list and the flow.
• Flows break quietly. A renamed column or an expired connection, and requests stop arriving in the list. Nobody notices until someone asks where their request went.
• Keeping the requester updated means another flow for each status change, and people outside your organization can't see the list.
• Rules are hard. "Can't close without a cost" means validation formulas or more flows.
• Replies don't come back. When the requester answers an email, it lands in someone's inbox, not on the list item.
• Each new kind of request is another form, list and set of flows.
• Some connectors cost extra, and the person who built it becomes the only one who can fix it.

When to switch

Move to a purpose-built tool when you have more than one kind of request, requesters outside your organization, or nobody left who wants to maintain the flows.

What a purpose-built tool does instead

In TicketStacker, the form, the list, the steps and the emails are one thing, called a stack. Add a field and it's on the form and the ticket at once. Requesters get updates and a tracking page without an account, replies land on the ticket, and step rules are a setting instead of a formula. Your team signs in with their Microsoft accounts.

If you've already been collecting requests in a List, export it to Excel and smart import brings the history over.

Try it

Join the pilot. It's free while we build TicketStacker with a small group of businesses. See also: Microsoft 365 ticketing.