The Continuing Journey to a Paper-less Office... Nintex Forms Print to PDF in the Cloud!

B
Badge +6

Many of you may recall that back in May of '16 we dropped some certified magic into the on-premises

version of Nintex Forms in the guise of a Print to 186975_pastedImage_3.pngPDF 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!

 

 

186977_pastedImage_7.pngFeatures

  • Create 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 Forms for Office 365 designer and click on Form Settings from the ribbon. You will see a Print to PDF category added at the bottom:

 

186979_pastedImage_13.png

To enable or disable a users ability to click on the Print to PDF button you can enable or disable printing. Additionally, specifying the page size and orientation can be done here.

 

If you would like to designate where the form will stop on a page inside of the output PDF, you can drag the new Page Break Guide control onto the canvas:

 

186980_pastedImage_43.png

 

After publishing you will see the Print to PDF button on the ribbon. Simply click on it to save a copy of the form:

 

186981_pastedImage_44.png

 

Just wait a few moments:

186982_pastedImage_45.png

And you will be able to Save or Open the PDF version of the form:

 

186983_pastedImage_46.png

 

Notice in my PDF the repeating section data starts on the second page just like I wanted by inserting the page break guide earlier?

 

186984_pastedImage_47.png

 

Well that was awfully easy! Professor Hinkle would probably trade in his old hat for it!

 

I hope you enjoy using this powerful and convenient new feature. If you would like to learn more, please check out the online help for Nintex Forms for Office 365. Also, don't forget to check out the other great features includes in today's release; Control Alignment and the venerable Lookup Function!

19 replies

G
Badge +5

This is brilliant! We've been waiting for this since we first implemented Nintex for Office 365 so it's great news.

I just tested our main forms: 3 of the 4 worked perfectly.  Unfortunately our main form crashes with "Internal Server Error Building PDF". Where's the best place to go looking to troubleshoot this one?  A re-save/re-publish didn't fix things.

"Internal Server Error Building PDF"

B
Badge +6

Hi Gerard Hyland​, I'm guessing something in the form data could be amiss. If you have any custom JavaScript or CSS you could try removing it as a troubleshooting step to see if the form will print. But, regardless, I would recommend navigating over to our support area and opening a ticket so that we can investigate further with you to determine what the root of the issue is.

Best,

Brad

G
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Thanks Brad, in that case I suspect it may well be some javascript that adds a random (1 of 4) background image to the form

B
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Oh yeah, that could be the culprit. See if you can set a static image perhaps and see if that does the trick?

G
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Sadly no. Time to log a call.

L
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Hi Brad,

Awesome to see this functionality hit the product, can you please let us know if you will be taking the next step and making this available to call from nintex workflow online as we need to automate this process. I know others in the community have been asking for this functionality as well!

Cheers,

Luke

W
Badge +9

Great to finally see some updates rolling out for Nintex Forms in Office 365! This is certainly a handy feature for users are as forms printed using the browser print option certainly don't come out as expected.

Nice write up Brad Orluk​ - only thing I would suggest is borders around the screen shot to make them pop a little more.

L
Badge +2

Pity this is only for enterprise subscribers. It would be great to see basic forms functionality like this available to all customers

H
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Has anybody made this work in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7 (our corporate standard)? I get a 404 page not found error.

Also tried Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10 - this generates an Internal Error Building PDF.

Works ok (although slooooooooooow) for me in Google Chrome on Windows 7.

G
Userlevel 6
Badge +13

Question, as this is a feature in O365 that doesn't require any special license beyond the standard purchase, will it be moved to the Standard edition in on-prem? I'd say it's a core piece of functionality around any form creation, and should be available to all customers, not just those swinging the big bats in terms of deployments and budget.

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Glad to hear, Luke Gullifer​!

There have been discussions around adding this functionality to Workflow but I don't have any official info to share. That being said, I would ask that you up vote this feature request over on our UserVoice site.

B
Badge +6

Would have if I could have. Jive..........

B
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I haven't heard any reports of this issue Hans-Henrik Sørensen​. I would suggest letting Nintex Support know about the issue so they can assist via the Support Portal here on Connect.

K

I agree, a printing option should be a standard feature of the product. Way too much money to pay for being able to print a form accurately. I can see having to purchase other enterprise features but to create a new version instead of adding this as a new feature seems to be the new way for software companies to make more money. I would even pay a reasonable amount as an add-on but I cant justify the cost when I do not need the other Enterprise features.

L
Badge +2

Unfortunatley this does require the online enterprise version its pretty frustrating that a fundemental feature is not available to all customers.

We are in the same boat with having to consider paying more money for a single feature.

W
Badge +9

oh I see, thanks!

W
Badge +9

Working fine for me on Win 7 with any browser including IE 11

B
Badge +6

As I had mentioned when this feature was released on-prem, I am sorry that the lack of Print to PDF in Nintex for Office 365 Standard disappoints you. I will certainly pass your feedback along to the product team. Additionally, I would certainly encourage you to voice your opinion on our UserVoice site or via the Feedback link found on the ribbon in the Forms designer interface.

That being said, here are a few observations that may help explain our position. You are not required to use Nintex Forms for Office 365 Enterprise to print a form. By accessing the print function of your browser you can print a form. Many of our customers simply do not have occasion to print their forms or they may have another strategy in place to create and print structured documents. But, since a subset of customers need increased functionality and want to capture forms to PDF with a higher fidelity, similar to other premium offerings on the market (such as the print view feature in the now deprecated InfoPath), we offer Nintex for Office 365 Enterprise which includes not only Print to PDF but also connectors to Salesforce.com and Dynamics CRM as well as entitlement to create Nintex Mobile Enterprise apps. Plus, we will be releasing the Nintex Hawkeye analytics tool for Office 365 later this Fall and it will also be included at no additional charge in our Enterprise offering.

While you may only want to purchase this single feature, there is an incredible amount of value in the Enterprise Edition and a great deal of additional functionality that you will probably chose to utilize after deciding to invest in Enterprise. I would recommend contacting your Nintex partner of choice to discuss a trial so you can test out all of the enhanced functionality and also to learn more about Enterprise pricing as this has also undergone some changes that I think you may be interested in.

Best,

Brad

G
Userlevel 6
Badge +13

Hi Brad,

Completely understand the value available in the Enterprise edition, but I'm dealing with a client who is just dipping their toes into SharePoint and Nintex now, limited budgets for IT are a real thing and pennies have to be spent shrewdly, and it seems that most agree this is a core piece of functionality. I'd have been pretty disappointed if I'd bought Office and couldn't print my documents, spreadsheets or Access forms.

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