News and Guidelines

IntroductionNintex for 365 does not currently support versioning for workflows. Importing a workflow on top of a current workflow and publishing with the same name will result in irretrievable loss of the current workflow. Up until now Nintex for 365 has not allowed the importing of a workflow over an existing workflow by blocking publishing under the same name. This however, prevents customers from following their workflow (software) development and release processes and has attracted many votes on the Nintex Uservoice site.Nintex has released a change to the interface for importing that allows the user (with several warnings), to import a workflow on top of an existing workflow and publish under the same name. The possibility of inadvertently over-writing and therefore losing a workflow still exists.Nintex suggests the following process to manage workflow versions in a controlled way that will also allow retrieval of an inadvertently overwritten workflow.SharePoint Document Libraries

My farm is up to 170 Nintex content databases and I have been remiss in cleaning up old workflow data and history. Part of the reason for this is that we have a legal requirement to preserve some workflow data and try as I may I was never able to get a decisive answer to 'Exactly what data needs to be preserved?". Performance has been off lately so I decided to at least trim down the data from the maintenance workflows that we run. These are workflows that load a list from AD or changes the title of a list item. Nothing business critical and nothing that will land me in jail if I delete it .(kidding...I think). You can tell how large your Nintex tables are by opening up SQL Server Management Studio, expanding a Nintex Content DB and highlighting 'Tables'. I'm on SQL Server 2014 but this is in earlier versions as well. Now in the ribbon Select 'Object Explorer Details' or simply hit the 'F7' key. Take a look at your WorkflowProgress and your WorkflowInstance tables. Some of our progress

The Requirement :To implement a department hierarchy structure using Employee information maintained in SharePoint Lists.Solution and Implementation:So rather than implementing a pure jquery solution , I saved myself some time and instead used Nintex runtime functions to retrieve the user profile properties from the user profile (sync to active directory).Please refer my blog-post to see the implementation :Using Nintex and Jquery to create a department hierarchy structure in SharePoint on-premise Final Result Please add in your feedback if any !

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:Language

I recently put together a slide deck to present to the team I am part of to offer understanding of the different ways to manage workflow tasks when offering support to users in the business.  The main driver for this is that we always get calls from users "never receiving" the email notifications sent from Nintex.  My thoughts on whether they are "not received" or more simply "deleted" shall be kept quiet here...  users eh!  Anyway, prompted by a question recently posted on the community I thought it might be a good idea to put the information in one place on here too. Nintex Workflow Web Part - My Workflow TasksThis web part can be added to a page in any site and can be scoped to look at tasks assigned to the logged on user as the site, site collection or farm* level.  This will include tasks assigned to SharePoint groups the user is a member of (only when individual tasks are assigned in the task config in the workflow action).Nintex Workflow Web  Parts – Workflows I’ve StartedThis w

In the following sections we will compare the features of Nintex workflow document generation options. Currently we have the following options available:Update Document Workflow Action. Generate Document (the new document Generation Feature)Update Document Workflow ActionThis workflow action can be used to update values in multiple 'content controls' within a Word document. and you need to set the content controls in the word document using the Developer ribbon. “Content Controls” names in the word document should be matched in the Nintex “Update Document” action, any misspell will result in not filling the control with the right values. Each “Content Control” should be addressed in the action, otherwise it will not be filled.   To add more values to the document, then more “Content Controls” should be added to the document first, then match them with the variables in the action. Tables can be filled with Variable for each cell, and cannot be dynamic Dynamic images are not supported. I

We all know we are here because we work on something that is related to Nintex Workflow or Forms, and the reason we use Nintex Workflow or Forms is because it makes our life easier. Things have changed a lot these days, trending towards the cloud, hybrid environment becoming very common that most of us are working on both on premise platform and at the same time on the cloud. Regardless of which platform you use, you will find Nintex helps. Part 1 of GKK Compressor Industry blog series, I am going to share exactly how I use my hybrid environment to save the efforts for my recent investment - GKK Compressor Industry. GKK Compressor Industry is "Lean Manufacturing" produces world class compressors. Moving towards a Six Sigma company, Simplifying Processes and Reduced Errors falls in its Lean Six Sigma project mission to turn the company into highly effective and efficient company. RFQ (i.e. Request for Quotation) is one of the key Sales and Marketing processes involving its customers. Th

Hi Friends, It has been an amazing August. I got to spend some time with the folks over in the Bellevue office and was fortunate to have enjoyed a bit of sunshine while I was there. Lots of things coming down the release pipe in the coming months. However I want to focus on the now; the 2 releases we did for August culminated in an epic feature roll out. I believe this is one of our biggest release months we have done in the history of Nintex Workflow Cloud. Collapse and expand actions - manage navigating large workflow designs by collapsing and expanding branching and containerized workflow actions. In addition, the collapse and expand state of an action is retained on save and publish. Something to think about - you might want to keep sections collapsed / or placed in "Action sets" to help make the workflow more readable / understandable when a user opens it, rather than being show the entire workflow design at first open. Introduction of the Action set - There’s also support for not

In the support organization, there are frequently customer requests for how to properly refresh Test / Dev Environments with Production data.  The steps below can be used as an example for how to migrate content.  These steps are some basic guidelines around the process for migrating data from a Production Farm to a Test farm, but as all SharePoint farms are different, you may need to adjust these accordingly to meet your specific business needs.  Production Farm StepsBackup Your DatabasesIf you wish to preserve the current workflow history and state, it is recommended that you stop the target Web Application Pool(s) in IIS along with the SharePoint Timer Service in Services.MSC prior to performing backup operationsSharePoint SharePoint Content Databases Nintex Forms Unless this is a straight migration where the old farm is no longer being used, it is recommended you generate a new database / new live ID for the farm, meaning that the Live / Mobile forms stored in the Nintex Forms dat

Related links Did You Know: The Magnificent Flexi Task – BehaviorDid You Know: The Magnificent Flexi Task – Reminders and Escalation Did You Know: The Magnificent Flexi Task – Communication Methods  The Flexi task is one of the most popular workflow actions and we are eagerly awaiting its arrival in the o365 version.  For something so powerful, how much of it do you really know?  How many of the options have you used? Today I want to concentrate on the behaviour section: What do these options actually mean? Like most of you, I suspect we accept the default behaviour “First response applies” and carry on happily knowing that a single person is going to make a decision on an action and their decision is final.  Things, however, start to get a little trickier when multiple people are involved.Let’s start by way of an example: We have a situation where the flexi task is has two outcomes (Approve and Reject) and it is sent to two people.  In order to continue, we want both of these people t

In the recent request for community members to name their favourite workflow action, I put forward the "Copy To SharePoint" action, this was down simply to the element of surprise, that it helped me do exactly what I wanted to, easily, with no hacking, or fudging, as we call it. I had a requirement for attachments in an event calendar to be treated like true SharePoint managed documents when uploaded by users. Step 1We've created an OOTB calendar. We've also created a document library called "Event Resources" and in that library we've added some Site columns, the ones that will contain metadata in the event calendar that we want to associate with the document. The meatdata is important because we will use it later to give the users a nice way of viewing the documents. Step 2We will create a workflow that will run on Create or Modfied and the first action we will insert is "Copy to SharePoint", this action will basically try to copy the event item to a document library, but it's actuall

Workflow-veterans know: when you publish a new list-workflow to SharePoint a new column is added to the list, which show the current status of the workflow. Typically, these statuses are: in progress, completed, error and canceled.There is a corresponding workflow-action, which allows to write in any custom status, for example if an item has been approved or needs additional review. This allows a more fine grained insight of the current status of a workflow.Starting with SharePoint 2013 Microsoft introduced the Windows Azure Workflow infrastructure in addition to the existing workflow engine from the .Net Framework. This new engine is totally independed of SharePoint (and is therefore a separate setup as well).If you publish a new WAW-workflow this will also create a new status-column, but this column will actually be left blank (at first), when a new instance is started.Because SharePoint Designer adds a Stage action to the workflow, this stage-name will be used as the workflow status

Configurations lists within a workflow process can make any workflow more dynamic in nature. It allows workflows to always have the latest information to make correct decisions. They can also effect workflow that are in-flight, or already started. We have been using this practice for many years and have continued to use them in O365. I came across a scenario while using configuration lists to gather the current person who should approve a task. Over time, this approver can change for various reasons. In order to prevent continual updates being made to a workflow to simply change who to assign a task to, a config list was put in place. In this article, I will show how to create a config list for a workflow, and how to gather a person value using two methods.  Configuration ListMost config lists are simple custom lists. From Site Contents you can select new to create a list if in Modern UI, use the gear menu and click "Add an app" then choose custom list, or in classic view go to Site Co

I'm posting this as an alternative to another article posted here on removing orphaned and duplicate ECB menu Items. That one doesn't work for me since I have around 160 sites to manage with more on the way. We have a real problem with these buggers since we have to update our workflows more frequently than perhaps the normal workflow and we end up with alot of orphans in our menus. It's important to know at the start that we do not change the names of our workflows each time we publish a new version of the workflow. I doubt many places do but thought I'd mention that. If you are doing that this script won't work for you as written. The script can be modified to run against every site in a farm or on a single list which is what I was after and explains why I'm not using LINQ or something more efficient. In this case ease of maintenance trumps efficiency and though it's loopy the script runs very quickly. While running this kind of thing for every site in the farm in one call is temptin

I have been working with Nintex workflows for a long time now and have only just started using this action.  It is so simple but so powerful and has saved me doing this painful step in a lot of my workflows: ScenarioI have a workflow that runs for all types of users entered into a list.  Most of the workflow is relevant to all types of users but there are some things that I would like to be done only if the user type is Employee.  Yes, I could use a Run If action, but I am using this fairly simple scenario to explain the filter action. The Filter ActionAs opposed to a Set a condition action where only one branch is executed, or a Run if action where the contents are run only on a condition being met, this action literally only executes the actions below it if the condition is met, otherwise the workflow is ended.  No need to add actions to a Run if container, or to add actions to one branch in a Set a condition action and an "End workflow" action in the other!Action ConfigurationVery

Many of you, like me, will have seen and used this feature many times.  What does it do?  Well it allows you to add a shortcut to your start workflow page directly on the item context menu.These are the settings you need on workflow settings: This then, when the workflow is published, displays as such on the item context menu: Now I have been using this awesome feature for many years and then Paul Crawford‌ asked me why he seemed to be limited to only adding four workflows to the menu?!  I have never needed to add this many before so wasn't aware of any limitation... I won't pretend I solved it, because I didn't, but he came up with a quick fix that I wanted to blog about so that neither of us forgot this simple trick: Rather than using Menu item position: 0, 1, 2, 3, etcHave Menu item position: 100, 101, 102, 103, etc

Office 365 with SharePoint Online has excellent custom form and workflow options, that is a known fact.Those who love InfoPath Designer 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 can do A LOT of customized workflows, with multiple approval paths, parallel approvals, conditional task and anything else you can think of or not, with the OOTB actions and steps in SharePoint Designer 2013. I love InfoPath Designer and I love SharePoint designer, there is no secondary thought about that. But what you love need not always be what is loved by all. So in comes Nintex. My first time with Nintex Form and Nintex Workflow.Straight forward request this time.There is a Sofware Request form, when a user submits request -> Approver A->Approves->Approver B->Approves->Approver A again for further actions.Creating the custom sharepoint list with the identified fields is nothing new. Once the list is created with your columns(lookups, person/group, multiline textbox, datetime etc.,) Look at your List

With the new Nintex Document Generation action in Nintex for Office 365, it is now possible to create an Excel Report from Sharepoint List items. With the output options of either its original format (i.e. Excel file in this case) or PDF in the defined destination of Sharepoint folder, you can then automate the generated report document for approval as usual in Nintex Workflow. In the following diagram, I have my Expense home page consists of Expense Items (i.e. Customer List) and Create Expense Report query form. Create Expense Report Query form is a simple form one can use to specify report filter criterial (i.e. Title, Start Date and End Date, etc. of the items to be included in the excel report to be generated). The Create Expense Report query form is nothing but just another custom list to trigger a Document Generation workflow (i.e. "Process Expense Report - Demo" workflow in this case) to export the filtered list items to an Excel document with the newly available Document Gener

In my last post I already talked about how I migrated my Nintex for Office365 tenant to Europe and how I faced the challenge to find all the sites where the Nintex Workflow for Office365 app has been activated in order to re-publish my workflows. PowerShell to the rescue!It was obvious, that only PowerShell could help in this challenge. So let's walk through this step-by-step. At first we need to find all the sites where the Nintex Workflow App has been activated.$userName = "[username]@[mydomain.fqdn]"$siteColUrl = "https://[tenant].sharepoint.com/sites/[mysite]"Add-Type -Path "d:Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"Add-Type -Path "d:Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"$cred = Get-Credential -UserName $userName -Message "Enter SPO credentials"$spoCred = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials ($cred.UserName, $cred.Password)$ctx = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($siteColUrl)$ctx.Credentials = $spoCred$web = $ctx.Web$ctx.Load($web)$addInIn

When designing a Nintex form, it's common that there is a part of the form that should only display to certain users. These sections are usually contained in their own panels within the form. It could be IT administrative details, financial information, or actions for HR to complete. In Nintex On Premises, it is easy to hide this panel based on the current user by using a rule and the inline function fn-IsMemberOfGroup. Unfortunately, that function is not available yet in Nintex Forms for Office 365.This function is available in O365 Forms, it just does not appear in the Runtime Function list. If you manually type it in, it will work. Here is a list of all supported inline functions. To accomplish this task, I created a hidden text field called "txt_HiddenIsUserAnAdmin" in the form and assigned it the JavaScript variable named jsvar_HiddenIsUserAnAdmin. I then created a rule on the panel that would hide it whenever txt_HiddenIsUserAnAdmin does not equal "Yes". To obtain the groups that

Hi Friends! July has been a busy month here at Nintex Workflow Cloud (and the whole of Nintex). I want to take the opportunity to highlight some of the key features and capabilities released and why you might want to use them. Express approval support for task escalation - you now have the ability to escalate the task you have assigned or choose to complete the tasks by setting it to the default outcome after the original task has not been responded to timely manner (you can set the time of escalation of course). Disabling (and enabling) actions in the designer - as a designer you'll be able to disable both unconfigured and configured workflow actions. Very handy when you're progressively designing your workflow or troubleshooting / testing your workflow. If you're asking "Can I publish a workflow with disabled unconfigured action(s)?", Yes! You absolutely can. So if you're stubbing out your workflow and want to progressively build it out - you can most certainly do that. When you're r

I came upon a stumbling block a few days ago during an effort to re-engineer some old InfoPath forms into Nintex for O365 forms. The culprit was the Choice Field Control. It does NOT work the same in both applications. Initial Control DisplayI got this when I dragged and dropped the choice control onto the Nintex Form for O365 canvas - and was initially stumped. Where are my choices?? Looking at the control's properties, I knew it had more than one choice. So, I figured that it must be a sizing thing - and I was correct. I was able to see all of the choices by re-sizing the boundaries of the control. Vertical vs. Horizontal LayoutThat's great, but I wanted the layout of the choices to be horizontal, not vertical. That was easy in InfoPath. Each option was separated by a carriage return. Simply deleting the carriage returns between choices produced a horizontal line of choices. Unfortunately that's NOT the case with Nintex forms. In Nintex, you have to do a few more steps. On the form c

Updated: Aug. 2, 2017  Please note that Scheduled workflows feature has been released as of July 2017. Please see  for more details on this fix.As many of you are aware our product teams are working hard in extending the capabilities of Nintex Workflow for Office 365. Some features might currently be missing but will certainly make it to the product soon. In the meanwhile, most of the features you might miss can still be implemented, simply by thinking a bit outside the box.One of these features is scheduled workflows. In this post I will show you how you can use existing workflow actions, SharePoint features and quite simple logic to allow workflows to run on a schedule power users can easily maintain themselves. What do we need?I provided the templates for the following as part of this post. Feel free to download and use them. A SharePoint ListThe list will contain one item per workflow you want to schedule. Each item will represent one scheduled workflow and consist of the following

I'm very excited to see the new Scheduling features for O365 Workflows. As first read from Tee Up Your Work - Scheduled Workflows Are Available for Office 365!‌ we learned the basics of scheduling site workflows. So I ran a few site workflows myself and could not find the history that they executed. My first test workflow would send me an email, since I received the email I knew it was working. But there was no evidence. Typically, I would go to Site Contents from the suite menu gear, then click on Site Workflows.I then see my normal screen of available site workflows to run, and which are still running or completed. Notice in this view I don't see anything in the completed section, yet I had the Email Site Workflow scheduled to run and it executed.What I found was, by clicking on Show All Workflows, I then see the completed scheduled workflows. Clicking on the workflow name will then display the workflow history associated.  The reason this was required is that the workflow executed u

Question:I absolutely love the option of creating ‘pages’ in a form, which is an option in InfoPath. I start with the first page to ask the user a question. Depending on the selection they make, it will flip to a new page to ask additional questions or asks the user to fill in information. Once complete, they click submit and it flips to the final page saying thank you and provides any additional information.I also like the ability to create new pages based on what the user is doing, i.e. new item or edit item. If it is a new item, I start with Page 1. If I am editing an item, it starts with Page 8, which has all the information in read only format. Simple and easy to work with.However, the concept of ‘pages’ in Forms does not exist. It looks like I have to add ‘sections’, and then determine which one should be active based on a ‘value’. That does not make any sense to me. Why is such a simple concept so difficult to implement in Forms? Answer:  There are a few ways that this can be im