News and Guidelines

One of my developers recently contacted me about long term delegation not functioning properly. Because we have multiple clients each with their own URL (host named site collections) we could not use the our of the box people picker provided with delegation and had to build our own form that present a To and From drop down of users in a list. The list is updated each morning from the AD OU of that client. When trying to do a long term delegation the user would get an email with the following message:  Users were using the feature but long term delegation wasn't happening. Current tasks were being delegated fine for all sites. Our users do not have admin rights, and in fact they have pretty limited permissions on their sites. Just enough to get work done. So here's what we found out and how we resolved this problem. First, we discovered that delegation uses both the clients Nintex content database and the Nintex Configuration database depending on how delegation was being done. For exis

There is a known licensing schema oddity when upgrading from Forms Standard to Forms Enterprise, that could cause issues for a few customers running older versions of our Forms product.  If you are running Nintex Forms Version 1.9 or less, for SharePoint 2010, or version 2.7 for SharePoint 2013, then you will need to upgrade your environment first, to the latest build of Forms, using a Standard Forms license in the environment, then then import your Forms Enterprise license. Everything moving forward will then work as expected. 

For those that want to activate the new Document Generation feature in your SharePoint environment, here is a quick video on how to get everything configured in your SharePoint Central Administration: Video Link : 1328  Check out Chris' blog post for an overview of the new Document Generation feature here:  As a reminder, you'll need to be running either Nintex for SharePoint 2013, or Nintex for SharePoint 2016 to use the Document Generation action, and you will need to be on at least build 3.2.0.0 or 4.1.0.0 respectively to be able to add the action to your workflows. This is an amazing new feature for Nintex Workflow, and I can't wait to start working with it myself!

Greetings!With the new year, we're excited to announce that with the latest release, designers are able to transport workflows between and within tenants through the export and import feature. Since General Availability, partners and customers have told us they want to:Finish in other tenancies: Build the majority of the workflow design within one tenancy and finish the workflow design within another tenancy. Build for reuse: Create a basic workflow design containing common parts used in most workflows. Share workflow designs: Transfer workflows between designers (within or between tenancies). With export and import, we've implemented a token key based approach to sharing workflows between Nintex Workflow Cloud tenancies. What are the mechanics of exporting and importing a workflow?On exporting workflows:Only published workflows can be exported. A unique import key is generated on request. The key has a validity of 72 hours / 3 days from the moment of generation. This key can then be s

One of the skills every Nintex workflow designer has to learn is how to debug a workflow.  As Andrew Glasser‌ has pointed out in his post Tips on Debugging Workflows, the most common way to do this is to Log information to the History List.  In addition to this there are also times that I will use the Send Notification action to email myself some information at a certain point in the workflow.  In both cases however, these are typically only actions you want to take when developing/debugging a workflow, and don't need them once it's up and running in production.  So what's the best way to turn off these actions once you're ready to publish your workflow? The ProblemThe most straight forward way is to go through your workflow before you publish it and either disable or delete these actions.  However depending on how many actions you have, this could be very time consuming.  Plus, if you ever needed to debug something in the future, you'd need to edit the workflow and turn them all back

Nintex is by far the best workflow system in SharePoint 2013; but I’d like to suggest some things that would make it more world-class—best-in-breed for workflows. I have outlined the shortcomings of both SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio Workflows in an earlier article. My focus in this piece is how to improve on the good.  Below are four areas that could make a difference in enterprise capability:A Better Functions Library More Robust and Intuitive String Tools A “For Loop” with A Counter to control loops An Action Control to Split Individual Persons from Group Fields Better Functions Library My programming career stretches back 40 years, starting in 1977. Some of my first job assignments were calculating date fields.  I can’t believe I’m still doing date functions. When I needed a Julian Date function in my Nintex Workflow, I had to “roll my own”: Anyone know an easy way to calculate Julian Days in a Workflow The algorithm was not complex, but I had to spend productive time doing

When clicking Save or Publish on a workflow you may get an error message that reads: soap:ServerServer was unable to process request ---> The ConnectionString property has not been initialized.  The reason for this error, or one of them anyway, is that there is no Nintex Content Database defined for the site. I create my sites with PowerShell and very rarely will the script complete but no DB will be created. So when I got a message from my developer that there was an issue I was perplexed. The solution for this is to simply go and create the DB in Central Administration and associate the site. If you (or if you are an administrator and one of your workflow developers is doing all this) you may get the following error reported instead of the one above:   This will happen if you attempt to republish after the initial error. The reason is that a directory is created with your workflow name as the title at <your site url>/NintexWorkflows and it will be empty. To resolve this simp

This topic came up in a question asked by Sean Docherty (Ability to cancel a workflow) and I wanted to share some of the solutions that were discussed within in a bit more detail. More specifically, I want to highlight that there are multiple ways of doing the same thing, as pointed out by our own Cassy Freeman‌. The AskProvide users the ability to cancel a request and in-turn, terminate the workflow and any outstanding tasks. SolutionsApproach #1: Create a list level workflow that can be triggered and terminate the workflows and then delete the item.Approach #2: Create a site level workflow that can be called to terminate the workflows and delete the item in any list.Already we can see the differences, but each will provide us with the same end result. So let’s step through them both. Approach #1: List WorkflowFor this approach we can simply create a new workflow on the list (we will call it Delete Me). Within the workflow there are two actions; Terminate workflow and Delete item. In

Workflows are a way to get repetitive tasks done on SharePoint in the background.  Examples are Approval Workflows for a document, Task Completion Workflows where different steps require different processing, and Scheduled Reminders for work actions or events. Over my nine years of SharePoint, the most common workflows have been a few standard SharePoint Out-of-the-Box Workflows, SharePoint Designer Workflows, Visual Studio Workflows and of late, Nintex Workflows. Out-of-the-Box Workflows have never been flexible enough to adjust for even minor changes. Invariably, you need additional fields or a slightly altered logic flow to accommodate a business circumstance.  They are for the most part immutable. One of the major drawbacks of SharePoint Designer Workflows has been accessing to SharePoint Designer itself. Most installations have very restricted access to SharePoint Designer because the installation, itself, can be damaged in SharePoint Designer. The SharePoint Designer Workflow is

If you are looking to disable the Nintex Mobile App option from the drop down as shown below, you can   do the following:Navigate to your SharePoint CA Click on Nintex Forms Management Select Manage Live Mobile Access From this page disable "Disable Live Mobile Access" option Press OKThis will remove Nintex Mobile Apps option from the menu.

With Nintex Forms for SharePoint On Premises 2013, you can download a serialized version of your Nintex Form in XML format. By changing certain element values in the XML you can write an application that can update the text of your labels, switch the target URLs for your images, update CSS, and so on. This is helpful for instance if you need to create a batch update of the Nintex Forms for rebranding your site or to make other modest changes to the content of a large number of forms. In this post, I'm going to look at creating a C# console application to modify a single form. Table of Contents About the XML DOM and XPathIn working with XML, you are going to read the XML document into memory and interact with the XML document object model (DOM). If you are familiar with programming with JavaScript, you are probably already familiar with working with a document object model. Like the HTML DOM, the XML DOM represents the document as tree of nodes. A valid XML document has a root, and then

Nintex Mobile is written using native technologies on iOS, Android, Windows and Windows Phone platform which enables us to provide the best and most performant experience for users. In order to make this happen and provide you with the best experience, we had to do some minor sacrifices on supported HTML formatting and styling. For example we don't support any css tag on any mobile platform. The problem is the each platform may interpret css tags differently which will force you to have inconsistencies on how forms are rendered on each platform. This will result in users having to spend much more time designing and testing a mobile friendly forms. However based on your feedback we have been adding support for some basic HTML formatting in the Label Control. The following table summarizes HTML formatting support in the label control in Nintex Mobile:  HTML Formatting support per platform Bold Italics Underline Font Color Alignment iPhone

Exporting all forms on the siteThis is an useful feature that sometimes saves your work.Currently on Nintex Forms for Office 365 has not the feature to browse your past version and you cannot rollback a change. That 's when this feature ( exporting all forms ) is useful because you can use it daily and have all version saved. You can export all forms on the site to a local .zip file. The file contains a separate .nfp file for each list that includes a form. Each .nfp file includes all configured device layouts for the form.Exporting all forms on the site is useful for backing up forms, copying forms from one server to another, and using forms in other SharePoint lists.To export all forms on the siteNote: You must be a site owner to access this functionality.On the Site Contents page for your site, click the Nintex Forms for Office 365 app. On the upper right of the Nintex Forms for Office 365 page, click Nintex Forms Admin and then select Export All Forms on Site. Follow browser prompt

There are two great features while managing variables in Nintex Workflow for O365. When you are viewing Variables by clicking on the Variable button in the Design ribbon, you will see that the deletion button is Red or Grey. This denotes that the variable can or can't be deleted because it is in use in the workflow.From the image above, I can delete the variables 'colApprover' and 'colApproverValue' but I should not delete 'pgApprover' because it is in use in my workflow. The second feature is that if I click on to delete the in use 'pgApprover' variable, I will be prompted to see where the variable is in use in the workflow. These are two quick and easy ways to manage variables in workflows for Office 365! Note: a good way to make this even easier for yourself is to change the action's labels. Making them unique and meaningful not only help to identify the correct action to manage variables, but also to 'read' the workflow as if it was a Visio diagram. 

The Nintex teams have been at it this last couple of months working hard on some great new initiatives influenced heavily by the requirements of our current user base, and feedback from the InspireX conference that was held in February just past. Firstly, let us quickly chat about FBA support. This new capability will allow customers already using or planning to use FBA to log into SharePoint from Nintex Mobile. The latest version of Nintex Forms (2013 and 2010) is required (2.9.1.0 / 1.11.1.0), and after a small configuration change in Central Admin you will be off and running. Apple iOS and Android will be supported initially this month with Windows Desktop and Phone rolling out in the next release. There are 2 sections inside Manage FBA Mobile Access.Enable Form Based Authentication for Nintex Mobile: Users can enable/disable Nintex Mobile access to Nintex Forms inside SharePoint environment using Form Based Authentication. By default, it will be disable. Set Nintex Mobile Token Exp

This blog goes over the connection account prerequisites and considerations when designing in NWC. All this information was generated and reference on 05/12/2016  and is subject to change without notice from the vendors that provide the end-point service.   BoxThe prerequisite is to use a Business Plan account and it has an API call limit which should be taken into accountwhen designing workflows.   API account limits: StarterBox API Access: 25k actions per month Business Box API Access: 50K actions per month Enterprise Box API Access: 100K actions per month Pricing :Plans and Pricing | Box Referenced from: Box Developer Platform   (Error Code reference)   ----------------------------ShareFileThis connector requires you to allow Nintex Workflow Cloud to access your ShareFile account, you will be prompted when setting up the connector. API account limit: N/A ----------------------------DocuSignThe prerequisite is to enable the account to Send on behalf of functionality. SOBO functionali

I was on a call with a Nintex partner the other day and they had asked me how to hide actions from the workflow status. While I answer questions about complex workflow and forms scenarios for partners and customers alike, I often receive questions about more basic functionality like this as well, especially from non-technical users. So, in an effort to make sure that everyone is empowered to build the most engaging workflows, I will be working on putting together some blog posts about how to do some things that are relatively easy to with Nintex Workflow and Nintex Forms but that can really help you build compelling business automation solutions. In this post I will cover a common question: "When I start a workflow or look at a workflow history, I see this really great picture of what is going on thanks to the Nintex workflow diagram. But, I have processes that I really don't want users to see inside of the workflow or I don't want them to see anything at all. How can I hide this infor

There is now a Nintex Forms 2013 installation walkthrough video up:Video Link : 1332  Similar to the Nintex Workflow 2013 installation video this is meant to act as a complement to the Nintex Forms 2013 Installation Guide (Installing Nintex Workflow 2013 and Nintex Forms 2013) and follows Nintex best practices. The walkthrough goes through the basics of getting Nintex Forms to a place where users can start building custom forms in the SharePoint environment. I will be digging into Forms configurations (specifically with Nintex Live Forms) down the road, so please keep an eye out for an update here once that video is live. If you have any suggestions for future videos please let me know! Hope this is helpful  

Hi Everyone! Wanted to let everyone know that there is now a video walkthrough on how to install Nintex Workflow 2013:Video Link : 1445 Installing Nintex Workflow 2013 This is meant to act as a complement to the Nintex Workflow 2013 Installation Guide (Installing Nintex Workflow 2013 and Nintex Forms 2013 ) and follows Nintex best practices. The video goes through the basics of getting Nintex Workflow to a place where you can start building workflows in the SharePoint environment. I will be digging into all of the Nintex configurations in a later video, so please keep an eye out for that once I have it built.  If you have any suggestions for future videos please let me know! Hope this is helpful

Greetings, We’re excited to announce that the latest release includes the “External start” event within the Nintex connector. Selecting this as the start event of your workflow will provide an authenticated REST URL for the workflow. This URL returns the JSON definition of the workflow (including optional parameters derived from variables) which will start the workflow. What does this allow you to do?Execute a Nintex Workflow Cloud workflow from an existing Nintex Workflow product using the Web request workflow action. Execute a Nintex Workflow Cloud workflow either from within the same tenant or a different tenant using the Call web service workflow action. Execute a Nintex Workflow Cloud workflow from an application that will allow you to make a REST call. How would you go about doing this?1. In the Start event configuration, select the Nintex connector and select the External start event.2. Define your Start event variables. These start event variables will become the input into you

So you've decided to automate a process in Office 365 with Nintex Workflow... excellent decision! But, now that you're done building your workflow you notice when people are out the the office or 'OOF'  (Why is it OOF and not OOO? The Exchange Team @Microsoft explains) it breaks down. So, if you want something else to happen, like assign the task to another individual or kick off another workflow perhaps? Well then, I've got something that will be right up your alley! By using a simple web service call, we can query the EWS (Exchange Web Services) of your Office 365 tenancy to find out if someone's OOF settings are enabled or not as well as the start and end dates for when they'll be out. So first thing's first. We need to call the classic Exchange Online method (outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx) using the Web Request action. Keep in mind that the authorizing user needs to have the appropriate permissions* on the mailbox to perform this query.Here is the body of the EWS call tha

Dear Friends, This is interesting that in our current project we were trying to implement such a mechanism by which a NINTEX workflow can be move forward on clicking a button in the NINTEX list Form instead of submitting the task form explicitly. Basically when we associate a component like ‘Start a task process’ or ‘Assign a Task’ with a list workflow attached with a task list, a new content type is added to that task list. For a complex workflow you can find out that multiple NINTEX content types are added in the SharePoint Task list. So in this case without submitting the task form you need to explicitly update that Task item field attach to that NINTEX content type inside that task list. For this you need to get hold of the task id and the respective field attach for that NINTEX content type. And then update the field of that task item inside that task list by CAML query. Remember since list is proprietary of SharePoint, either you have to update it by REST API or CAML query. Imple

You know when you get asked a question and you respond really quick because, you know.... it makes sense in that microsecond that you spent thinking about it?  Then of course when that person tries to follow you advice, everything goes pear shaped.  Well, that happened to me the other day. The question was around having tabs in your Nintex Form.  Here is a post on tabs in Nintex Forms for Office 365 and here's one for Nintex Forms for SharePoint. The tab pages visibility is controlled by rules on the form.  The request was for having another tab called "All Tabs", which when selected, would show all the tab pages. My first response, was just put in another rule which checks all the tabs...blah blah blah... wow was I way off.  That's why I should have taken my vitamins in the morning  So now to the real solution.  YOU DON'T NEED ANOTHER RULE!!! What you do need, is to tweak the existing rules for each tab.This is the form that we can look at as an example.  Notice there are 3 tabs (Tab1

How many times have you thought to yourself... "Gee... wouldn't it be great if I could quickly and easily collect metadata from users on the web to use in my workflow?"   But, the problem is, getting a form built and then placed outside of your corporate firewall is something that is usually not a quick or easy thing to do. Well, the good news is that it this can in fact be done automatically (which means not only quick but incredibly easy too!) with Nintex Workflow Cloud (NWC)! So, let's walk through how this is done... A workflow designer has the ability to select the Nintex option from the Connector selection inside of the Start event configuration dialog in NWC:  Here, a workflow designer can define variables (to collect the metadata input into our anonymous web form) and upon publishing of the workflow, NWC will go ahead and auto-generate an attractive form and publish it to the cloud. Then you can simply share the link to the form and whenever someone completes this form and the

It’s interesting to see the evolution of Nintex. With Nintex Workflow Cloud, we have connectivity to systems we haven’t connected to in the past with Nintex Workflow. What this does, is expand the variety of processes that can be automated. Not only that, but it also increases the scenarios around what can start a process and how users interact with it.Nintex Workflow Cloud has built in support for Twilio functionality. Now some of may not have heard of Twilio, but it’s cloud communications platform, with API’s they expose to do a variety of things from text messaging, to voice etc.In Nintex Workflow Cloud, we have created a connector to Twilio, so that you can have a workflow start on the receipt of a text message. That definitely expands the range of scenarios. Also, we have a Twilio Sent Message action that will let you reach back out to users via text messages. Now you’re probably wondering, why would you want to send a text message from a workflow? What is the compelling story beh