News and Guidelines

In the video below, I will walk you through how to build an employee onboarding workflow from start to finish using Nintex Workflow for Office 365. Some of the actions you will see me configure (such as Office 365 Create User, Office 365 Assign License, etc.) are part of the Enterprise Provisioning Pack. Enterprise Provisioning Pack Details Automate the entire process of provisioning, managing and de-commissioning of user accounts, transforming complex onboarding/off-boarding processes into one simple solution. Unify the management of users, mailboxes, custom user-groups, and even access to external systems. Now you can create and manage accounts across Office 365 and Yammer, spin-up or spin-down virtual machines in Amazon and Rackspace, ensuring efficient use of your chosen cloud infrastructure provider. Enterprise Provisioning Pack is available in Nintex Workflow for Office 365, Enterprise Edition or Nintex Complete Edition only.  

 In my dealing with customers, there are some questions and confusions that keep coming up. I thought I'd share them to help others who may have the same query's. Why is Nintex Different?Fully Leverage SPNintex Workflow is built natively on SharePoint using pre-existing SharePoint infrastructure and the Windows Workflow Foundation. The benefit is that you leverage your existing architecture and infrastructure and avoid incurring the costs of implementing, serving, and supporting additional platforms. Install in minutesNintex Workflow installs in minutes. No need to install clunky or outdated add-ons to client machines as required by some other workflow solutions. Design and deploy quicklyWorkflows are designed with no down time. When you create and publish your workflow, Nintex simply picks up the new design when the next instance runs. Unlike options from other vendors who require that every designed workflow must be compiled, packaged, deployed, and activated before they can be used.

I have always wanted Nintex Forms and Workflow for many years now. It's been about 3 months since I was able to purchase the Enterprise Edition and it has changed how I support my customers. Like anything else, learning new apps can be exciting and frustrating. As long as I can remember I said to myself "this would be a good lesson to share..." but I'm always just focusing on my work and always forget to follow through. This time I'll give it my best shot because 'm loving working with Nintex. I want to share with other new users things I find along the way that will help either get over that obstacle they face or bring to light a different approach. I'll be adding items as I progress through my Nintex journey. Nintex WorkflowAction Sets​ Nintex FormsPanels​Hide Individual Ribbon Elements​Date Stamp a Repeating Control (* recently added)    LinksDate and Time Format Strings - Quick Reference Guide - Andrew Glasser (* recently added)Nintex Community Training Space - (must bookmark)Need

In this Article, you will learnHow to set a Calculated Value when the form is loaded How to develop JavaScript to get SharePoint Context Properties and Methods How to wait the loading of a JavaScript Library How you can hide Buttons or Controls based on user permissions In a Nintex Form in O365, even the user has only Read permissions, the Edit Item button is visible.If the user clicks Edit Item, then the Save button is visibleAnd if the user clicks Save, then (s)he receives this messageTo avoid this situation, I propose to hide the Edit Item button if the user is NOT allowed to Edit List Items.For that, we need to know what are the user roles in the context of the List Items when the form is loaded.Nintex Form let's you add JavaScript in the Custom JavaScript section of the Form SettingsHere is to how to develop JavaScript to get SharePoint Context Properties and Methods.The SharePoint Client Context provides features to program against a SharePoint site using JavaScript.It helps to a

Hi All,This is my first blog and I hope it will help the beginners who are working on repeating control Scenario:List A and List B are two Lists with columns ColumnA,ColumnB in repeating control and depending upon some condition you want to create/modify the item in ListBExample:List Asia has  columns  "Country" and "City" in the repeating section hence we can add multiple rows for the values "Country" and "City" .List "Asia" also has "Count" column which is not present in the repeating section Suppose we want to update the  item of list named "Events" which will also have "Country" and "City"  in the repeating section with the values of "Country" and "City" in the repeating section of list Asia. List "Events" will also have "Count" column which will be updated with the value of "Count" of the item in List "Asia"Issue:Repeating control columns appear blank in the list view by default and if we write a simple workflow to create item in ListB by specifying ColumnA and ColumnB it wont wor

This is one big day for Nintex This is a huge deal, if I can say so myself; and as a long time user of Nintex, seeing the evolution that has occurred from Nintex 2007 to the fourth generation of the Workflow product is breathtaking because it truly makes designing workflows so easy. On May 4, 2016, Microsoft rallied its ecosystem and, for the first time in a very long time, showered tons of love and marketing into an event centered on SharePoint® Server. Their well-executed goal was to bring assurance that SharePoint Server was still part of the strategy for Microsoft. If, like me, you were in attendance, you probably walked away with, “okay, time to figure out my SharePoint Server game plan and how much I want to leverage with SharePoint on-premises vs. using SharePoint online with Office 365.” The overall theme was good news for a lot of us who’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly with SharePoint Server since its market debut in 2001. With the 7th version coming out, I’m more conf

Bingham Blalock​ posted a very useful blog about Some Common Misperceptions - Q & A In this post he touched upon a principle around the design (or architecture, if you want to try and convince your boss that your should earn an extra 5k a year) or workflows when it comes to changing a workflow whilst it's running. This prompted me to write about the idea of "micro-workflows" (I made that up, lets see if it sticks). Micro-workflows (as defined by me ) are workflows that perform specific tasks within a process. An example of this was an app I developed with an approval process which required a number of conditions to be queried before deciding which route the approval would take. There were a number of other tasks involved in the process as well, and the complexity led me to break the single workflow down into a number of smaller workflows. Not only does this mean I can make changes to a workflow whilst the "process" is running against the item, it makes making changes to the wor

Alternative for "Copy to SharePoint" in Site workflows  If you have a requirement where you need the "Copy to SharePoint" action on a Site Workflow, you could do the followingCreate a new list named "Schedule Movement" with a column named "Year" and a column named "Month" Then write you workflow (staring on new items) using the "Copy to Sharepoint" Action. Then Schedule a Site Workflow adding a new item on the list "Schedule Movement"

Products: Nintex Forms 2010, Nintex Forms 2013 A question came in about activating Nintex Forms 2010/2013 via PowerShell. It is fairly easy to do assuming you have the FeatureDefinitionID (0cdf436f-61b0-43d2-b250-4360f0353b63). Below you will find an example for how to activate/deactivate the feature via PowerShell. PowerShell Script Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue   Enable-SPFeature -Url http://contoso.com -Identity 0cdf436f-61b0-43d2-b250-4360f0353b63 -Confirm:$false   #Disable-SPFeature -Url http://contoso.com -Identity 0cdf436f-61b0-43d2-b250-4360f0353b63 -Confirm:$false    Note: To deactivate the feature, uncomment the 5th line and comment the 3rd line. Version History and other scripts can be found here: http://alps.codeplex.com

The new user experience for document libraries in O365 is now being pushed out and my tenant recently picked up the change. I love all of the new UI and experience it brings. It has a lot of advantages, but also has further changes to be made. I'm not going to outline every single change here in this post as there are a lot of blogs on the subject already. It is not clear if these changes will make their way to SP 2016, but it should be no surprise when they do. https://blogs.office.com/2016/06/07/modern-document-libraries-in-sharepoint/Office Dev Center - Update on Modern Document Libraries and ExtensibilitySwitch the default for document libraries from new or classic - SharePoint​SharePoint Online get's a new document library experienceNew Experience Sharepoint Online Library - Rapid CircleNew SharePoint Document Library Experience (Content Precedes Design)(Note: some of these written in April are out of date already and features they say were removed were added back in) Ribbon Acces

We are very excited to announce the availability of Nintex Hawkeye, our new, cloud based workflow analytics service!  At Nintex, we know that as you begin to better manage everyday processes with the Nintex Workflow Platform, it adds up to more productivity, a stronger bottom line, happier people, and opportunities for teams to focus on more strategic endeavors. Now, Nintex Hawkeye gives you an unprecedented view into your process portfolio across the entire Nintex workflow platform. What is Nintex Hawkeye?Nintex Hawkeye automatically captures people and process data and helps you define reports, dashboards and analytics to help business and IT decision makers understand important questions like: which processes are automated, what functions do they perform, when and how often do processes run, who’s involved in the process, how effective are they and how might they be improved? It allows you to instrument and measure your automated business processes, enabling you to generate insights

Many of you may recall that back in May of '16 we dropped some certified magic into the on-premisesversion of Nintex Forms in the guise of a Print to PDF function. Print to PDF allows users to, with a single click of a button, "print" a Nintex form to a PDF. This method allow the form to be converted to a PDF, while maintaining its full fidelity, and then be saved to disk (or maybe back into a SharePoint document library) or even printed to paper (the horror)! Naturally, our Office 365 customers began to clamor for this awesome functionality... So, without further ado, I am pleased to announce that the 'dev elves' over here at Nintex have been busy hammering away in their workshop and have just completed adding Print to PDF in Nintex Forms for Office 365!  FeaturesCreate PDF versions of your Nintex Forms with a single click Adjustable page sizes Ability to disable Print to PDF on specific forms Save your PDF form anywhere Designer defined page breaks  Go ahead and open up the Nintex Fo

Today I needed to generate a random number in the simplest way. I found some information about generating a random number with custom UDA actions, but I didn't want to make installations on my server.So I found a good solution and posted it on the Nintex Xchange™​ cool space. You can see the post here >>> Random Number Generation on a workflowThis solution is based using a service in RANDOM.ORG and not only you can generate a simple random number. You will find a lot of uses as the following ones: Free services Games and LotteriesLottery Quick Pick is perhaps the Internet's most popular with over 280 lotteriesKeno Quick Pick for the popular game played in many countriesCoin Flipper will give you heads or tails in many currenciesDice Roller does exactly what it says on the tinPlaying Card Shuffler will draw cards from multiple shuffled decksBirdie Fund Generator will create birdie holes for golf coursesNumbersInteger Generator makes random numbers in configurable intervalsSeque

We recently ran into a request to "archive project sites after the project has been completed" and this started to make me think of how we can automate as much as possible behind the scenes. Before we could do anything, we first had to define what "archive" meant to the end users, site owners, and us (the SharePoint team). After a few conversations, we all landed on the following: An archived site retains current permission structure, but is reduced down to read at the site level. All users will have access to the site, for historical reference, at a read level. The site will be "stamped" with an expiration date, upon which the site will be reviewed and deleted. Any content on the site may need to be migrated to team sites (for operational guides). With these key points in mind, we can begin to really understand how to approach this. I am going to go over the first two steps here, and the others at a later time.I do want to say that this will perform the actions at the top level of the

Hi Nintex Community, With a long Memorial weekend, a short week, a wrong turn (involving serializing the Forms object model) I wasn't able to finish my next XML code sample until late last night. So I will be able to verify, write it up, and post everything by this next Friday. This is a small application that generates valid form XML with a limited subset of controls. I plan on including some common Word and HTML form controls: single and multi-line text box, list box, a check box, choice box, and in Nintex Form parlance, a label control. The application will take a tiny XML file that lists the controls, control-specific values (such as label text), control dimensions, and generates form XML. I can see this process being re-purposed to create a batch conversation process for HTML forms, or converting Microsoft Word forms (in the open office format), or Adobe Acrobat forms.     In addition, I'll also publish a general reference for back-end attributes for each of the standard forms con

You can create a Nintex Forms XML with an application and upload the file to a SharePoint list. The Nintex Forms On Premises 2013 SDK contains a code sample of an application that will take a stripped down XML description of a form and create a Nintex Form. In this post, I'll walk through my steps in creating, uploading, and then binding my the form input fields to a SharePoint 2013 list using the Simple Form Builder (GenerateFormXML).Table of Contents  Sketch the form elementsFirst, I sketch out the parts of my form. In this case it is a contact form that lists a club for each contact: Form title: Contact Information FormFirst NameLast NameCityStateZipClubFootball Club Fencing Club Chess Club Sewing ClubFrom working with Nintex Forms, I know the desktop layout is 700 pixels wide. I also know that the each input field such as a text area will also have a corresponding label control. My controls are going to be 50 pixels wide. The layout routine of the application follows a similar logi

Hi Nintex Community, Based on a number of requests and feedback, I’m going to pause direct work on the Nintex Forms portion of the SDK in to update topics for the Nintex Workflow and Forms 0365 API documentation and expanding the narratives in the Workflow 2013 SDK on creating a custom workflow action. I look forward to posting a reference to the back end elements of Nintex Forms controls when that work is complete, and then getting into the JavaScript reference and some JS snippets. Stay tuned for some interesting new material coming soon. Cheers,Matt

As named, if you would like to include a high level "process flow diagram" on a form, here is my sharing on direction and quick start to do that. The concept and requirement I got here is a high level process state diagram of the document/process flow, showing Past, Current, and Future state of the business process on the form. The diagram below shows the sample outcomes of the form on Office 365 with a Process Flow/State Diagram in the top banner of the form. The solution is accomplished by flowchart.js Javascript Library which is based on Raphaël—JavaScript Library​. It draws the "Process Flow Diagram" on the fly when the Form is open for viewing or editing. The data of the diagram is saved as "Multiple lines of text" column of the Sharepoint list, as such it could be updated by Nintex workflow action(s) to change the state of the flowchart when needed. I have named my "Multiple lines of text" in my example as "WorkflowStatus", which is linked to Nintex Form's "Multi line textbox" as

Know your process"Know your process”, this seems like a simple, straightforward statement, but I found that many users just do not know it as well as they should. I wanted to share my thoughts, findings, and approaches on how I tackle this within my own company and hope to hear about how you, as a workflow developer or form guru, approach your customers. Initial ideaWe all have been in those meetings where someone says "this would be a good candidate for a SharePoint workflow and/or form", and dread the next steps (or you get giddy and excited over a new chance to prove your skills...I geek out way too much!). The flood of a million questions starts to pour in: Why SharePoint? Are we replacing something existing? Is the current process broken? Who owns this? And so on. For me, I take this time to gather my own information. I pour over the current process as an end user and see what the experience is TODAY, and take notes on its strengths and weaknesses. With this in hand, I can hold an

Hi Nintex Community, Today's SDK update finishes the XML Reference with an inventory of the formcontrolproperty element containing the properties of each of the Nintex controls. I'm still working on the next XML code sample which is an application that will generate valid form XML from scratch using a limited subset of controls. This could be used in creating a conversion process for HTML forms or forms in another application such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat.     Earlier today I posted a walk through illustrating my own process for constructing XPath queries and then using the sample to update and load the form XML. Next week, I'll post the next XML code sample and also a general reference for back end attributes for each of the forms controls.     I look forward to hearing more more of your feedback, and let me know what else I should be thinking about in relation to Nintex Forms. Cheers!Matt

These steps provide an alternate method to share a Collection variable across multiple workflows, should the Store/Retrieve method not suit. In this example I have 2 list workflows where Workflow1 creates the Collection variable and Workflow2 continues to use the Collection variable.   STEP 1: In Workflow1 use an Update Item action to copy the Collection variable called varCOLString to a Multi-Line Text column called tString.  Example: Based on our collection variable the text in our tString column might look like this: 1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;   STEP 2: In Workflow2 use a Set Variable action to copy the tString column to a Multi-Line Text variable called varMLTString.   STEP 3: Use a Build String action to count the number of characters in varMLTString and store this in a Text variable called varTXTLastChar.  Text: fn-Length({WorkflowVariable:varMLTString})  Example: Based on the string 1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9; the result in varTXTLastChar will be 18.    STEP 4: Use a Math Operation action to s

I was asked this question by Daniel Mueller​ and thought it was worth sharing I have a string stored in a variable looking like this: name, email, usernameI'm using the regular expression to split the string and storing the result in a collection variable (lets name it collection).So from my understanding it should look like this now:collection[0] = namecollection[1] = emailcollection[2] = username So I only want to use the second variable (email) in that collection and put it into an email field for example how do I do that?From my understanding there must be something like this: ID1 collection but I dont know how to extract that. Isn't the collection an array of variables? I read the whole guide of "how to use a collection" but this didnt answer my question. The Collection Operation action allows you to interact with a Collection Variable and specifically the Get operation allows you to access a specific index of that collection. In Daniel Mueller​ case the second index. If the secon