I was on a call with a Nintex partner the other day and they had asked me how to hide actions from the workflow status. While I answer questions about complex workflow and forms scenarios for partners and customers alike, I often receive questions about more basic functionality like this as well, especially from non-technical users. So, in an effort to make sure that everyone is empowered to build the most engaging workflows, I will be working on putting together some blog posts about how to do some things that are relatively easy to with Nintex Workflow and Nintex Forms but that can really help you build compelling business automation solutions.
In this post I will cover a common question:
"When I start a workflow or look at a workflow history, I see this really great picture of what is going on thanks to the Nintex workflow diagram. But, I have processes that I really don't want users to see inside of the workflow or I don't want them to see anything at all. How can I hide this information?"
Sample workflow:
The answer to this question is, yes you can! Plus, it's easy to do!
Whomever is building the workflow can simply open the configuration dialog for any action in the workflow through the Nintex workflow designer, navigate to the Common settings option, check off the Hide from workflow status box and click on Save. Done! This action will no longer show up on the diagram.
So now that we're done hiding our actions, what does the workflow diagram look like on the start page or in the workflow history?
End Result:
Now, if you want to go further and hide the workflow diagram all together you can make sure that you've enable custom workflow start pages in the Nintex Workflow settings inside of SharePoint Central Administration. You will need to be a SharePoint administrator to do this! Once you've done that you can remove the workflow diagram or add any other information to the start form you would like.
To enable custom start pages:
- Open up Central Administration
- Application Management
- Global Settings (under Nintex Workflow Management)
- Check that the "Allow workflow designers to specify a start page" option is set to Yes and then Save. (This change will take about 15 minutes or you can manually restart IIS for the change to take effect immediately)
Users can now open the workflow and create a custom start page by clicking on Workflow Settings and then clicking on Edit Start Form.
Customize your start page and save it. Then simply publish your workflow. Now, when you attempt to start the workflow, the custom form will be displayed:
As you can see, I only added a label control and the text 'My custom start form!' but you can tailor this form to include a myriad of controls and fields but again, as you can see, the workflow diagram is not there! Keep in mind you can always add the diagram back to this page if you so choose by editing the start page and dragging and dropping the Workflow Diagram control back onto the form, saving and publishing the workflow.
I hope this post helps you and please keep a lookout for more in my Back to Basics series!
