This post is a review of the march 2017 release. What is included in this post is my personal observation/opinion.

*** Nintex Workflow Cloud ***

Changes

1. Addition of ‘Conditional start’ feature.
2. Addition of ‘Share a link’ feature.
3. A new connector action.

Addition of ‘Conditional start’ feature

This 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 useless for a conditional start.

The example that first came to my mind was adding a bunch of files in one folder and let conditional start determine on which files the workflow must be started (Using: Microsoft OneDrive for Business - New File).

Before conditional start I had to create a separate folder for files on which I needed to start the workflow or had to build that logic into the workflow which would increase the entries in the ‘Instances’ unnecessary, making it more difficult for me to find the right instance (action limits is no longer an issue but was it too in the beginning of NWC).

Conclusion

I really like this addition.

Addition of ‘Share a link’ feature

This feature is an action which makes it possible to send an e-mail with links to files on several data storage location, like Microsoft OneDrive for Business. Connectors which currently have this feature (action) are:

• Box
• Citrix ShareFile
• Google Drive

Microsoft OneDrive for BusinessThere are 2 types of links: 

1. Download
2. View

Test

I tested the action for the ‘Microsoft OneDrive for Business’ connector. I used the ‘New File’ event and the value ‘NWC’ for ‘Path’. When uploading a file to this folder, the workflow started, using the above mentioned conditional start :)

Next, using the ‘Share file link’ action, 2 variables were filled. But that was not the only thing that happened. The file in OneDrive for Business that triggered the workflow was shared too such that the person who knows the share link can view the file.

I then used both variables (links) in the ‘Send an email’ action. Clicking on the links in the e-mail did exactly what it promised (viewing the document and downloading the document). Test successful.

Conclusion

I like this new action. It would be nice if this action was expanded so you could also configure what kind of link to make: A read link or an edit link.

New connector action

Nintex Workflow Cloud has again a new feature. We want more, we want more  

*** Nintex Forms ***

Changes

1. New ‘Save and continue’ button (On-premise only)
2. Managed Metadata control (Office 365)

New ‘Save and continue’ button (On-premise only)

This is a much requested feature: Saving without closing a form

The feature is available as an extra option called ‘Save and Continue’ in the button action dropdown:

When using such a button action, the button does exactly what it implies: Saving the form and leaving it open.

But thinking about it does not stop there! Using ‘Save and Continue’ can start a workflow because the corresponding item is added/updated. The form designer must inform the workflow designer about this situation. The easiest solution is of course to add a hidden field, give it a value when using the ‘Save’ button and use a conditional start on the workflow.

A blog post about this topic has already been added by Nintex: Lucky You, there's New Form Features!

Conclusion

This feature works as expected but ‘connected’ workflows must be evaluated if all still works as required.

Managed Metadata control (Office 365)

This feature was already present for on-premise. I am personally not such a great fan of using managed metadata fields in solution (mainly because of migration complexity) but for Office 365 this will mostly be less of an issue. For certain customer requests, managed metadata is the only possible option, so yeah, I think it is good this feature is added.

An blog post about this topic has already been added by Nintex: Introducing Managed Metadata Control for Nintex Forms for Office 365

Conclusion

The difference between on-premise and Cloud features became a bit less again.

*** Nintex Workflow ***

Changes

Nothing seems to have changed here, though there was initial an indication some changes were made. This can be seen when opening the version page of the release notes of Nintex Workflow 2016.

*** Release notes ***