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I was wondering if I could turn the document generation functionality into document conversion (Word > PDF), and guess what, it can be done! The most important ingredient is what I call 'dynamic templates'. This is possible because the templates used by the Nintex document generation action, only need to be available at build and run time (of the document generation action). Nothing is stopping you to change the template in the mean time  The solution presented in this blog post consists of three parts: 1. Initialization.2. Making sure that the previous document in the library is converted before proceeding.3. Converting the document. I created two libraries: INPUT and OUTPUT. To the input library, I added the workflow presented above and a status column. I used the output library in the document generation action. Now throw in some Word documents and wait until the output library is filled with related pdf files. I have one tip: Add a file before publishing the workflow, and set it

G'day, this is Dan on behalf of Rick   and Rick wanted me to tell all you fine Nintex for O365 workflow designers that we are thinking about you.. Quite often in the design process, you build in some debugging actions like log to history, Send email, set variable etc etc to capture information to help you along with your designs.. Also when you are building and designing your workflows you would have to find the actions that are causing you grief, whether it is a config error in your design, or you are just testing out an action for later. You want to be able to just disable this action or set of actions rather than delete everything only to find that that bit you just deleted wasn't the issue at all. Because once you delete them, you have to configure them from the beginning...Now this is far from optimal..  Now as the title suggests, the functionality that On-prem workflow designers have enjoyed for some time, is now available in Office 365.. I wish I could write more about this, but

Whenever you hear the great Dick Vitale say “it's awesome baby!" you know it's that time of year. We get to spring forward (for those states that recognize DLST), begin to break out the shorts, plan spring breaks, and like a springtime version of the holiday season, we get to fulfill the annual dream of trying to fill out the perfect March Madness bracket (never mind the 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance of that actually happening). Last year the Summit 7 Systems team had a lot of fun building a Bracketology Solution powered by Nintex Forms and Workflow, and this year, we’d like to invite the Nintex Community to join us in competing for prizes and glory!Here's How to PlayUsing our tabbed Nintex Live Form, provide your user information, and then fill out your bracket – it's that simple.  We'll take care of the rest.NOTE : Make sure to use a valid email address & create a unique username. After submitting your bracket, you'll receive a printable copy of your bracket via email courtesy a Ni

   We’ve all heard the phrase “Lightning Ready”, but what does that mean? More importantly, what does that mean for Nintex’s Drawloop? To help shed some “Light-ning” on this (pun intended!), our resident expert and Partner Technical Evangelist, Ryan O’Leary has outlined the most common questions with supporting answers! What does “Lightning Ready” mean for Nintex Drawloop Document Generation? Can we generate documents by clicking our existing button? Is batch document generation supported in Lightning? Will all the documents being generated in Salesforce Workflow still work? Being that Salesforce has promoted Lightning Components, does that mean Drawloop has a Lightning Component? Do we have to reconfigure all of our Document Packages to support Lightning? What does “Lightning Ready” mean for Nintex Drawloop Document Generation?    Great news! Nintex’s Drawloop product has been ready since April 2016 for your customers/users to generate all the documents that they have been generating

This post was originally posted on my blog, sopkow.com.If you've got a Flexi Task and you want to replace the Decision Control with buttons that submit the form and sets an outcome, you can do so with just a little bit of configuration and a touch of JQuery. The following describes how this can be easily accomplished On our Nintex Form, add a Decision Control, we will be using JQuery to hide this field (if you don’t want to use JQuery you can place it behind another control). Note that we can’t set this to Visible: No , because we will need the control rendered into the form.Next, add ‘Save and Submit’ buttons to your form (one for each outcome). In the advanced section of the control’s properties, set the onclick of the first button to:NWF$('#'+myDecisionControl+'_0').prop("checked", true);return;This will submit the task with decision set to the first outcome. For the other buttons that you've added, change the _0 part to the zero-based value of the decision control (if you want the

I was presented with a problem the other day, and in a short amount of time I had to build a demo that had to take "Orders" from Nintex Mobile and place the orders into a SharePoint list. From there, the order had to be placed into Salesforce..  I got a little carried away, and figured I could get away with adding in a few more elements, so Ryan O'Leary‌ helped me out with some Salesforce and Nintex Drawloop‌ love, so not only could I get the order into Salesforce, but I could use Nintex Drawloop to build out the order into a PDF send it off to Docusign for the customers signature.. Lost you ?? no.. good ok.. So I decided to go down this path of over engineering  and why not, I had had the perfect use case..  So to spell it out.. this is what I wanted to do..  Get Order via Nintex Mobile Collect in SharePoint Create order in Salesforce Generate Order and sent it to Customer  Get customer to sign order via Docusign Docusign save document into Box Nintex Workflow Cloud execute from new d

This seems to be a common ask, and this is by no means the only way to do this! This is a simple approach using out-of-the-box functionality and can be setup in a few minutes in a site workflow or a list workflow. The "ask":Return all users from a SharePoint User Group in First Name Last Name format. Setup and Overview:First step is to get the User Group name that we need to interrogate. Once we have that, we can make a web service call and get a collection of all logins, loop through them and build a list of all users. Done. Here are the variables that I will be using:**Note that I am doing this as a SITE WORKFLOW and have my varGroupName required and on my start form.If you want to make this in a list workflow, you will need to alter that piece and feed it in a different way. The workflow:1. Get Group Name - This is simple enough, just ask for the user to type it in. Be careful though; it will try to find exactly what you put in, so if it is misspelled, you are not going to get resul

Welcome to Part 3 of this Dictionary series.  The previous two posts can be found here:Dictionary Part 1 - Manually Creating a DictionaryDictionary Part 2 - Query XML results into a Dictionary  There are a number of web services that come with SharePoint online.  Both ASMX and REST services.  In this post, we're going to look at making a query to a SharePoint REST services, store the results into a Dictionary variable and parse those results. The service we will call, is the lists service.  The url will look like this : http://[siteurl]/_api_web/lists This will give us a bunch of data about every list in that site.  In this example, we want two pieces of information.  The List name and the List template it was based off of. Calling the Web Service The HTTP Call Web Service action make it quite easy to call the lists service and it lets us store the results in a Dictionary variable.Notice the dynamically generated URL for the web service.  That means that you can take the attached web s

This topic describes the concept of assigned use in the context of workflow-based subscription licensing. If your tenant uses a workflow-based subscription license, then you must specify assigned use when publishing workflows and forms in accordance with subscription licensing terms. Examples of assigned use options presented when publishing workflows and forms:   Assigned use options are as follows. Development: Intended for the development phase; the workflow or form does not operate on or affect any business outcome or data outside testing and development. Watermarks appear on development workflows and forms as well as on email messages sent by workflows. (Form preview omits the watermark.) Example: Running an expenditure approval workflow generates a request for purchase of a notebook computer and that request is approved, but no purchase occurs because the workflow is being tested. Production: Intended for the production phase; the workflow or form operates on or affects live bu

With Nintex App Studio you can create your own branded Nintex app. What perhaps not everyone knows, is that you can filter the forms and tasks that are shown in it. This functionality is already present for some time but the way to do this has changed over time. This blog post has the goal to show you how to filter forms and tasks in your custom branded Nintex App at this moment. I created the following objects for the purpose of this blog post:A workflow in Nintex Workflow Cloud. This workflow contained an 'Express approval' action. Two lists in Office 365. The lists have their own Nintex form and both have a Nintex workflow connected to it containing a flexi task. Four lists in SharePoint 2016. The lists have their own Nintex form and 2 lists have a Nintex workflow connected to it containing a flexi task. Two lists in SharePoint 2013. The lists have their own Nintex form and both have a Nintex workflow connected to it containing a flexi task.I also added an item to all lists and star

Question from a current customer: I am looking to create wizard-style workflow. It supposed to have a form with tabs: "Request Permission", "Select Files", "Confirm Selection", "Upload", Edit Metadata".Each tab is responsible for certain step in the workflow (an action would be performed and workflow state changed). Workflow state may be changed conditionally. I am having trouble creating such a workflow in Sharepoint. It only provides single initiation form by default. The form would close as soon as the data was entered and "OK" selected. The next step would be for a user to go to the list of tasks and open a task. Creating a form with tabs which would stay on screen and interact with the workflow, is a problem for us which we need to solve. Answer:  This depends on what they are looking to do.  If they are wanting one form with individual tabs that progress multiple tasks, this would not be recommended.  Currently task forms are created for each individual task within a workflow and

Nintex Hawkeye™ is a workflow analytics solution that gives you an unprecedented view into your process portfolio across the entire Nintex Workflow Platform. Today I'm pleased to share that it now supports Nintex for Office 365 and Nintex Workflow Cloud. For those of you who have the Nintex for Office 365 Enterprise subscription (Workflow based) and skipped over previous posts about the topic, revisit Getting Started with a Nintex Hawkeye Process Intelligence Lens... Because this now applies to you..  So let me get to some of the basics.. Before you can start to see anything you need to get your Nintex Hawkeye tenant and connect your Office 365 environment to it. If you don't have a tenant, head to Try Nintex for 30 Days - Free!  to request your Nintex Hawkeye tenant. If you already have the license as part of your subscription shoot an email to Licensing@Nintex.com with your Tenant ID and they will activate it for you. You can find the Tenant ID on the "Nintex data sources" pageWhile

Stronger Together - Nintex Workflow Cloud and Nintex Workflow for Office 365. Many of us have been asking for feature such as scheduled workflow in Sharepoint for Office 365, that has not made available by Nintex Workflow for Office 365 today. Well, a scheduled workflow is pretty straight forward and easy to setup in Nintex Workflow Cloud, we can create a scheduled workflow in Nintex Workflow Cloud to trigger a workflow in Sharepoint for Office 365. That gives us the solution of scheduling a workflow in Sharepoint for Office 365. To demonstrate how that works, Nintex Workflow for Office 365 - Site Workflow1. I have created a Site Workflow in Sharepoint for Office 365 environment. Here is how "MySiteWorkflow" looks like in Nintex workflow for Office 365 environment: 2. The "MySiteWorkflow" takes one Initiation Variable as defined below, when the workflow started manually, it will prompt users with the initiation form for users to provide input for the "listname" initiation variable.  3.

Here is a question for you: "How complex a business process can be solved by Nintex Workflow Cloud?", well I think I do have an interesting answer for that, it solves business processes that is as complicated as the famous Farmer-Wolf-Goat-Cabbage cross a river puzzle.  There are many programming languages out there, everyone will have its own strengths and focuses. You might find it easy to solve the old classic puzzle such as the "Farmer-Wolf-Goat-Cabbage cross a river" with much lesser code in Prolog or Lisp that is associated with Artificial Intelligence than a Java program. It will be interesting to find out solving the same puzzle without even writing a piece of code with Nintex Workflow Cloud. For those who have not came across the "Farmer-Wolf-Goat-Cabbage cross a river" puzzle, you could simply do a search on the web to find enough article and solution for it. This is just a perfect puzzle trying to understand a real world business process is, it has:  Objective:To move all th

Products: Nintex Workflow 2013, Nintex Workflow 2010 We received a request the other day to bulk update Workflow Constants. While it is easy to import-export Workflow constants, it is not a trivial matter to update a great many of them. Typically updating involves logging into Central Administration and/or each site and updating the credentials manually. Here is a method that takes some of the work out of updating these values by allowing you to edit an exported Workflow constants file using a specific format and persist these changes back into the environment in an automated fashion. Things you will need: An export of Workflow Constants in file format. Some kind of XML Viewer (Notepad++ is what I prefer). A copy of this script (below and attached). Steps: Export the Workflow Constants you want updated and save them to a file (More information here: NWAdmin Operations - Nintex Workflow 2013) Open the File in an XML Viewer. This should present you with one long line. Save a copy of this

Dear Drawloop fans,We've been busy here on the Nintex Drawloop team, so we wanted to share with you where we are going and what we are going to be doing in the upcoming months.  If you find yourself at these events, we would love to see you! 3/29 - Salesforce "Connected Leaders:  Contract and Document Apps to Do More, Sell More, Close More" webinar.  Nintex Drawloop customer testimony is being shared. Register here. 4/4 – Salesforce World Tour DC Register Here 4/4 - PublicSector Networking Reception, following Salesforce World Tour DC Register Here 4/20 - Salesforce WorldTour Toronto Register here 5/18 - Salesforce WorldTour London, register here 5/31 - Salesforce WorldTour Boston, event details 6/15 - Salesforce WorldTour Chicago, event details To see where else Nintex is going to be, check out our Events & Webinars page.   Happy Spring! Yours truly,T yearofeinstein‌ 

On-premise customer, trying to Question:On the web service action, what is the replacement for getting external data into a site for use on a form? Let’s say we have a customer list in oracle or SQL on prem. How do we get that list to a site to be used in a drop down on a form? Especially when it might be used across multiple sites and multiple site collections and must be up to date? Answer from Brad OrlukThe absolute best approach here would be to use BCS in SharePoint to surface that Oracle data in an external data column. This way we show it in the form using our BCS control. Otherwise, they would need to use the Web Request / Execute SQL action in workflow to pull the data from the database and put it into a list and then use a list lookup for the dropdown. This would need to be done as a scheduled workflow so that the data in the list stays relatively up to date with what’s in the database. Answer from Dan BurkeFrom what I looked into, what looks like the only way to do this onli

This post is a review of the march 2017 release. What is included in this post is my personal observation/opinion. *** Nintex Workflow Cloud ***ChangesAddition of ‘Conditional start’ feature. Addition of ‘Share a link’ feature. A new connector action. Addition of ‘Conditional start’ featureThis is my favorite release feature. Keep on going with the good work! If this feature is available depends on the connector. I have not found a list about it but it can be easily checked. The available conditional start options depend on the connector and event. The Nintex connector does not have a conditional start but connectors like ‘Dropbox Business’, ‘Microsoft OneDrive for Business’ and ‘Twilio’ do. Below is a screenshot of a conditional start (Microsoft OneDrive for Business):   Do check if your requested conditional start is indeed possible. So has the option ‘Size (bytes)’ (Microsoft OneDrive for Business) no ‘greater than’ or ‘smaller than’ option making this start event variable a bit use

I have been doing a lot of "selling" Nintex to different business areas within my company lately as we gear up for the ever-looming exodus to "The Cloud", and have faced the same question more times than I really thought I would have. "What is Nintex?" The question is simple enough, and I could go on for hours about it, but how do you sum it up in a sentence, or a word? When you think of Nintex, what jumps to mind? What is your "elevator speech" for Nintex? I have heard everything from "they do workflow and forms, right?" to "they do some stuff in the SharePoint space", but that hardly does Nintex any justice. For me, I always gravitate towards "improvement".  From existing workflows and processes to forms, it is a tool for improvement. It allows us to improve how we do our day-to-day as well as changes the way we look at approaching existing and new ventures. I think about how I can incorporate a process into other areas of the business using Nintex and how it will improve the overall

Well hopefully you have already had a quick look at It's here... Nintex Document Generation and had a play around with the Doc Gen action in Office 365. With this post I'm going to go a little deeper and try to explain how to get repeating section data from a Nintex Form into a table in a document. Kok Koon Gan​ just posted a great post as well detailing Using Document Generation to create Excel Report from List Items​. Continuing on from It's here... Nintex Document Generation  I'm going to use the same example and template, but just change it up, just a little. The thing you have to get in your head early in this process is that to have a table in a document you have to build up a collection of data that can be inserted in.. Now for those of you that have worked with Collections, you'll know that it is just an array.. Eg One, Two, Three, Four etc. So knowing this, how do you get multiple columns into a table ? We have dictionaries, these are close to what we need, but we can't use th

In this blog post I’d like to show, how to use the Nintex Forms “Web Request” control together with the Google Distance Matrix API to automatically calculate the distance between two cities and the estimated duration for that trip.At the end the form will look like this (Edit mode):Setup Google Distance Matrix APIBefore the implementation of the SharePoint list and the Nintex form, some simple steps need to be performed, to be able to use the Google Distance Matrix API. The documentation of the Distance Matrix API can be found here: Developer's Guide  |  Google Maps Distance Matrix API  |  Google Developers The most important point is the generation of necessary API key, the process for this is described in the “Get a key” section of the documentation:After reading the documentation I configured the following request:https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/distancematrix/xml?origins=Hamburg+22763&destinations=Muenchen+80331&mode=driving&language=de-DE&key=*****************

Hi,I got the requirement to design a multilingual form the other day.Thanks toVadim Tabakman‌ for describing a good way to realize such a form.Since my customer is thinking about translating the whole SharePoint-Plattform, Oceanik came into discussion.Unfortunately, I haven't found any discussion about Nintex Forms and Oceanik in combination yet so I decided to share my learnings here. To learn about the capabilities of Oceanik, please visit their website here: OCEANIK for SharePoint 2010, 2013 and 2016 - Oceanik    First, I installed Oceanik on my test environment and activated it on a plain SiteCollection. For this test, I translate terms from Englisch to German.To check whether the solution is working or not, I put "Go-Live" on my homepage. Now I can switch between the two languages and see the result. So far so good.As you can see in the left navigation, I also created a list called "Expenses" and translated that to "Spesen". Now for my next test, I use the term "expenses" in a lab

Set Workflow Variable is a fundamental workflow action that allows you to assign a value to a variable, based on the current place and decisions made in the workflow process. You could always create multiple variables within the action, but up till now you could only set one variable at a time.  This approach meant that every time you wanted to set a variable value, you would need an individual instance of the Set Workflow Variable action. For instance, if a workflow had 2 variables (discount price and sales value) that were set in 2 different process stages(proposal and negotiation), you would have had to use 4 instances of this action. This also meant you required a lot of canvas space in the workflow designer.   You may have noticed all the past tense in this discussion. That’s because new enhancements of the Set Workflow Variable action now allow you to assign values to up to 20 variables. Revisiting the earlier scenario, if the workflow designer needs to set 2 variables progressiv

You can now assign taxonomy during form submission, in the cloud! Nintex Forms for Office 365 is introducing the new Managed Metadata Control that allows you to do just that. This control allows consistent allocation of metadata, in a form submission context. This results in improved content discoverability and metadata enabled navigation to underlying lists and libraries.SharePoint’s Managed Metadata is information about information. For example, a product’s type identification number and preferred location can be its metadata. You can organize the metadata structure in a way that makes sense to your business context and use metadata when aggregate or searching for the said item. For more information on this concept, read this introductory article on Managed Metadata in Office 365.Once you have setup your taxonomy, implementing the new Managed Metadata control in your form is simple. I will take you through a quick end-to-end textual/pictorial demonstration.We will start with the list

We've all been there haven't we? You've got a multi-stage workflow, your director has approved it, your manager has approved it, and then **ERROR** Something goes wrong. Maybe your next approver has left the company since the workflow was started, or there's an erroneous value in your variable that your SharePoint column won't accept. Either way, you've got into a position where you've already had approval from a director (or anyone) once, you don't really want to have to ask them again. On long running workflows this can be a real pain. So we introduced a setup that allowed us to "Pick up where we left off" (or were kicked off as the case might have been). The State Machine is a brilliant action for for these staged workflows that transition through a number of different states and the Switch Action allows us leverage these states. Take the following example:An item is created, to achieve approval it must go through 3 stages on a State Machine.Manager Approval Director Approval Task t