Nintex Automation K2: Back to basics
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Most of us must have come across challenge where forms in Sharepoint Online is taking a much longer time than expected to load. This could be caused by different factors, and one of the factors is believed to be the custom list size, especially the number of columns you have in your list. Based on official document, the number of column limits can be up to 276 for the Single-line-of-text coloumn, but when come to performance it might not be a good idea to have your custom list designed to have such a big number of columns. Based on the experiences of one of my partners, by reducing the number of columns for one of the problematic forms from 100+ columns to below 50 columns, the performance has improved from around 20 seconds to below 10 seconds to load the form. Reducing the number of fields for a form to below 50 is not viable most of the time, so how could be reduce the required number of columns for a list but still have as many form fields as required? well, the answer is not to l
I am going to share configuration examples of Execute SQL and Web Request workflow actions for Office 365. The example I used is based on the previous post by Dan Stoll on Sign your name across my heart and my previous post on Extending Nintex Mobile Signature control to desktop/browser to demonstrate how the Nintex Signature Control example could be used for a Shipping or Delivery Order scenario of business process. I have simply modified the Title control to enable the barcode scanning feature, and renamed the label to Item ID as shown in the below setting of the Title (i.e. Single Line Textbox control).The outcome of that is shown in the diagram below, which could be used as a Delivery Form to which a delivery man could use to scan the Bar code or QR Code of a parcel or item delivered, and get the consignee to sign the Delivery Form for confirming the parcel/items have been delivered.Once the form data had been submitted and sync back to the Sharepoint on Office 365, a workflow will
I am trying to create a cascading drop down in Nintex Form, but the filtering by a control’s value its not working (the filter works by a specified value).The control works perfectly on our site, but not at the site of a customer. This is the XML error that occurs when the page loads <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Request Error</title> <style>BODY { color: #000000; background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; } #content { margin-left: 30px; font-size: .70em; padding-bottom: 2em; } A:link { color: #336699; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; } A:visited { color: #6699cc; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; } A:active { color: #336699; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; } .heading1 { ba
I was asked recently to explain how Microsoft Flow could be integrated with Nintex Workflow Cloud. The point of the question was that Workflow Cloud provides enterprise level workflow capability, so it supports custom workflow connectors via the OpenAPI/Swagger definitions. In this article I'll explain how we can integrate Nintex Workflow Cloud and Microsoft Flow, leveraging the Nintex Workflow Cloud's Xtension framework to sync Microsoft Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. Calling Nintex Workflow Cloud from Microsoft Flow1. To call Nintex Workflow Cloud from Microsoft Flow, I have created a Nintex Workflow Cloud workflow with an external start event as shown here. I have also included parameters I want to bring over from Outlook Event to sync with Google Calendar Event (in this example, Event Title, location, ID, Start date-time and End date-time). 2. Once the workflow is published, it gives us details on how the workflow could be triggered from external system(s). What we need fro
In my role as a sales engineer, I come across many unique use cases that are new to me but may apply to other organizations. The subject of this blog involves a prospect that wanted to have approvals as part of a workflow but route them based on the starting character of a string. The prospect was in Education and the administration of the school wanted to route approvals based on the starting character of a Student’s last name filled in a Petition Form using Nintex Workflow Cloud. There were a collection of counselors that oversaw students based on their last name starting with A-F,G-M,N-T, and U-Z. Doing this type of routing takes a bit of craftiness, but can be done using the following actions. Apply a Regular Expression – This action is needed to extract the first character of the string. The input value should be the field/control from the Nintex form you want to use as the basis of routing. Type of expression should be set to ‘Extract’ and the pattern should be [a-zA-Z] w
Introduction“I am trying to login to Nintex RPA but it isn’t letting me in! What do I do?” This is a question I’ve gotten a lot since the release of Nintex RPA Central - and honestly, it is a pretty loaded question. There are a lot of pieces to look into when someone asks this question. Let’s take a look into each of these pieces and walk through how you can troubleshoot this problem on your own. I am going into this assuming that all the installation instructions have been followed, found here. The ProblemA new user opens Nintex RPA and is met with a login screen. Upon entering their credentials, an error message is displayed stating “This user is unauthorized to use Nintex RPA.” They try and try and try but can never login, so the user will reach out for assistance. Identifying the ProblemThe first red flag in this scenario is that Nintex RPA is prompting the user to login. By default, if everything is setup correctly, Nintex RPA will auto-login the user based on the Windows account
When moving to the cloud, the identification of what content needs to be migrated, and understanding if associated workflows can be supported, is a complex process. The success or failure of any migration to the cloud often hinges on proper pre-migration planning and strong management throughout the project. For existing Nintex users moving from SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online and into Nintex for Office 365, Quest now offers even greater capabilities and services for migrating SharePoint content, Nintex workflows and now forms, up to the cloud. If you haven't yet heard about the Customer Loyalty Program (CLP), it is an incredible offer that the team here at Nintex has put together for current on-prem maintenance customers to help them make the move to our subscription platform in the cloud. As part of the CLP Nintex is offering cloud entitlements for Workflow, Forms, DocGen, App Studio, Nintex Sign, Analytics, and Nintex Promapp! Additionally, for Nintex customers that ar
New Features and EnhancementsProcess Discovery AdminIntroducing the Process Discovery Admin (formerly the Orchestrator) New Discovery page (formerly, "Pipe") and AI Engine page (formerly, "Algo Settings") The default value of MinShowsPerVariant has been changed to 1 (instead of 2) Robot RecordingImproved process mapping for emulator applications ArchitectureThe installation folder default has changed Bug FixesAfter log-out, the application does not kill the session properly Incorrect username in Discovered Process Report User recordings after disable --> enable robot not saved Wrong process count when using multiple tenants For more information- refer to the attached document.
Sometimes it's needed to count some characters on a string on a Nintex Workflow This sample shows how to calculate it with 3 actions. The used actions are: I set a variable named myString with the value 123-1234-12345 Then I create the following variables Firstly I count the total characters on my string using the action named "Convert Value" Then I count the characters deleting the character you want to count ("-" (hyphen) in this case) , from the string Then I use the action named "Math operation" So you get the result on the variable named "myResult"
In this article, we have provided an interactive guide using Nintex Promapp that walks you through a step-by-step process for the Know-Your-Workflow script. This process shows you how to download, run, and generate your workflow consumption reports within your SharePoint on-premise environment. However, if you are not familiar with the Know Your Workflow script, it's recommended to review this article prior to proceeding: Introducing the Know Your Workflow Script. Nintex Promapp Process: Run the KYWF Script Select the Run the KWFY link above. The Minimode version of the Run the KYWF Script process map opens and serves as a great Interactive guide for you to go through and follow. Select Activity 1.0 - Download KYWF Script. The activity expands to display all associated tasks for this activity. These are the steps you'll need to follow to ensure you download the correct script. Once you've completed this Activity 1.0 - Download KYWF Script, continue with the rest of the activities until
When you are desiging a workflow, Allowing a task to be sent out to multiple users/ approvers would be helpful in some situations. In Nintex Workflow Cloud, we are planning to support it in future (https://nintex.uservoice.com/forums/430063-5-nintex-workflow-cloud/suggestions/37195216-assigning-task-to-multiple-approvers). In current version of Nintex Workflow Cloud, we can achieve it by calling a sub workflow. I use the following workflow as an example: I want to assign a task to three difference email. First of all, create a form to accept three emails.And then, we can put those emails into a collection variable. Then we can use loop for each to pass all email to a sub workflow one by one. When you calling the sub workflow, remember select Run both workflows concurrently. In the sub workflow, we select component workflow as start from and add email as start variable And then you add Assign a task action into the sub workflow. And set the assignee equal to variable "Email"Then you
Do you know what you are doing? Are you doing what you are supposed to do? Workflows can automate a lot of repetitive tasks. Building them with NWC can be a very quick process. The problem is that sometimes knowing what to build requires multiple departments, communication, approvals etc. Trying to chase all that down can be tough to quarterback. Not with Nintex Promapp. For this article I am going to reference a common use case… Contract Redlining. Let’s say I have users working in Salesforce to close deals. They are dynamically generating their contracts with Nintex Drawloop and sending them to a workflow as a delivery option. The magic of this use case happens in the Nintex workflow. First, based on the Salesforce data model there is an approval based on the discount given. If there is a discount greater then 10% then before it even enters the redline process a boss needs to approve it. Once approved the document heads to the customer to either approve or redline. If they approve t
ProblemOften I have workflows with approval (assign flexi task) actions in that usually run the same generic course:On approve, change status, send notification On reject, change status, send notification asking for updates Now I love the out of the box “Common” properties that can be utilised in workflow such as Approver Comments, Current Date etc. but what I think is missing from here is a link to the item in edit mode (if someone knows how to solve this problem more easily please let me know). Often in the reject email the text will say something along the lines of: Your request has been rejected for the following reasons: {Common:LastApproverComments}Please address the issues and resubmit using the link below: Edit item URL SolutionI was pointed to this awesome article by a colleague that describes the different page types available in SharePoint – this might be old news to many but having just discovered it I am now obsessed https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.share
IntroContinuing from my previous blog post, found here, in this post I am going to outline how I took that list and used it within my botflow to click on each link one at a time. If you did not read that previous blog I published, the goal for my botflow is to go into each city detail page and gather some information before making a decision. Working on this particular website there were a couple of hurdles to overcome, which have been the inspiration for these blog posts. The problem with this website is that nothing is in a proper web table, using <table> tags. Instead, everything is in a <div> format, which seems to be becoming increasingly popular in modern web design. In my last post, I manipulated the text from the webpage within Excel to create a List that I can now Loop through. This example I will go through is very simple but please keep in mind that this ‘method’ can be applied in other cases as well. Before the ClickIn my case, I am working off a List within N
I have come across this issue a number of times in the past and more recently forgot this could be a root cause - so want to share the knowledge and also link my uservoice suggestion to this post... ScenarioSomeone in the company wants to add a suggestion to the suggestion scheme. This could be sensitive or not, so the permissions are determined for each suggestion in the workflow. For those that are not sensitive, the suggestion is open to all. For those that are sensitive, the suggestion is open only to the investigating team. IssueThe suggestion goes through an approval route. It is first assigned to a team of reviewers (SharePoint group) who can approve and choose an "Investigator" using a people picker on the approval task. This updates the underlying list item, completes the review task and assigns an investigation task to the selected investigator.Note - this workflow was developed by a previous analyst who has since left the company, so was picked up by myself when an issu
One of the most exciting announcements with the latest drop from the product teams this month would have to be "Execute SQL" from O365 no less..http://help.nintex.com/en-US/O365/Default.htm#O365WorkFlow/Workflow%20Actions/Execute%20SQL.htmYES, this means you can execute SQL from the SharePoint Online platform to your internally hosted SQL servers. This does have some caveats though. Note: The database must be internet-accessible.For this post I'm going to connect to my Azure SQL server.. Ok so first of all get your DB setup with some tables.. I used this to get me started. Getting started with SQL Database - AzureI was then able to use SQL Server Management Studio to connect to the server and check out the tables etc.. Heading into Nintex Workflow for O365, and adding the "Execute SQL" action to the canvas we can get into configuring it.. Now if you are familiar with the "Execute SQL" action with the Nintex Workflow for SharePoint (2007, 2010, 2013) this is pretty much the same to conf
Hello world and welcome to my first blog of 2020! My oh my, this year I am so thrilled to share some great technical content that will showcase features, updates and new releases to the Nintex platform. Now before I dive in, I wanted to take moment to give a BIG shout out to my fellow colleagues that make up the Presales team here at Nintex: burked, DocFather_Ray, MMachado, DavidStephen, JohnHernandez, john_armstrong, katie_chu, ryan_oleary, MattHSpears, simpson and vadim_tabakman. Our team had a combined 27,544 views on blog post for 2019…way to go team!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To kick off this year with a bang, our product team will be releasing something new in Nintex Promapp, known as the "Checklist" Who: This will be beneficial to the organizations who are worried about process compliance and auditing, but have no way to capture that tasks have been completed in a timely fashion and currently have no process automation initiatives within their organizations. What: The checklist will operat
Hello, In this blog I'll walk through taking an existing Nintex Form for Office365 that publishes to a list and extract that data from the Sharepoint list into a document using Nintex DocGen. Hopefully you found that video helpful! Please leave me your thoughts below or reach out on twitter! @sayhellotoryan Cheers,Ryan
Moving to the cloud can be a daunting task for even the most seasoned SharePoint users and administrators, however now more than ever the benefits now far outweighs the effort required. Cloud services have seen a huge uptick in recent years as more and more organizations move workflows from costly on-premises solutions to managed cloud services. This session on moving to Office 365 and SharePoint Online with Nintex will provide an overview of the migration process broken down into three main parts: Planning your SharePoint migration with Nintex Understanding some of the technical considerations you should know before moving to the cloud Reviewing the capability differences between Nintex for SharePoint On-Prem and Nintex for Office 365 Make sure to check out the resources at the bottom of the post after you've watched the session! Resources:Nintex Migration WhitepaperNintex for Office 365 Best PracticesUsing the Know Your Workflow Script for Migration PlanningNintex Live for Office
What steps can be taken to improve accessible experience on Nintex Forms?Tab Based Forms Create Tab like functionality on your Nintex Forms Tab-based Layout Solution Creating Tabs in Nintex Forms An example of making Nintex Forms elements focus-able with tab-index and JavaScript?InFORMed: Customize Your Nintex Forms JavaScript Events in Nintex Forms Manage focus on a form using keyboard commands or key handlers?Shortcut Keys for Forms Design Shortcut Keys Create Custom Form Controls Create a Custom Form Control Sample How can we add WAI-ARIA authoring practices (roles or states) to Nintex Forms HTML markup for screen readers?Examples dMAX AP Automation for Nintex Workflow and Forms A Different Approach for Task Notifications Location Controls Set image based on location in Forms Location Documentation Best practices to manage keyboard focus when using dialog boxes within Nintex Forms?Using JavaScript would be the best route JavaScript events in Nintex Forms Horizontal fields
With the encroaching end of a major effort I have been a part of for the better part of this year, the time has come to look back and review all the things that were encountered and see if they could have been done better. I wanted to take a moment and share something that was asked of me mid-way through this project and changed how I approached the workflow. A Bit of BackgroundAt the core, this is nothing more than an approval process. That said, it goes through 9 different approvals ranging from service reps, to field reps, to engineers looking at installed equipment. In total, there are 5 different groups that have to touch this and within each of those groups, it may be assigned to a different user depending on geo-location. So you may already see where I am taking this, but the issue that arose is how can we assign a task to someone but allow for someone else to jump in and take over? Delegation right? Well delegation requires the assigned user to do the delegation. What happens i
With the release of the Nintex Workflow for Office 365 Web Request action, it opens a whole new world of functionality to your Nintex Workflows. SharePoint online still exposes a number of ASMX web web services. You can now call those web services and get the data or update data as you need it. Not only can you call ASMX web services, but you can also perform HTTP GETs, POSTs, PUTs and you can also build your own HTTP packets for your requests. In this post, you'll see how to make a call to an ASMX web service. Specifically, the SharePoint Lists.asmx web service, in order to call the GetList web method. This is what the Web Request action looks like :Calling an ASMX Web Service You can build up the url dynamically, using common properties, or for testing, you can simply put in the entire URL.eg. http://mysite.sharepoint.com/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx Once that is placed in the URL field, you can choose the appropriate Method. Usually, either SOAP 1.1 or SOAP 1.2 for ASMX web services. In
Credit where credit is due, this was inspired in part by Michael's post of similar nature using Nintex for Salesforce and Drawloop, find it here. IntroductionSometimes when creating a botflow in Nintex RPA, you might be required to interact with a website or application that isn’t ‘behaving’ as you might expect it to. Maybe the bullseye is pulling out too much when you drop it, or maybe it isn’t pulling out enough, or there is a list you need to iterate through but it isn’t contained in a table. There are all examples where using Excel as the middle-man can help out. You might be questioning “Why use Excel? Why not Notepad or internal variables?”. The simple answer is that this is just the method I prefer. Nintex RPA has some really great interactions baked in that make working with Excel super easy. Sure you could use Notepad to accomplish the same goal, but then you’d be relegated to using directional arrow keystrokes to navigate around, Notepad’s find function, etc. It is 100% poss
You have a bunch of manual processes and the road may be long to complete and automate everything the way you want. So, do you add a temporary fix in the short term? Is the calorie burn even worth it? Maybe it’s better to just focus on the greater goal and leave everything manual. A family pet makes a mistake on the carpet. You know you need to clean it up. In some cases, you need to rip and replace the carpet. Instead you cover it up until you decide on the path best taken. This is what I call "Newspaper Automation". By covering the stain with newspaper, I fixed it right? My wife would not agree but she isn't writing this article. In regards to automation sometimes adding a small fix can be a big change. For example, I had a customer that wanted to generate contracts out of their Salesforce environment and get them eSigned. They were not aware of Nintex Workflow Cloud. SIDE NOTE: Nintex Workflow Cloud or NWC can handle many contract focused use cases such as...Redlining Approvals Rout
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