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Excerpt from: Using process reviews to maintain the gains The big transformationLast spring, I had a professional landscaping company come to my house and replace the weeds that dominated my front yard with new sod. They also converted one large planter into two smaller ones and added fresh mulch. The contrast between the new yard and old yard was startling. Not long after they had completed their work, I began to notice that the new grass, although certainly healthier and more attractive than my old weeds, still required a minimum level of work in order to maintain that stark contrast over the old weeds. The “big transformation” had temporarily solved many of my problems – an unsightly yard, out of control weeds, and unhappy neighbors – but it did not eliminate the need for me to manage my yard. Despite the large upfront investment, I still had to work to maintain the gains that were made. It is not uncommon for organizations to approach process management like I approached my yard pr

But what does DMAIC have to do with a process culture in sub-themes? Simply put, it lays the foundation for optimally managed process optimization according to Six-Sigma. From my experience over the last 14 years, this topic is often misunderstood. Processes are seen as an annoying evil, yet they are at the heart of every company.  If processes are not optimally defined, the implementation cannot be applied in a resource-saving way. This is reflected in the costs and earnings of a company. It is therefore important for companies to establish process optimization as a corporate or even process culture.  Long-term success through responsibilities and the right communication Make sure that such a project is always driven by C-level. True to the motto "We are all pulling together", long-term success can be achieved in this way. If this is not the case, unavoidable grievances will arise that run through the entire company. It is also important to define responsibilities for the project. Not

A huge part of sales enablement is creating tailored and effective emails for your sellers. If you use a powerful sales tool like Salesforce, it only makes sense to leverage the data inside of your CRM to drive the emails for drip campaigns, lead communication and prospective emails that close business. Most customers will gravitate to Salesforce email templates to do a direct mail merge of Salesforce data into the message of an email. However, Salesforce email templates have certain limitations that restrict the type of content you can generate. There's no support for multiple line items or conditional lines of text.                 Historically, Drawloop customers would get around these limitations by generating a document that is attached to an email. Drawloop docgen does not have limitations for line items or conditional text. But it sometimes just makes more sense to exclude attachments from an email and drive all of that content directly into the message of the email. Well now yo

Last month I wrote the first part of this blog and that was focused on the Nintex Form piece of this solution. This month we will focus is on how to take those individual items on the single form and create a list item for each one. There are many scenarios that this could come in to play such as breaking out each item in a request to better understand metrics or even running processes on individual item rather than on the entire submission.  For this scenario I will continue from the last blog and frame it as an expense report. The report will allow for each submission to have multiple items on the report, but we want to break out each item into a separate list for additional processing. For this, we will need to create a separate list to push the necessary data into. Keep in mind that this is the list is where the items will be pushed to in order to process them further. The next step is creating the workflow that will push each item into this list. This workflow will be on the list

I saw a number of posts on this topic with no real clear solution.   I would like to present my solution here.   It is based on the work of a number of people on this forum. But first I would like to state that  it is beyond comprehension why Nintex does not have the option to validate before Save and Continue right out of the box.   We should not have to come up with a hack for something that common sense says should  have been a part of the original design. Now for the solution. 1. Place a Save and Continue button on your form. 2. Give it a class names something like SaveAndContinueXYZZY.  You should be able to store the ID in a JavaScript variable but yet another thing beyond comprehension is why this feature is not available for buttons.   It is probably a good idea to take the extra step of using your own class as opposed to using  what Nintex provides because if they change their design then your form will still work. 3.  Hide this button with a rule.  Remember to turn off the  a

 A few months back I was fortunate to attend an education roadshow in South Africa, and I presented a Student Onboarding Scenario in 5 minutes. Yes we were only given five minutes haha. Decided to do a chilled 11 minute version and provide some useful links below. Enjoy!  1. You can view my Promapp Process here <iframe src="https://app.box.com/embed/s/3f5127zjh66q4jv4n6v5ddx86y20ob3y?sortColumn=date&view=list" width="500" height="400" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe> 2. The Nintex Workflow Cloud Key - Use this to import this into your tenant is P7iAw1FTL3XXEiqEoSejN9oekMTh845RbQufce18M1mwuMvSvNote: this is valid up until 2 June 20193. Trial Links: Nintex Workflow Cloud Nintex Promapp Let me know if you have any questions!!! Cheers!!

You can find Kryon documentation, including release notes, user guides and more, here:RPAProcess Discovery

Moving data with Nintex Workflow Cloud or NWC can be a very simple setup. This is a very common need and use case for Nintex. I have data in one system and when it hits a certain stage or status sync it to this other system. I have seen this come across my desk several times this week so I though I would write about it. I typically refer to workflow setups as magic tricks and this will be no exception. Meaning any example use case I give can completely be shuffled and told in a different order… Ta-Dah! In the example I have pictured below the starting event is a new case record created in Salesforce. Every time I create a new case record I want this workflow to run/fire.  The next step is creating an item in a Sharepoint list. The ending result is below. I created a Salesforce case and the data in parallel mapped to Sharepoint. Configuring this is not a big calorie burn.  To make this happen first make sure you have added your connections to NWC with the systems you are using. In this

Excerpt from: Gaining clarity: how process scoping fuels simplicity  If you were to write a process for grocery shopping, what would it look like? Would it be simple to understand and use? Would it be helpful? Take a moment to think about it. Perhaps you are already thinking about specific conditions. Things like: What items are on the list? What grocery store (or stores) will you need to visit to get those specific items? What day or time of day will you be going? What is your budget? Now, admittedly, I am not an expert at grocery shopping, so this list of conditions might be much longer. The point is, as simple and straightforward as “grocery shopping” may sound, the content and complexity of that process is greatly dependent upon specific conditions to be included in it.... See full post here: Gaining clarity: how process scoping fuels simplicity 

I appear to come across the same scenario time and time again.  A request of some sort is made.  It goes through one or multiple lines of approval.  Whilst it is in the approval process the item is set to read only so that no amendments can be made while it is in review.  Upon final approval, the item/document is updated to reflect the approved/rejected status.  The permissions on the item at that point do not allow for this update.  Or upon approval an item is added to another list that the “initiator” does not have access to contribute to.  So I thought I would discuss the different options that can be used for dealing with permissions inside a workflow:Set item permissionsThis action allows you as the workflow designer to decide to inherit or create unique permissions on the current item on which the workflow is running.  This works well in state machine workflows where the permissions at each state need to change (i.e. the current approver needs the ability to update an item whilst

We recently upgraded Nintex Forms for SharePoint 2013 and have found suddenly that some forms that have been published and unchanged for ages and broken and won't open in any mode (new, edit or view) because of corrupt or broken people picker fields. The uls logs showed an error similar to:Error=Object reference not set to an instance of an object.   at Nintex.Forms.SharePoint.FormControls.PeoplePickerFormControl.EditModeDataBinding(String value)     at Nintex.Forms.SharePoint.FormControls.PeoplePickerFormControl.OnFormControlDataBinding(Object sender, EventArgs e)     at System.Web.UI.WebControls.CompositeControl.DataBind()     at System.Web.UI.Control.DataBindChildren()     at System.Web.UI.Control.DataBind(Boolean raiseOnDataBinding)     at System.Web.UI.Control.DataBindChildren()The fix came after a call with the amazing Nintex Support (Kavin) who told us to do the following with the people picker controls in question:Change the control to be unconnected Open the "Advanced" setting

In relation to the announcement made by Microsoft regarding SharePoint 2010 workflow retirement for Microsoft 365, Nintex Workflow for Office 365 is not impacted by the SharePoint 2010 workflow retirement. To note:Nintex Workflow for Office 365 is not impacted as it does not leverage the SharePoint 2010 workflow engine to run its workflows. Nintex Workflow On Premises is not impacted as the retirement only applies to Microsoft / Office 365 platform. For more information or assistance, please reach out to Nintex Support.

What is the real calorie burn needed to make my documents automated? This is always a fair question I consider when I demonstrate Nintex Drawloop for Salesforce. “I have a unique scenario.” “We have a complex data model.” “You probably can’t do this.” All fair statements. The truth is… the answer to the calorie burn may be simpler than anticipated.  Let’s talk about those quotes… Statement: “I have a unique scenario.”Response: As all scenarios are different typically the approach is always the same. I need a document generated with data that exists in a system of record like Salesforce and it needs to be delivered in a specific way like eSign, emailed or stored. Shuffle the deck with any process and the story is different but we are all play with the same cards. Meaning we hard a feature for unique scenarios. Statement: “We have a complex data model.”Response: Simple or complex if you have logic that says I need this because of these reasons… we can reach it whether it's related or unr

Ever been in a situation where you need some randomized test data? “Test One” living at “123 Fake St” can only get you so far. Luckily, Nintex RPA can help you generate real-looking randomized data! This blog will cover how you can use Nintex RPA to create randomized data. What’s Out of the Box    There are a ton of randomized tokens available out of the box, which are all accessible through the Expression Builder (the “magic wand” looking icon). Just like any other token, these random tokens can be used anywhere you need to, such as in a Send Value action or Set Variable. Since there are so many, I won’t go over each of them but I’ll highlight some of the ones I use most: Random First Name and Random Last Name This goes without saying, but anytime you need a name you can just pop these tokens in. They also come in gendered “Random Male” and “Random Female” name options as well, if you need something more specific. Random Gender This one is useful, but maybe no in the way you might th

Following on from this question Need to Copy a repeating section from a List-item to a repeating section to a different List-item?‌  raised by Pam Lewis‌ i thought i would blog my solution in case there were others with the same requirement. Requirement: ListA - Title column and repeating section.ListB - Title column, lookup column and repeating section. Create an item in ListA, update a repeating section with info as required. Save.Create an item in ListB, from a lookup control, select the relevant item from ListA and the repeating section on ListB will be populated from the repeating section data from ListA. Form from ListA:The repeating section control is connected to a plain text multiline of text column.The first text control in the repeating section has a name of dwgDimension.The second text control in the repeating section has a name of ddOperation. Form from ListBThe repeating section control is connected to a plain text multiline of text column with a name of rsdata and css cl

A few days ago, I released a custom field type called "Nintex Repeating Section Data" for SharePoint 2013 to simplify how you can display of the repeating sections in SharePoint List Views without the need of creating complex workflows. If you haven't checked that yet, please refer to my blog post.     After the amazing feedback I received from the Nintex Connect Community as well as Nintex fans on Twitter, I'm glad to announce the availability of the same for SharePoint 2010. The WSP in included in the the attachments.   Let me give you a more complex example than the one I showed you in the previous post: 1) Here is the 2010 form I designed. I have two repeating sections, the first one is named "RepeatingSection1" and contains a Choice control rendered as a drop down list and a Yes/No control. The second repeating section is named "RepeatingSection2" and contains a Multi Line Textbox control as well as a Date/Time Control.2) After publishing my form, I created two list columns from t

Yebo you read the title right  So this workaround will assist you in either deleting or restoring a previous version of a Nintex Form for Office 365 using SharePoint Designer 2013.  Author Palesa Sikwane‌ Long Description This is a little workaround that can assist you in setting deleting a broken Nintex form or restoring the previous version of a Nintex Form, on Office 365 using SharePoint Designer Dependencies Nintex Workflow 365 SharePoint Online SharePoint Designer 2013 Compatibility Office 365/SharePoint Online Nintex Forms O365 Platform Nintex Forms for Office 365 Disclaimer Please note that this is a workaround I have come up with to help anyone who might want to troubleshoot a buggy form or restore a previous version of a form on Office 365. The OOTB (Out of the Box) functionality by Nintex Forms 0365 is still underway, and I would still recommend that you always export your Nintex Form as a backup, also if need be, I'd also encourage

As part of the recent upgrade in Nintex Promapp has implemented support for the SAML (Security Assertion Mark Up Language) conditions as part of its Single Sign-on functionality.  These conditions improve the security of single sign-on and ensure that claims generated by your Identity Provider can not be replayed by another party to gain access to your Promapp site.  The conditions supported include the time period that a claim is valid, whether that claim can be replayed, and specifying the intended audience for claim. For more details, see the Single Sign-on help article or our Release Notes.   What are the impacts?As part of any upgrade we thoroughly test Promapp’s adherence to the SAML protocol and it’s supported Identity Providers – Azure AD, Microsoft Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS), Okta, and OneLogin.  However, the audience restriction typically allows for custom configuration and this is where we have seen issues for customers.  The audience specified in your Identi

Nintex Workflow Visio Shape Collection - Initial ReleaseCheck out the asset in   - Nintex Workflow Visio Stencil Sheet   FeaturesEasy to mock up workflow designs in Visio prior to development work. OpenSource  Actively Developed 148 Shapes Nintex Workflow 2016 Shapes Easily installed (Installation instructions here)Planned FeaturesLabels for each shape Additional Icons for other products  Screen Shots  UPDATESVersion 1.2 (current)All actions have working connection end points Actions/icons have been sorted alphabetically Version 1.1All actions have been named properly. New .zip file with Visio Stencil sheet  Disclaimer As stated in our Terms of Use, Nintex is not responsible for any third-party content made available for download on Nintex Connect, whether or not this content has been reviewed and/or moderated by Nintex and regardless of who originated that content (including, but not limited to, Nintex employees, partners, affiliates, or moderators).  Users shall assume all risks asso

The other day I overheard someone needing to encode/decode a URL string inside of a Nintex Workflow (and again at the Nintex 2017 InspireX during a presentation on Azure Functions). Presently this is a non-trivial task (more information here), so I decided to simplify the process a bit by creating a set of REST web service endpoints that would handle the encoding/decoding process.These web services can easily be called from the Nintex Workflow Web Request actions in On premises products as well as O365.To use these web service endpoints, configure a 'Web Request' action to POST application/json content to these endpoints:Encode: http://swunaapi.azurewebsites.net/api/Url/Encode Decode: http://swunaapi.azurewebsites.net/api/Url/Decode To use the endpoints POST the following JSON:{"value" : "Url To Encode/Decode"}

Hello, **********I strongly suggest you review Repeating section as html tableIts easier and more efficient than this.********** I've been searching alot for something simple to convert or decode the xml that is generated from the repeated section into a plain text. most of the blogs uses UDA and some complex workflows to do that. but i managed to make a simple workflow and some extra controls on Nintex forms to get the text i needed. it may not be the optimal solution for most cases, but for me, its just what i need  as a start, create two list columns type of Multiple lines of text "plain text"   - Create a form using Nintex Forms. - Create the repeated section you need.  note that all controls inside the repeated section must be "Not connected". only connect the repeated Section to one of the multiple lines column that you created. name the controls inside that repeated section. when publishing the form and creating a new item, you will see the below results in the Repeated Action C

Any Drawloop user in the Salesforce ecosystem knows that Nintex can deliver powerful document automation using data in Salesforce. This automation typically includes point-to-point value to document merging. However, there is sometimes a need to go beyond what is simply stored within Salesforce and deliver aggregates, grouping or charting of data. Drawloop does have the ability to preserve native MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint charts within a template. Drawloop can feed raw SFDC data into a template and allow a MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint chart to update and reflect the incoming raw data. This is especially powerful when making use of pivot charts or tables.  To make this work, you must first push the raw data to your template. In our example, the template is in excel. The raw SFDC report data is going to be pushed to the ‘Data’ sheet and our pivot chart will be on the ‘Output’ sheet.  Within the template, you’ll need to insert a pivot chart of your choice and highlight what you want t

What is the status of this? At what stage is that? Who is taking so long to sign? Where did this go? Why did this get sent back? All common questions one can get during any business process. When adding Nintex automation to any process the process is accelerated. As a regular user when asked one of the above questions what is the answer you give? How do you find out at what stage the process is at if you are not a Nintex admin? The answer is simpler than you would think. With Nintex Workflow Cloud or NWC you connect different systems of record and add automation where human interaction gets in the way. For example lets look at a quote to cash process.  The data is in Salesforce and pushed into a document for esignature. Prior to the signature there is an approval/redline process. Once approved the document is automatically sent through the signature process - no human intention needed. The Sales persons job was done at starting this the workflow. The workflow is quarterbacking everythi

Whether you are looking at digitally transforming your business to electronic forms, building workflows, generating documents or automating desktop manual processes through RPA, ROI is an important factor.  A solid digital transformation plan, will not only include the processes that you should automate, but also the best of breed tools you should use, and the cost of not only licensing, but the savings your business will achieve through this transformation. In this post, I'll endeavor to cover a few things to think about, that most companies aren't thinking about during thei digital transformation journey. Crowdsourcing understanding your businessWhether large or small, you are probably underestimating how many processes occur, in order for your business to run every day.  There is knowledge in the brains of your staff, that they bring into the business, that they have done for so long and continue to do, without even knowing it.  Should those employees get promoted or leave the busin

To import Excel sheet into SharePoint list , We can use Query Excel Services Action with Collection operation . Requirements : 1. Excel file has "No" Null columns.2. SharePoint List3. Controls : Set Variable, Query Excel Services, For Each, Collection operation, Create item. Step 1 :Set Variable of Max Row needs to be imported. step 2: Use Query Excel Services Control as below  Use credentials to login to site , Workbook path should be an absolute path with sheet name Cells to retrieve is from and to rows  store in collection variable. step 3: For each loop with run if and collection operation and create item Foreach :Target collection is Unique Column , Get the items and store in item till max number of rows (Index) RUN IF:Run  the section if it is not empty COLLECTION OPERATION: Get the column collection and get the items and store in variable  At last create an Item using Create Item operation :   Finally upload the Excel with out any empty columns ( in case null fill " -" or someth