News and Guidelines

Recently, I came across an error using Nintex Forms for Office 365. Fortunately the error was isolated to a specific scenario and turned out to have a pretty simple solution as well. The Scenario...Using Nintex Forms on Office 365 to customize the form on a document library (not a regular list) Using the library's Upload link to select a local file that you wish to upload into SharePoint (problem did not occur when clicking Edit Properties or View Properties on an existing document) Using Internet Explorer v11 (problem did not occur with IE10 or Chrome in my testing) The Problem...In the scenario above, I was expecting to have my Nintex Form displayed in a dialog just as SharePoint normally displays the standard Edit Form.  Instead, I was greeted with this erro

Planning AheadWhen designing a workflow it is often assumed that the actions will be processed in the exact order they are shown in the designer. While true most of the time, if your workflow is utilizing any batched actions (see below), the actions do not always execute synchronously. What is a batched action?A batched action is any action that makes a change to a SharePoint environment. These actions are added to a batch and processed together. How are batched actions handled?SharePoint Workflow Infrastructure processes activities synchronously until it reaches a point where the workflow is blocked (Task, Pause, etc). Only at this point will SharePoint commit batched actions. Processing changes to SharePoint in batches has several advantages: Processing changes in a single SQL transaction is less resource intensive than processing every change as it occurs in a workflow. When SharePoint encount

Planning ahead In addition to creating one to one mappings of Nintex and SharePoint content databases (Covered here: https://community.nintex.com/docs/DOC-1092). Workflow history lists can be created on a one to one basis for each workflow in the environment using the below steps: Navigate to Site Settings Nintex Workflow Manage workflow history lists. Click New from the ribbon and name the new History List something meaningful like the workflow name and history list. Example: ‘My Approval Workflow History List’ Open the Nintex Workflow Designer and click Workflow Settings. Select the new history list from Workflow Options and click save. When you publish/re-publish your workflow all new instances of that workflow will use the newly provisioned workflow history list. Performance Typically we start to see performance degradation w

Applicable to Versions of Nintex Workflow 3.1.1.0 (Nintex Workflow 2013) and 2.4.1.0 (Nintex Workflow 2010) and earlier. Configuration Nintex Workflow solutions are deployed to SharePoint as Web Application scoped Solutions (Nintex Live being an exception). Nintex Workflow also makes use of the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) for its assemblies. When Nintex Solutions are deployed to the farm, only Web Application Servers install a copy of the Nintex Workflow assemblies into their GAC. Every server that is running the Workflow Timer Service (Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service) is going to be in a pool of servers that can/will process Sharepoint and Nintex Workflows. SharePoint uses a round robin system to determine which server will process a given workflow instance. There is no feasible way to limit/reconfigure this functionality other th

In support we field a lot of questions revolving around workflow history such as; where it is kept, how it grows over time, how to maintain it and what are some of the limits that you will run into. Today, I would like to show you where it is created, kept and how to plan for the future. General Information: There are 2 places where the workflow history is kept and accessed.      1. SharePoint Workflow History – This is kept inside of the site collection in a hidden list typically           called NintexWorkflowHistory.     2. Nintex Workflow History– This is kept inside of the Nintex Workflow database. Because there are two places the workflow history resides, this also means that there are two places you can view it. SharePoint Workflow Hist

Related products: Nintex Workflow 2016, Nintex Forms 2016, Nintex Workflow 2013, Nintex Forms 2013, Nintex Workflow 2010, Nintex Forms 2010, Nintex Live Typically when an error comes up around a missing Feature or a duplicate Content Type or Field within SharePoint, it can be difficult to diagnose what exactly is being referenced.  In order to assist with troubleshooting the issues specifically related to Nintex Products, below are Nintex Features, Content Types, and Fields along with their associated IDs. **Please note that some of the Features, Content Types, and Fields are hidden.  Hidden items are not going to be visible within the SharePoint UI. Nintex Features**Note: The feature NintexWorkflowClaimsMigration is only included in SharePoint 2013 environments Feature Feature ID

Planning ahead Speed is typically a business requirement when designing a workflow; however, sometimes the appearance of speed is just as good as the real thing. Adding a 'Pause for...' action as the first action of a workflow will actually have the illusion of being much faster to end users. Additionally, starting workflow designs with a pause has the added benefit of increased durability. PerformanceAdding a pause to the start of a workflow will force the workflow instance to immediately dehydrate and persist to the SharePoint Content Database. A workflow executed by a user will show a 'Working on it...' message to the user until completion or dehydration (This has the appearance of sluggishness). The quicker you can dehydrate the workflow, the quicker the workflow will appear to users. Reference: Workflow Scalability an

Recently I've been involved in that project, where data and information that was being created for years in on premise SharePoints had to be migrated to the sharepoint online environment in office 365‌. All migration was said to be a simple, straightforward and easy due to the usage of sharegate, but... the real truth turned out to be way more dark.Before the real migration started I sat down and started reading about the process and possible obstacles. I can now divide them into 3 groups:Limitations of Sharegate Limitations of SharePoint Online Limitations of Nintex for Office 365.First things first. I will guide you through all and each from them.Limitations of SharegateSharegate is a really great tool. Honestly. It saved me dozens of hours but as well made me frustrated. But still it is great. It really allows not straightforward migrations to be possible (like from SP2007 directly to SP2013 and so on), is th

According to Leif Frederiksen‌ last post Filtering large List Lookup dropdowns ...‌ I had the problem with a real big dropdown (nearly 20.000 entries). So the code of Leif was not suitable for me because it took too long to filter (blank out) all the entries that are not needed. I decided to do a workaround and figured out another way to solve the problem. Why not do a CAMLquery on the whole list and show only the results in the dropdown? So I have the full control of the query (i.e. "Contains"). In this example I show you how I did the search/filter for our suppliers. My users can choose a category and the search works with "contains". There are too many entries we have to deal with...

Recently, we were working for a client who wanted to migrate on-premise NINTEX Forms and Workflows into O365. But the challenges we faced while creating an Azure Security group by using Office 365 Nintex workflow. As such there is no direct component that can be used in O365 to achieve the goal as like on-premise/enterprise edition. It was very urgent from client perspective and so we can't wait for NINTEX help-desk to reply on that. We have implemented with our own ideas and thoughts and hopefully it will help you in coming days until NINTEX is providing a straight forward component in Office 365 to achieve this. Solution to Add/Edit/Delete Azure AD Groups involves a four-step process: Step 1: Having an app registration in Azure that will have the rights to create, update, delete Azure AD group.Step 2: Getting TENANT ID, APP ID, and CLIENT SECRET while registering the App.Step 3: Authentica

If you are a current DocuSign customer you are likely familiar with document and envelope Custom Fields.  These custom fields allow users to create custom versions of standard fields and save them for reuse in future documents.  Leveraging custom fields comes in very handy when automating a process using Nintex Workflow Cloud. In this brief blog post I am going to walk you through how you can leverage these custom fields within a Nintex Workflow. There are 3 components to making this work and I will walk through each below. https://support.docusign.com/guides/ndse-admin-guide-custom-fields 1.  The DocuSign Custom Field The first thing you need to do is create your custom fields within your DocuSign account.  You can use either standard fields provided to you or create custom new ones.  These field

Nintex Forms Enterprise enables your forms to connect to external data sources, such as SQL databases or web services, extending their reach by automating the inclusion of relevant information. In this post I will explain the power of SQL Request Control to query warehouse data from an external SQL Server data store in order to build a Product Order Form.The SQL Request control simplifies connecting to a SQL Server database by configuring basic information such as Server Name, Database Name and Authentication mode (Anonymous, Windows and SQL). This Control supports multiple display formats similar to Nintex Choice Control - Option buttons, Checkboxes (Multiple Selection), Dropdown list or Text/Label. The SQL Request control leverages the SharePoint Secure Store Service in order to protect the SQL Credentials, which we would also recommend are configured under least privilege principle

I have to admit that I had worked with Nintex Workflow for well over a year before I discovered these beautiful actions!  When I realised what they could do, I realised that I was repeating a lot of stuff in separate workflows unnecessarily.Using these actions together allows you to store variable values and pass them between different instances of running workflows. Where might this ability come in handy?  Well I do not like to have workflow that are too large, so I occasionally break them down into smaller and more manageable chunks as separate workflows.  I join them together using the "Start workflow" action.  Often I will require an output from the workflows I start in the main workflow they are being started from.  Here's how to grab them: Start workflow actionWhen configuring this to run, ensure you capture the instance ID in a text variable of the workflow you are starting.  This is required later when you retrieve whatev

All of your documents are tagged, delivery options have been configured, now it's time to move that newly created Drawloop Document Package from one org to another but how? The good news is, Nintex has thought about this and we’ve created a tool to make it easier on you. Step 1: Confirm Drawloop is installed in your destination org Log into the destination org navigate to Setup - Installed Packages and confirm that Nintex Drawloop is in the list of Installed Packages.  Step 2: Select the Document Packages you’d like to Migrate Now that you’ve confirmed that Drawloop is installed in the destination org it’s time to select the document packages you want to migrate. Log into the source org and navigate to the Drawloop Document Packages list view. Once on th

When prompting your users to fill in a form, it can be handy to sometimes help them out by filling in some of the information for them. You can do this by default values of course, but sometimes it needs to be more contextual. For one solution I was working on, I had an issues list that I needed our users to populate as and when they encountered a bug, the issues would relate to an item that a workflow was running on, but the issue was being recorded on a separate list. I built a link in the email the workflow would send them, prompting them to raise any bugs they found that looked like the following: http://server/sites/sitename/lists/listname/NewForm.aspx?URL=www.google.co.uk&Status=New Then, with Nintex forms,

NTX PowerShell Action - Initial Beta Release *** Please see this thread for updated information: NTX PowerShell Action - Stable Release *** FeaturesRobust security features based on Windows Remote Management. Ability to execute PowerShell scripts from any machine allowing Remote Management from your SharePoint servers. PowerShell exceptions are handled so workflows are unaffected. OpenSource Actively Developed Automated Installation Routine Planned Features Async PowerShell script execution Script Repository Run worker as a centralized SharePoint service instead of in Workflow Infrastructure Pass SPServer object to PowerShell session for determining executing server. Current roadmap/planned features can be fo

Read from Documents using the Read document actionThis actions allow you to read from Content Controls inside a Microsoft Word document.  When documents in a document library have these controls, Nintex Workflow has the ability to work with these controls.Below you will see the steps needed to achieve reading from the Content Controls in a Word document. Step 1:  Edit the template for the document in the document libraryThe document that is added to the document library needs to have the content controls in the template for Nintex to work with.  We therefore need to edit the template associated with the document library.  You can do this as follows: Navigate to your document library, and access the Library Settings through the Library tab in the ribbon Select Advanced settings under

This week (6th October 2014), Nintex released the Nintex Connector for DocuSign.  What does this mean for the Nintex Workflow user? Put quite simply, you can now build workflows where you can request signatures in documents from users, via DocuSign. In this post, I'll be highlighting some of the actions that are available and how to use them within a workflow.  The scenario that first comes to mind, when requiring a signature, is a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Firstly, from the DocuSign end.  Although you could just have a simple document you want people to sign, one of the cool features of DocuSign, is that you can have a Document Template that has fields in it.

Requirement where a designer has create a workflow assigning multiple parallel tasks to multiple parallel groups of approvers is complex.  Basically, Nintex offers us two approaches: either assign task to a group and wait for the first response or to wait for all responses. But what when we need to have multiple groups assigned a task in parallel?  Approach  Doing multiple parallel approvals requires either parallel block or... unchecking the option for waiting until task is completed. The first approach require the workflow to be edited every time number of parallel groups is changed - to add or remove branches. It makes it quite fixed. And therefore hard in maintenance.The second approach is better. This way you can build a loop and in the loop assi

There was a blog post made and a major announcement that I haven't seen here in the community yet, so I wanted to post the link to the announcement and allow for any questions here in the community. https://www.nintex.com/blog/announcing-new-admin-and-governance-features-for-nintex-for-office-365/?utm_source=linkedin&…  by Marcus PlattPosted on

Many times we have to validate attachment control inside a form on certain condition. For example, say, there is a checkbox on a form and when you check the checkbox you need to add an attachment (Mandatory) otherwise not. So how you will accomplish this? It's easy and here are the steps to follow: Create a custom function to check the named attachment is whether having a minimum attachment attached to it or not. Create a rule using that custom function where you have to pass the CSS class name of the attachment as a parameter to that custom function. Follow the section below for detailed implementation: The screen looks like as follows: Now if you check the AttachmentFlag, it’s mandatory to attach attachments. For that follow the following steps:   Step 1:Goto NINTEX Forms -> Se

Applies to: Nintex Workflow for SharePoint 2016 and 2013Note: Nintex Live is known as the Nintex external platform in Nintex for SharePoint 2016. If you are not yet ready to upgrade your installation to the latest product version, you can run a script to get the latest updates for the monitoring service that handles service requests for Nintex Live actions (connector actions in 2016). Before you start2013 only: Run this script if you are using Nintex Workflow version 3.1.6.0 or above. To find your product version, see https://community.nintex.com/docs/DOC-1394.  Upgrade the service that monitors service requests for Nintex

State machines are a wonderful thing to easily control, manage and administrate long running business processes. For those of you who don't know what state machines are and why you should use them, I have put together a post on my personal blog which you can access here. The purpose of this post is not to reiterate any content from my blog but to provide you with a template that I regularly use. Hopefully it provides a common standard for everyone and you agree with the approach taken. PrerequisitesThe following items will be required to make this template work:A status column on the list/library to track the process stage as part of each item The sub-processes should exist on the corresponding library or list. A standard error handling process. This could be implemented as a UDA

Hi, sometimes here on the community someone ask how to set through a workflow a lookup field, so I've decided to write here how to do that..it's very simple!  In your workflow you need to know what is the ID of the elements in the list that's connected through the lookup column.. if your list has a lookup on the following list: ID Title 1 Item1 2 Item2 3 Item3 and you want to set on your item a lookup to Item1, then in your workflow you have to set that field to the corresponding ID

Sharing two pieces of JavaScript getting List Item(s) and User Profiles from Nintex Forms for Office 365. The two JavaScript was tested based on Nintex Forms for Office 365, App Version: NFO 1.2.3.0. Please take note that this code is tested only based on the above mentioned version of Nintex Forms, it might not be optimized in term of performance or simplicity.  Calling Sharepoint Online REST API to query host web's custom list from within Nintex Forms for Office 365 (i.e. App web).var pollSP;  NWF.FormFiller.Events.RegisterAfterReady(function (){      pollSP = setInterval(checkSPLoad, 500);  });        function checkSPLoad(){      if (clientContext){          window.clearInterval(pollSP);            var hostweburl = decodeURIComponent(getQueryStringParameter("SPHostUrl"));          var appweburl = decodeURIComponent(getQueryStringParameter("SPAppWebUrl"));            var layoutsPath = "