News and Guidelines

The first time I worked with attachments in a workflow, I ask where are the attachments stored and how can I show all attachments in the following workflow tasks to give an approver the possibility to read the attachments. I have attached an NINTEX 2013 example site workflow using NINTEX Forms 2013. A prerequisite is the installation of the Get List Item Attachment in Base64 Custom Action from Vadim Tabakman‌ (see http://www.vadimtabakman.com/nintex-workflow-get-list-item-attachment-in-base64-custom-action-happy-thanksgiving.aspx). In the first Flexi Task you can add multiple attachments. The task IDs are stored in the workflow variable task_ids This attachments are stored in the task items of the Flexi Task.If the Flexi Task is approved an item is created in a data list. To copy the attachments from the task item(s) to the list item the following steps have to be executed in a loop for each task ID:Call web service Lists.asmx with method GetAttachmentCollection to get the URLs of all

December saw a collection of new PMBOK templates for Promapp and a great new tool to leverage Nintex Workflow Cloud forms in your Salesforce environment! If you have not yet had a chance to check out the Discover Nintex Workflow Cloud playlist on the Nintex YouTube channel be sure to review it to see how you can build workflow solutions from scratch with Nintex! Alright, now let's take a look at what was built in December. ToolsSalesforce NWC Forms Component - The Salesforce Lightning Component for NWC will allow you to embed NWC forms directly onto your Lightning page layoutsPromappPMBOK 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan - Define how projects are executed, monitored and controlled, and closed PMBOK 4.3 Direct and Manage Project Work - Lead the performance of the work defined in the project management plan PMBOK 4.4 Manage Project Knowledge - Use existing and acquired knowledge to achieve the project's objectives PMBOK 6.1 Plan Schedule Management - Establish the requirements for man

Microsoft Teams is now the company’s fastest growing application ever, with over 13 million daily active users and 91 of the Fortune 100 companies using the communication and collaboration platform. Such phenomenal growth leads to some more familiar challenges beyond simply automating the publishing of content and that’s how organisations administer and govern their Microsoft Teams deployments efficiently, effectively and reliably. Let me introduce you to the new Microsoft Teams capabilities in Nintex Workflow.Launched this week, the comprehensive set of actions within Nintex Workflow Cloud for Microsoft Teams allows organisations to go beyond simply automating the publishing of content, but significant administration and governance of Microsoft Teams.We’ll take a look at the range of capabilities launched, show you how to leverage those in a workflow,  and dive into a specific use. Lastly, I’ll outline all the different options available to you with Nintex Workflow Cloud and Microsoft

                  Preview from: Some thoughts on process management in 2020 As 2020 was coming to a close, I thought it might be interesting to hear from some process management professionals about how the year went. I solicited the help of two of my peers in the industry - Jean Suh at Capital Group and Jerome Deveix at Salesforce. Check out the stories below to see their thoughts on 2020, goals for 2021, and advice for organizations considering investing in process management in 2021. See full post here: Some thoughts on process management in 2020

This post is now out of date and updated information can be found here.  Many customers and organizations have workflows with a small number of actions to automate different business processes and help bring efficiency into the organization. Recognizing that this is a common scenario, Nintex has introduced a concept called Limited Action Workflows to help customers understand what will or will not be counted against the their workflow allowance. What is a Limited Action Workflow? Workflows that have less than or equal to five actions and don’t start another workflow will be considered as Limited Action Workflows. These workflows will not be counted towards the workflow allocation. This will allow customers to automate simple common business scenarios without adversely impacting a customer’s workflow allowance. For example, a simple approval workflow to route a document to my manager for approval which consists of three simple actions would be free. Are there workflow actions that canno

Are you about to upgrade?Want to know more about the new features you will be getting? First, you should read the release notes - this is where we write all about the new features.Then, you can check out these release overview webinars: 19.1 Webinar20.3 Webinar20.9 Webinar If you are more of a reader, you can find the webinar's presentation attached here as well. 

In both personal and business situations… online forms are used to capture and gather data. Sometimes a form asks more then is actually needed or required. When a form hides these situational fields from users that don’t need to fill them out “confusion-itis” is less likely to happen. First Name: KevinLast Name: McCallisterEmail: kmccall@alone.comNew Customer: YesHAR#: ?????? - huh? Kevin is a new customer. He doesn’t need to fill out the HAR#. I could add a note/direction next to the HAR# field telling him not to fill it out if he is a new customer… but as that helps some… even with a note… I sometimes don’t notice the sign my wife puts on the dishwasher to empty it. Unlike the dishwasher where the appliance technology doesn’t exist to make it invisible when its not needing attention… Nintex has solved this issue in its FORMS technology!!! THE RULES TAB Below is an example of the values that we need. The second table for existing customers is only needed to be answered and filled if t

Greetings!! , Finally back in South Africa from Namibia! And I'm excited to bring you part 3 of my Time sheet blog series. If you guys remember in part 2 , I didn't get to cover the Time Sheet form below:  And so in this part I've included a breakdown on how the Time sheet Form has been put together as suggested by David Heineman  I've done a +/- 29 minute long video explaining the form in greater detail, and also shared some tips and tricks that should help you on your Nintex journey Hope you guys enjoy this Have a great week everyone! Continue to part 4 Cheers

Greetings again!!!Before anything, I would like to thank my long time friend; Yaaseen Sadulla for producing the instrumental I used in this intro!!  As promised, here's part 2 of my Time sheet blog series. In this part I've included a breakdown on how the solution has been put together: The RequirementThe Projects team would like a Time sheet solution that:Allows the project team to control the number of weeks that employees can submit overdue time sheets Allow the project team to manage: Projects (Project Name, Category) Employees which can submit Time sheets and also how many Time sheets each employee has submitted Consolidate all submitted Time sheets into a single SharePoint list for reporting Allow managers to easily approve submitted time sheets Allow managers to reject time sheets, notify, and send them back to the Employee in Draft mode for amendment Allow Employees to save their Time sheets as a draft, so that they are able to work on it laterThe SolutionThe proposed solutio

We are excited to introduce the Nintex RPA Central v2.0, with a new user interface as well as improved feature functionality.  We have redesigned Nintex RPA Central to make it much more intuitive and streamlined to help you manage your Nintex RPA Botflows™ more efficiently.  The new user interface will be similar to our best-in-class Nintex Workflow automation and will provide a more seamless experience.    In addition to a more contemporary interface, you will also enjoy improved features functionalities including more configuration and scheduling capabilities. With the new Nintex RPA Central, you will be able to configure, schedule, and publish a Botflow using a single window, where previously it required navigation to multiple pages.  In addition, the installation process has been completely changed to make it a faster and more pleasant experience, so that users can quickly use the product.  The benefits of the new Nintex RPA Central are:Faster and easier Nintex RPA Central and Nint

I'm pleased to announce the release of two fantastic new features - Data Source Permissions and Data Source Deletion which are now live on NWC. Not only can users now delete data sources, but they now have the ability to control which users can edit a data source and who can consume it to bind data to the data lookup control. When saving a data source, a permissions dialogue will appear displaying the existing permissions along with edit access, if that user is also the connection owner. Details on the permissions each of the key roles have been outlined below: Connection Owners (owners of the connection used in a data source):The only users that can “Share” the data source with other users by defining who are data source editors and users Will have edit access to the data source and will be able to change the configuration Will be able to delete the data source Can use the data source in forms to bind to a Data Lookup Control  Data Source Editors:Will have edit access to the data sour

                 Preview from: Process purpose informs process language Have you heard the adage: “It’s not what you say – it’s how you say it.”? In the world of process management (and reality in general), this is only half true. A more accurate statement would be: “It’s not only what you say, but how you say it.” “What you say” and “how you say it” should be greatly determined by the purpose you have for saying it in the first place. Speaking specifically of process documentation, “what you say” is the content of the process. “How you say it” is the process language you use to communicate the content to others. The purpose you have in documenting and communicating the process should stem from the process customers – the end users. What is their purpose for having process documentation? Knowing that, you have a greater chance of saying the right thing in the right way. See full post here: Process purpose informs process language

Adobe Sign New Hire ScenarioThis scenario steps through the process of using the Adobe Sign action to send documents for digital signing with the Adobe e-signature platform. Scenario: Your HR department wants to automate the new hire process. Currently, the hiring manager contacts HR to begin the contract process. But with an automation process, the hiring manager fills out a form that populates a template, which is then sent out for digital signing using the company’s Adobe Sign account. The new employee signs the contact and the documents are automatically sent back to HR.   Create a list and formFirst, create a list and a corresponding form. This information is used to populate the contract you send out for signing. For instructions on creating a form with Nintex Forms for Office 365, see Creating and working with forms in the product help.List column Form value Name The name of the new hire. Contact Email Address New hire's email address.  Position  The job titl

Nintex App Studio provides us with the ability to create a mobile application specific to the scenarios/use cases you are automating.  This is made up of a combination of aesthetic changes (logos and colour schemes), tailored content (showing only the forms relevant to the use cases) and extra features not available on the standard Nintex mobile application (custom content). This post will focus on the custom content that you can add.  What do I mean by custom content? Your app can contain any type of "file" that your mobile phone can read. e.g. Pdf documents, MS Office documents, videos, pictures, and here's where it gets interesting, HTML files/web pages. To add any content, add a menu item and select "Content" as the type:I recommend naming the menu item using a single word without spaces e.g. CompanyPolicies.  You can use spaces however some devices will have trouble linking to this. Once you have created this menu item, you can add any of those files I mentioned above up to 50MB w

Further to the recent SPAM incident, we have now implemented a number of measures to minimize the risk of similar incidents impacting the Nintex Community and its members.  As a result, we have now enabled new user registrations. Specifically, we've implemented the following measures:enforcing email validation of new user registrations implementing Captcha for new user registrations and each time another user is to be Private Messaged enabling Private Messaging Opt-In, where registered users can choose whether to enable the Private Messaging function on their account. If you Opt-In to Private Messaging, you can disable email notifications through the My Settings menu.  Notifications will then only occur via the "bell" icon when you sign in to the Nintex Community. monitoring all new user registrations on a daily basis as a further safeguard against suspicious account registrations ______________________________________ On December 2, 2020 a number of Nintex Community members reported r

November saw a collection of new templates from Nintex Workflow Cloud workflows, Promapp process maps, and Nintex Workflow Cloud custom connectors. If you have not yet had a chance to check out the Discover Nintex Workflow Cloud playlist on the Nintex YouTube channel be sure to review it to see how you can build workflow solutions from scratch with Nintex! Alright, now let's take a look at what was built in November. WorkflowsNintex Workflow Cloud Urlaubsantrag - (German Template): Ein Prozess zum Erstellen einer Urlaubsanfrage. Custom ConnectorsUrlday: Generate shortened URLs with UrldayPromappPMBOK 4.1 Develop Project Charter: This process creates a document to formally authorize a project and provide authority to apply key resources within the organization to that work. It ensures a connection between the project goals and the strategic objectives of the business as a whole. PMBOK 13.1 Identify Stakeholders: Identify project stakeholders and analyze and document their interests, inv

Planning ahead When designing a fairly complex workflow/business process it is common for a workflow to become overly complex (in programming this is often referred to as a god object). This can lead to issues down the road such as: Troubleshooting/Debugging difficulties. Difficulty maintaining code/loss of flexibility. Performance degradation on publishing (or even timing out altogether). Performance degradation on initialization (this can affect the entire farm). Inability to export or edit the workflow after publishing. Workflow template corruption (limited to the workflow itself). Workflows should be broken up into more manageable bits whenever possible (in computer science this is called Separation of Concerns‌). An example of this would be a workflow that has multiple stages of approval and logic inside of each approval branch: There are several approaches that can be taken to mitigate these issues: User Defined Actions (UDAs) User defined actions are a great tool for encapsulati

We know that it can be frustrating designing large forms in Nintex Workflow Cloud due to how long it can take to save. We have some fantastic news - by returning the form as an object, the amount of time it now takes to save has been significantly reduced by up to 8 times! Not only that, but these improvements will also reduce loading times.  Details of performance improvements:6-8 times performance improvement when saving task forms  3 times performance improvement when saving start forms  30% improvement on load times of start and task forms  These updates will be performed on that form the next time you save it. For existing forms, the first save will take a little longer while they are updated, after which existing form variables will be replaced and migrated to reference to the new form object. Performance improvements will be apparent on subsequent form loads and saves.  As can be seen by the image above, to access the form controls, simply navigate to the same place you would ha

Nintex Migration Coaching We are excited to announce a new program designed to ensure your Nintex migration has a successful outcome.Visit our Migration Center to review documentation and interact with the community.  We have coaches with years of experience ready to assist you for both cloud migrations and migrations to a new version of Sharepoint to help you develop a plan best suited to meet your goals and timelines and ensure a successful outcome.  Do not hesitate to Book a session with a coach from our support team to help you build your migration plan. Who is this for? Our Migration Coaching sessions are aimed at Project Managers or System Administrators in charge of assessing, planning, and implementing a migration. When embarking on this project the coaching session can be used to dive into the expected technical challenges and differences between platforms. Migrating to the Cloud If you are planning on migrating to the cloud your Nintex coach will focus on:Deciding which cloud

So whenever you send out this contract please make sure to update the status of the Salesforce Opportunity. Also make sure the correct Sharepoint list has the same status. Also after everything is said and done and the contract is signed make sure to save the final version in a folder in Box… Not hard to handle this when you have done it hundreds of times. When you are new to an organization this can be a bit to learn. What happens when your sales team goes from 5 to 30 overnight? How do you minimize mistakes and ramp up user adoption?  The majority of the time when task and updates need to be done and updated in this manner logic typically exists to dictate next steps. If this… then… do that… As mentioned above this can be a bit of a learning curve for one use case. But most of us have more then one task type a day. In addition when you want to scale employee size and expand knowledge this manual process could be difficult to adopt.  No matter how simple or complex… when automation ex

Some really great templates were added in October with a focus on Nintex Workflow Cloud to help highlight some of the new features and functionality that has been delivered to that product. If you have not yet had a chance to check out the Discover Nintex Workflow Cloud playlist on the Nintex YouTube channel be sure to review it to see how you can build workflow solutions from scratch with Nintex! Alright, now let's take a look at what was built in October. WorkflowsNintex Workflow Cloud Food Premises Assessment Report: This template uses Nintex Document Generation and a responsive form to allow field teams to capture information from businesses that serve food. Student Enrollment Application: Provide parents with an easy way to submit applications for new students using NWC and SharePoint Online. Purchase Order Request: Provide customers with an easy to use request form that integrates with your CRM system, creates all the required records, and then generate a dynamic Purchase Order

Given the current global climate, Microsoft said in March that Teams usage had grown to 44 million daily active users. It’s now jumped another 70 percent - during one of their latest investor calls, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that Teams usage has increased to more than 75 million daily active users. Its evident Teams has become the enterprise collaboration hub for teamwork, with organisations seeing the benefits of Teams, some of which includes: Chat-based communication instead of email Channels instead of folders Workspaces allowing you to securely edit files at the same time. The liking of content, @mentions and replies.  But with all good things, comes a great level of risk – with Teams, it’s the management and governance controls which become the biggest hurdle. There are various ways for a user to create a team, and as such, these are some of the pitfalls: Teams and Site sprawl Potential Data loss Permission issues Organisations should think of ways to manage their Team

Nintex Forms allows for Cascading Drop Downs which can improve the functionality of your forms, but what if you wanted to include a third-tier to the cascading drop down? Let's take a look at how to configure a three-tier cascading drop down using Nintex Forms! The Setup For this example, we are creating, in total, four lists (List A, List B, List C, and Meal Order). Below is what List A -  C look like: List Configuration  Notice the following: List A contains the Single Line column 'Title' data that will feed into the 'Meal Time' List Lookup used on List B. List B contains the List Lookup column, 'Meal Time' (from List A), and a Single Line column, 'Meal Type'. List C contains the List Lookup column, 'Meal Type' (from List B), and a Single Line column, 'Beverage'. These are the columns used when creating the list, 'Meal Order', which will be where we build our Nintex Form. Below is the configuration of the 'Meal Order' list columns: Meal Order - Col

Welcome to the first blog of my new series!Nintex vTE Giving back to the Community:  Getting Started with Nintex Forms As a Nintex vTE I’m approached daily by colleagues and customers making requests of me to come up with creative and efficient solutions for some super complex business problems.  This blog isn’t about any of that though.  Rather, its purpose is to help those of you who may be new and perhaps struggling to get started.  It’s my intention to save you time by avoiding some common pitfalls, while teaching you some of the basics.  Moreover, it’s about giving back to the Community.  Join me now as we explore Nintex Forms. Assumptions:  Nintex forms is already installed; User possesses general SharePoint knowledge. Intended Audience:  Someone new to Nintex Forms.  Although the examples in this tutorial were done in on-prem, O365 will be very similar. Level:  BeginnerVersion Information:  Sharepoint 2013 (On-prem), Nintex Forms Version: 2.9.4.0 You’ve just received word that N

Hi! One of the nice features of Nintex forms is an ability to create a repeating section within a single form. This allows you to add multiple lines of something, IE sales and then tally the rows up.  One of the problems is easily reporting on this row data. If you export to Excel you just get the ‘Rows’ within the form in a single field as XML. I wanted to create an excel report that split out these xml fields into individual rows and be refreshable. Power Query to the rescue with a bit of help from my power query guru. The following is a guide on splitting that data into individual rows using excel and power query and connecting directly to the Sharepoint list to create a refreshable report. WHAT YOU NEEDFirst off you need your sharepoint list and make sure your repeating section is connected to a multiple line field to capture the XML. All of the fields you’ve added in the repeating section should be named. You will then need Excel 2013 onwards with the latest version of PowerQuery.