While we are in the middle of migrating our forms from the old Insider to new SharePoint Online Insider, we have developed a work-around for completing and submitting Online Course Observations using Excel Online. The Online Course Observation is on the forms list to be built on the new Insider so eventually it will be an electronic form like the others.

Key Concepts to Remember

  • Call it SharePoint Online (SPO), Office 365 (O365) or Microsoft 365 (M365), it is all of Microsoft's products (pretty long list) living in the cloud. 
  • Outlook does not work in M365 because it is not connected to anything. We use Google. It is always best to copy a link in M365 and paste it into a google email.
  • You can get to a list of all the products by clicking the waffle from wherever you are in M365
  • Everything you do in M365 is saved in the cloud. Please be aware of where you are within the product.


Download the Excel Form & Set Up Master File

Before you begin using the Excel form, you must download it into your OneDrive

  1. Navigate to insider.blueridge.edu and click on "Forms" in the top navigation. the Online Course Observation is listed under "Maxient or Online Forms."
  2. Click the name of the form to open it. *Please note, this opens the original, master form. Any changes made at this point to the form body will be made for all those who follow you. Please do not change this form.
  3. Once the form is open, you need to save a copy to your One Drive. You only need to do this step once if you maintain a master in your OneDrive and create copies for each observation. To save to your OneDrive, click "File" in the top navigation, click "Save As" in the left navigation, then click "Save As" in the body.
  4. This will open a dialog box with your OneDrive file structure. We suggest creating a folder for your Online Observations by clicking "New Folder" and naming it something like "Online Observations."

  5. After creating the folder, click on it and then click "Save." 
  6. The excel file will open from your One Drive after you click "Save." To confirm, you can click the down arrow in the top navigation bar by the name. From here you can rename it to something like "Online Observation - Master" and see the file path.


To make a copy of this file and share with others, please see Online Observation Form - Share With Users