A while back, I shared some reactions one might see if NBC’s The Good Place deployed Microsoft 365. In the show, profanities are auto-filtered and replaced with something a little more G-rated. For example, “holy sh**” becomes “holy shirt!” So even though PG-13 profanities can’t be used, the characters can still get their emphatic points across.
In that spirit, I present some M365-inspired (but G-rated) profanities and swear alternatives to incorporate into your daily vernacular.
Spam is no joke. But when we educate users about it, we can have a little fun. A few months ago, my director sent out an email with the subject line “Spam on the rise” which I felt needed a little cinematic pizzazz. Without further ado I give you Spam on the Rise, ready for your PowerPoint slides or digital resources.
Have a holiday party coming up? Staff meeting you want to spice up? Send a form out to attendees in advance to collect adjectives, nouns and verbs and showcase your favorite completed libs at your meeting. Or just do it for fun – because work should be fun. Go ahead and try my test version to see for yourself!
Make your own (short version)
Create a form at forms.office.com with questions for adjectives, nouns, etc. Be sure to collect email addresses as well so you can send participants the completed mad lib. You can use my template
Create a flow at flow.microsoft.com that pulls responses into an email template. You can import the flow I built
Create an account if you don’t already have one (it’s free!)
Note: It must be an organizational account – Flow cannot currently connect to “personal” Forms accounts.
Create a new form or use my template (open link and click “Duplicate it” at the top)
If you just created an account
If you already have an account
Add a title, subtitle/instructions and then any questions/word parts you want. You must include email address as a required field if you intend to email the results to someone.
If you’re giving people multiple mad libs to choose from, you must also require a choice field like in my example.
Create the flow to send completed mad libs
This is the part that takes form submissions and turns them into the actual mad libs. It’s easiest to import the flow I built.
Now select your existing connections for Forms and Outlook.
If you don’t already have an Outlook and/or Forms connection, you’ll need to click “Create new” and add them, then come back to connect them in the previous step. You can also modify the Flow to use Gmail or HTML emails instead. If you use HTML emails, however, they’re more likely to go to spam or be blocked since they come from a well-known “marketing” address rather than an individual (yourself).
Once you’ve set your connections, click “Import” (you should no longer see red x’s next to the connections under “Related resources”)
Once imported, click “Open flow”
Check every step, especially the “Forms” step to set the correct Form connection, and correct other fields like “email body” variables as needed.
Note: My Flow template has multiple mad lib options. If you just have one, you don’t need the “switch” at all (which is really just a conditional statement).
When finished, click “Save” in the upper right, go to your flows and make sure it’s “On”.
Finally, copy the “Share” URL from your form and send it to people to complete! Have fun!
If you’ve watched NBC’s “The Good Place,” you’ll enjoy this post that much more. My CIO loves the show and recommended it so I started watching it. And then I couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t forking stop.
When someone added the entire department to the “Owners” group
When someone says all their forms are built in InfoPath
Looking at the shared network drives after implementing OneDrive for Business and SharePoint
When someone says they prefer Google Drive
But then someone on my governance committee suggests we crack down on shadow IT things like DropBox and Google Drive being used outside the organization for work
The secret to high governance committee and user group attendance
When someone visits me after an update to SharePoint breaks all the workflows that have to be rebuilt asap
When a new app is rolled out without administrative or governance controls
When someone has ten levels of folders in a document library
When someone sends a link to file on SharePoint or OneDrive instead of attaching it
When someone suggests we utilize Power BI for data visualization instead of Excel
When an email subject line reads, “Woops”
Trying to explain a mandatory migration to Office 365
When someone says “search sucks” and I give up and hire Bad Janet to take its place
This National Cookie Day, I took Microsoft’s new icon set and gave them a festive frosting. If you have an awesome bakery nearby like KC’s Cakery in Tampa (thanks, Jon Levesque for the recommendation) maybe you could have these made up for your next governance committee meeting or a “launch party” announcing this change to the user experience.
