Dears,

Many Nintex customers working on Microsoft SQL Server are asking me how to trigger a Nintex Workflow (NWC) when an item/row is added to the database.

After looking at the "Start event" action settings in my NWC, Microsoft SQL Server connector is missing:

On the help portal for NWC, you can go to the following page related to Microsoft SQL Server connector and see that the feature is not yet available:

One of the solution is to use the "External Start" event:

You can refer to the blog post created by Renai Bell in order to provide a REST URL for the workflow:

Nintex Workflow Cloud External Start.

But still the challenge lays in the below:

How to call the above generated URL when an item is added to a table in my SQL database?

For sure it will not be a Transact-SQL trigger .

Let's note that in addition to the Transact-SQL language, we can use .NET Framework languages (C# for example) to create database triggers.

Among the benefits of using .NET Framework languages are:

1. Language Richness by owning capabilities previously unavailable to SQL Server developers (We are using C# ).
2. Debugging database triggers from Microsoft Visual Studio.

I will go for Common Language Run-time Integration (Commonly known as CLR) and create a trigger in .Net managed code. It will be executed like any other Transact-SQL trigger once an item is added to the database.

For more info on how to create a trigger in .Net managed code, check the below:

How to: Create and Run a SQL Server Trigger by using Common Language Run-time Integration

Below you can see my C# code for triggering event on item added to a table:

 SqlTrigger(Name = "UserNameAudit", Target = "Users", Event = "FOR INSERT")]
 public static void UserNameAudit()
  {
   SqlTriggerContext triggContext = SqlContext.TriggerContext;
   SqlParameter userName = new SqlParameter("@username", System.Data.SqlDbType.NVarChar);

   if (triggContext.TriggerAction == TriggerAction.Insert)
    {
     using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection("context connection=true"))
      {
       //Get UserName from inserted
       conn.Open();
       SqlCommand sqlComm = new SqlCommand();
       SqlPipe sqlP = SqlContext.Pipe;
       sqlComm.Connection = conn;
       sqlComm.CommandText = "SELECT UserName from INSERTED";
       userName.Value = sqlComm.ExecuteScalar().ToString();

       //Launch the external Start
       StartNWC(userName.Value.ToString());
      }
    }
  }‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

The above code will create a trigger named "UserNameAudit" associated to a table named "Users" on item inserted.

I will retrieve the value of the column "UserName" from the inserted item and then "send it" to my NWC in order to start.

Let's have a look on the StartNWC function where I will trigger my NWC by issuing an HTTP Request:

    public static void StartMyNWC(string UserName)
    {

        //Build HTTP Request
        HttpWebRequest Request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("Workflow URL with Token");
        Request.Method = "POST";
        Request.ContentType = "application/json";

        //Build the body of the Request
        using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(Request.GetRequestStream()))
        {
            string json = "{" +
            """startData"": {" +
                """se_user_name"": """ + UserName + """" +
            "}," +
            """options"": {" +
                """callbackUrl"": """