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Hi Nintex Community,This summer I was able to go to Anacortes near the Orcas Island in Washington State and climb Mount Eerie. It is the tallest point on Fidalgo Island at a towering 1,273 feet. But instead, I spent most of my time wading into the Nintex Forms/Workflow 2013 SDK and Nintex Forms/Workflow 0365 API to work on some walkthroughs that will provide step-by-step instructions on export and publishing workflows and forms, designing your own custom workflow actions, and creating custom form controls.Over the next month, I will post the results of this effort. This will include the following walkthroughs: Use of the Nintex Workflow and Forms 0365  API to export and publish workflow and forms using Postman (a REST client). Probably the most complex part of the Nintex 0365 API is getting all the information you need to execute the call in order. This walkthrough lies out that parts, and then shows you how to contact your list to grab the Form XML, and then how to take your Form XML

FORMATTING AN HTML EMAIL WITH LIST ITEMS USING NINTEX “CALL WEB SERVICE” There are a few to many different ways to accomplish this, and I assume as long as you know how to use a Web Service, you can somewhat figure out how to do the same thing as what I’m about to show you even if you don’t own Nintex. I’ve always wanted to be able to do this and had some requirements given to me that required it. It took a lot of research and I combined a few different ways noted by other bloggers. I also had to research and find some specifics for myself. Hopefully this will help someone out.CALL WEB SERVICESo, what you are going to want to do is…Create a site workflow in Nintex. Add a “Call web service” action In the URL add, “Web URL/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx” For the UN and PW – Use an account that has administrative rights and a non-expiring pw/account Click “Refresh” Web method drop down should’ve populated. Select – “GetListItems” Change the editor mode to “SOAP editor” – I haven’t had much luck with

As a current Nintex Account Manager for the East Coast, I receive a lot of customer questions, because I am the first line of defense for a lot of their concerns. Our Support team handles the majority of the issues, but for the rare few that are not support related, I do my best to leverage the resources I have around me to answer their questions. This blog post below is in regards to the functionality of our current Forms product, and it's differences to InfoPath, as asked by a customer in the insurance industry. Nintex does not seem to support multiple views to view the same fields in different arrangements. To implement it in Nintex, we need to create hidden sections using panel controls or tabs. I am not sure if that type of implementation method can create long delays when loading forms with large number of controls and rules into a single view. Not necessarily, it depends on the number of controls. Make sure to test your Form before you put anything into production.  Best Pract

I was asked a lot in the past, since in Sharepoint by default supports creation of workflows to support business process automation, why is there a need to consider Nintex Workflow? In this write up, I am trying to revisit the approaches and steps involved in Sharepoint workflows. With the summary on that, I am hoping to identify key challenges one might face, or benefits one could get if Nintex is in place for the same purpose. Let's revisit the approaches in implementing workflow in default Sharepoint environment. To simplify, I grouped the approaches into three as summarized in the table below:  Approach Description Tool Out-of-the-box (OOB)Workflows Automate common business tasks such as getting approval or collecting feedback on documents Within Sharepoint environment  via browser Custom Workflows Define from scratch with customer business process logic or states. Opportunity to assign own workflow actions that are made avail

Many users use the Lazy Approval Settings when they are designing a workflow.Many of us don't know that when a user that receives an email that can be answered by replying it, and this user has set as Out of office, a loop of infinite emails begins. To solve this issue is simple. Just go to Sharepoint Central Administration, navigate to the Nintex Workflow Management / Lazy Approval Settings and add a phrase to ignore. Ignore the phrase "Out of office" 

Checking on the complexity of migrating workflows from Nintex 2013 to 2016 using Sharegate. Is there anything we need to consider in terms of the migration with Sharegate?Nintex FAQ regarding Nintex migrations with Sharegate How to Migrate and Manage Nintex Workflow and Forms for SharePoint and Office 365 Using Sharegate How to Manage Nintex Workflows Using SharegateCan you migrate old Workflow history? The original migration from SharePoint 2007 to 2013, didn't include the workflow history. Can we still migrate that old Workflow DB? Migrating and Upgrading what you need to know Moving Nintex Workflow 2013 Databases Migrating Nintex Workflow FAQ’sCould we migrate the history from the old 2007 and current 2013 SharePoint system to the new 2016?When migrating your 2007 information, you would need to migrate to 2010, then 2013, and finally to 2016. Migrating from 2007 to 2013, or 2007 to 2016 is not currently supported. Upgrading from Nintex Workflow 2007 to 2013. Use the database attach

As you may all know, Nintex is closing the gap between features between O365 and On-premise versions of our products. Just a few important features are still missing. One of them (and maybe one of the most important one), is the Edit Task form feature for O365.  Guess what? That's exactly why I'm writing this blog!Our july release is shipping this feature to O365!I was really excited to test it, though I was having some worries about performances, but I have to admit that our development team has made a really well integrated feature that runs FAST! Let me give you a tour of this new feature! First of all, where will you find the feature? You will find this feature within the "Assign a task" action or "Start a task process" action.Open the task... and :   Now you can see in the ribbon of the action a "Edit Task Form" button. Note that this button is greyed out for a few seconds (The form designer is loading in background). Once it has been loaded once, it opens in less than a second an

I started creating my workflows in a very linear fashion across or down, each action laid out on my canvas.I quickly discovered the ability to "label" my action panels (do it!)But as my workflow started to grow in size scrolling up and down and side-to-side was increasingly frustrating. The only way I could get a clear view of the entire workflow was to zoom out which then made my label very hard to read. Testing my workflow also became very time-consuming as I would have restart and run through 10 steps to get to the action I thought was causing the problem, you get the idea.  One day I discovered Nintex in a Minute, Nancy & Shelley, Forms Film Festival, Jeopardy and Secret Agent Ninja in the Training Blog​. This is a must bookmark, especially if your just starting out. Workflow actions for 2013: Action Set  by Kayla Marsden​ gave me my first exposure to Action Sets, enough to want more.A Google search led me to a Nintex Tips and Tricks video by GigWerks. These two references poin

In the video below, I will walk you through how to build an employee onboarding workflow from start to finish using Nintex Workflow for Office 365. Some of the actions you will see me configure (such as Office 365 Create User, Office 365 Assign License, etc.) are part of the Enterprise Provisioning Pack. Enterprise Provisioning Pack Details Automate the entire process of provisioning, managing and de-commissioning of user accounts, transforming complex onboarding/off-boarding processes into one simple solution. Unify the management of users, mailboxes, custom user-groups, and even access to external systems. Now you can create and manage accounts across Office 365 and Yammer, spin-up or spin-down virtual machines in Amazon and Rackspace, ensuring efficient use of your chosen cloud infrastructure provider. Enterprise Provisioning Pack is available in Nintex Workflow for Office 365, Enterprise Edition or Nintex Complete Edition only.  

 In my dealing with customers, there are some questions and confusions that keep coming up. I thought I'd share them to help others who may have the same query's. Why is Nintex Different?Fully Leverage SPNintex Workflow is built natively on SharePoint using pre-existing SharePoint infrastructure and the Windows Workflow Foundation. The benefit is that you leverage your existing architecture and infrastructure and avoid incurring the costs of implementing, serving, and supporting additional platforms. Install in minutesNintex Workflow installs in minutes. No need to install clunky or outdated add-ons to client machines as required by some other workflow solutions. Design and deploy quicklyWorkflows are designed with no down time. When you create and publish your workflow, Nintex simply picks up the new design when the next instance runs. Unlike options from other vendors who require that every designed workflow must be compiled, packaged, deployed, and activated before they can be used.

I have always wanted Nintex Forms and Workflow for many years now. It's been about 3 months since I was able to purchase the Enterprise Edition and it has changed how I support my customers. Like anything else, learning new apps can be exciting and frustrating. As long as I can remember I said to myself "this would be a good lesson to share..." but I'm always just focusing on my work and always forget to follow through. This time I'll give it my best shot because 'm loving working with Nintex. I want to share with other new users things I find along the way that will help either get over that obstacle they face or bring to light a different approach. I'll be adding items as I progress through my Nintex journey. Nintex WorkflowAction Sets​ Nintex FormsPanels​Hide Individual Ribbon Elements​Date Stamp a Repeating Control (* recently added)    LinksDate and Time Format Strings - Quick Reference Guide - Andrew Glasser (* recently added)Nintex Community Training Space - (must bookmark)Need

In this Article, you will learnHow to set a Calculated Value when the form is loaded How to develop JavaScript to get SharePoint Context Properties and Methods How to wait the loading of a JavaScript Library How you can hide Buttons or Controls based on user permissions In a Nintex Form in O365, even the user has only Read permissions, the Edit Item button is visible.If the user clicks Edit Item, then the Save button is visibleAnd if the user clicks Save, then (s)he receives this messageTo avoid this situation, I propose to hide the Edit Item button if the user is NOT allowed to Edit List Items.For that, we need to know what are the user roles in the context of the List Items when the form is loaded.Nintex Form let's you add JavaScript in the Custom JavaScript section of the Form SettingsHere is to how to develop JavaScript to get SharePoint Context Properties and Methods.The SharePoint Client Context provides features to program against a SharePoint site using JavaScript.It helps to a

Hi All,This is my first blog and I hope it will help the beginners who are working on repeating control Scenario:List A and List B are two Lists with columns ColumnA,ColumnB in repeating control and depending upon some condition you want to create/modify the item in ListBExample:List Asia has  columns  "Country" and "City" in the repeating section hence we can add multiple rows for the values "Country" and "City" .List "Asia" also has "Count" column which is not present in the repeating section Suppose we want to update the  item of list named "Events" which will also have "Country" and "City"  in the repeating section with the values of "Country" and "City" in the repeating section of list Asia. List "Events" will also have "Count" column which will be updated with the value of "Count" of the item in List "Asia"Issue:Repeating control columns appear blank in the list view by default and if we write a simple workflow to create item in ListB by specifying ColumnA and ColumnB it wont wor

This is one big day for Nintex This is a huge deal, if I can say so myself; and as a long time user of Nintex, seeing the evolution that has occurred from Nintex 2007 to the fourth generation of the Workflow product is breathtaking because it truly makes designing workflows so easy. On May 4, 2016, Microsoft rallied its ecosystem and, for the first time in a very long time, showered tons of love and marketing into an event centered on SharePoint® Server. Their well-executed goal was to bring assurance that SharePoint Server was still part of the strategy for Microsoft. If, like me, you were in attendance, you probably walked away with, “okay, time to figure out my SharePoint Server game plan and how much I want to leverage with SharePoint on-premises vs. using SharePoint online with Office 365.” The overall theme was good news for a lot of us who’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly with SharePoint Server since its market debut in 2001. With the 7th version coming out, I’m more conf

Bingham Blalock​ posted a very useful blog about Some Common Misperceptions - Q & A In this post he touched upon a principle around the design (or architecture, if you want to try and convince your boss that your should earn an extra 5k a year) or workflows when it comes to changing a workflow whilst it's running. This prompted me to write about the idea of "micro-workflows" (I made that up, lets see if it sticks). Micro-workflows (as defined by me ) are workflows that perform specific tasks within a process. An example of this was an app I developed with an approval process which required a number of conditions to be queried before deciding which route the approval would take. There were a number of other tasks involved in the process as well, and the complexity led me to break the single workflow down into a number of smaller workflows. Not only does this mean I can make changes to a workflow whilst the "process" is running against the item, it makes making changes to the wor

Alternative for "Copy to SharePoint" in Site workflows  If you have a requirement where you need the "Copy to SharePoint" action on a Site Workflow, you could do the followingCreate a new list named "Schedule Movement" with a column named "Year" and a column named "Month" Then write you workflow (staring on new items) using the "Copy to Sharepoint" Action. Then Schedule a Site Workflow adding a new item on the list "Schedule Movement"

Products: Nintex Forms 2010, Nintex Forms 2013 A question came in about activating Nintex Forms 2010/2013 via PowerShell. It is fairly easy to do assuming you have the FeatureDefinitionID (0cdf436f-61b0-43d2-b250-4360f0353b63). Below you will find an example for how to activate/deactivate the feature via PowerShell. PowerShell Script Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue   Enable-SPFeature -Url http://contoso.com -Identity 0cdf436f-61b0-43d2-b250-4360f0353b63 -Confirm:$false   #Disable-SPFeature -Url http://contoso.com -Identity 0cdf436f-61b0-43d2-b250-4360f0353b63 -Confirm:$false    Note: To deactivate the feature, uncomment the 5th line and comment the 3rd line. Version History and other scripts can be found here: http://alps.codeplex.com

The new user experience for document libraries in O365 is now being pushed out and my tenant recently picked up the change. I love all of the new UI and experience it brings. It has a lot of advantages, but also has further changes to be made. I'm not going to outline every single change here in this post as there are a lot of blogs on the subject already. It is not clear if these changes will make their way to SP 2016, but it should be no surprise when they do. https://blogs.office.com/2016/06/07/modern-document-libraries-in-sharepoint/Office Dev Center - Update on Modern Document Libraries and ExtensibilitySwitch the default for document libraries from new or classic - SharePoint​SharePoint Online get's a new document library experienceNew Experience Sharepoint Online Library - Rapid CircleNew SharePoint Document Library Experience (Content Precedes Design)(Note: some of these written in April are out of date already and features they say were removed were added back in) Ribbon Acces

We are very excited to announce the availability of Nintex Hawkeye, our new, cloud based workflow analytics service!  At Nintex, we know that as you begin to better manage everyday processes with the Nintex Workflow Platform, it adds up to more productivity, a stronger bottom line, happier people, and opportunities for teams to focus on more strategic endeavors. Now, Nintex Hawkeye gives you an unprecedented view into your process portfolio across the entire Nintex workflow platform. What is Nintex Hawkeye?Nintex Hawkeye automatically captures people and process data and helps you define reports, dashboards and analytics to help business and IT decision makers understand important questions like: which processes are automated, what functions do they perform, when and how often do processes run, who’s involved in the process, how effective are they and how might they be improved? It allows you to instrument and measure your automated business processes, enabling you to generate insights

Many of you may recall that back in May of '16 we dropped some certified magic into the on-premisesversion of Nintex Forms in the guise of a Print to PDF function. Print to PDF allows users to, with a single click of a button, "print" a Nintex form to a PDF. This method allow the form to be converted to a PDF, while maintaining its full fidelity, and then be saved to disk (or maybe back into a SharePoint document library) or even printed to paper (the horror)! Naturally, our Office 365 customers began to clamor for this awesome functionality... So, without further ado, I am pleased to announce that the 'dev elves' over here at Nintex have been busy hammering away in their workshop and have just completed adding Print to PDF in Nintex Forms for Office 365!  FeaturesCreate PDF versions of your Nintex Forms with a single click Adjustable page sizes Ability to disable Print to PDF on specific forms Save your PDF form anywhere Designer defined page breaks  Go ahead and open up the Nintex Fo

Today I needed to generate a random number in the simplest way. I found some information about generating a random number with custom UDA actions, but I didn't want to make installations on my server.So I found a good solution and posted it on the Nintex Xchange™​ cool space. You can see the post here >>> Random Number Generation on a workflowThis solution is based using a service in RANDOM.ORG and not only you can generate a simple random number. You will find a lot of uses as the following ones: Free services Games and LotteriesLottery Quick Pick is perhaps the Internet's most popular with over 280 lotteriesKeno Quick Pick for the popular game played in many countriesCoin Flipper will give you heads or tails in many currenciesDice Roller does exactly what it says on the tinPlaying Card Shuffler will draw cards from multiple shuffled decksBirdie Fund Generator will create birdie holes for golf coursesNumbersInteger Generator makes random numbers in configurable intervalsSeque

We recently ran into a request to "archive project sites after the project has been completed" and this started to make me think of how we can automate as much as possible behind the scenes. Before we could do anything, we first had to define what "archive" meant to the end users, site owners, and us (the SharePoint team). After a few conversations, we all landed on the following: An archived site retains current permission structure, but is reduced down to read at the site level. All users will have access to the site, for historical reference, at a read level. The site will be "stamped" with an expiration date, upon which the site will be reviewed and deleted. Any content on the site may need to be migrated to team sites (for operational guides). With these key points in mind, we can begin to really understand how to approach this. I am going to go over the first two steps here, and the others at a later time.I do want to say that this will perform the actions at the top level of the