News and Guidelines

Hi Nintex Community,I'm a new(ish) programmer/writer at Nintex. Well, I'm not so new, but I still have bubble wrap clinging to my legs. I'm working with Dennis Kennedy to write developer-focused content and code samples. My focus is everything Forms. I'll be posting new material for Nintex Forms On Premises 2013 over the next month or so. Much like the work Dennis did, I'll be regularly expanding the material in the Forms portion of the SDK.To introduce myself, I've been a technical writer for the last fifteen years. I've documented ultrasound machines, the Microsoft Kinect SDK, the back end infrastructure of eCommerce sites, and the web services that connect wrist bands worn at a certain popular park to an array of services that provide everything from banking and to access to hotel room accommodations. I'm from the Pacific Northwest in North America, and have been lost in the woods more than a few times. I also have a sick fascinat

For two different projects this week, i have faced the same case about document generation.The goal wass to generate a document using the document generation feature including a lot of variables. Obviously the first thought for my customer was to one workflow variable per variable he wanted to display in the document (Because the Document generation feature can only display workflow variables). Obviously he had 20 "set variables value" actions before his document generation that were only used for that! The best approach, in fact, is to create a dictionnary, and to set each variables as an entry:You only consume one action "generate dictionnary" The designe is much simpler! What happens when you are back to Word? Your dictionnary variable will appear as a normal variable, and when you select it, you will have to e

I had a requirement whereby no users would have access to input into a list in SharePoint, but that my workflow needed to create an item in it.  Perfect for using a web service call with a service account I thought!I created a service account and added the credentials into my workflow constants for the site.To start with in my workflow I created a build string action to create the XML to pass into the web service call:Originally I only needed to add text fields in to the list, so I hooked up my web service call as follows:Call web service action URL = Web URL/_vti_bin/lists.asmx Username and password = managed credentials input earlier of the service account web method = UpdateListItems Editor mode = SOAP builder listName (string) = Requests updates (xml) = vMTextBatchXML (the XML we created earlier)

For any form or workflow logic around user filtering and person or group value matching you will eventually run into working with the SharePoint claim. The actual value of the user within SharePoint. So as I respond to those posts I came across two blogs that explain what the formatting actually means for the claims and why i:0#.w|domainuser is used. I hadn't seen these before and I thought it to be helpful to post the explanation here to help others. Joe Davies​Wictor Wilen​ SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2010 display identity claims with the following encoding format:<IdentityClaim>:0<ClaimType><ClaimV

In Nintex Workflow for Office 365, use dictionary variables for the “Field names” and “Field values” selections shown in the action configuration settings dialog box for DocuSign Populate Template.   When building dictionaries for names and values, key each dictionary identically; that is, use the key of the name (first dictionary) for the corresponding key of the value (second dictionary). In the example dictionaries below, the key “(0)” is used for both “Date Applicable” (FieldNames dictionary) and {Current Item:Modified}‍ (FieldValues dictionary). 

All hail the Manager functionality in Nintex Workflow for Office 365.  As with most of you, you're probably excited as I am about this little nugget.  Although there was a work around, using the Query User Profile action, this release now gives us 3 workflow context properties about the initiators manager, that will make life so much easier.  the Query User Profile is still useful, in that you can get the manager of other users, but if you want to deal with the initiators manager, which is most workflows, then these properties are perfect. Here are the three properties:Manager login nameManager display nameManager email address First of all, in order to get this to work, you will need to request your system administrator to grant Nintex Workflow access to the User Profiles (this only needs to be done once per site, then it'll be in effect for all workflows created on the site thereafter -

I had a co-worker ask if it was possible to restrict list file attachments to just PDF files. After a quick review of the attachment settings in Nintex Forms Designer O365 I was pleased to report the answer as Yes, and so much more! Here is what I discovered about the Nintex Forms file attachment validation settings. Below are the default settings of the attachment validation section. Minimum AttachmentsUse the Minimum attachments field to specify whether a file attachment is required or not. A value of 0 in the field indicates that file attachments are not required. A value of 1 or more indicates that an attachment is required. Note: Nintex Forms will automatically add the red asterisk (*) to the label when the value of the Minimum attachm

The principle of Continuity states once the eye begins to follow something, it will continue traveling in that direction until it encounters another object.A good example is a line with an arrow at the end of it. The symbol indicates that the user should follow the line and see where the arrow is pointing. The pointing finger also provides the same functionality. See Figure 1 below.Figure 1: Symbols to direct the user's eye toward an object. The Grid LayoutOne of the most common examples of continuity in form design is the grid layout. Grids are most useful in bringing order to a layout, but also useful in indicating context. (Source: Andy Rutlage – Gestalt Principles). Question:  What are you left with when you open a form in Nintex Form designer and clear all of its contents?Answer: A grid.

I have a customer that wanted to use a Nintex form on his mobile device(s) to capture and annotate photos and then add them to a SharePoint list along with information about the photos such as location taken, notes, etc. The customer owns a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge phone and a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10. So, I created a Nintex form that accepts attachments and published it to the Desktop layout, the Nintex Mobile Phone layout, and the Nintex Mobile Tablet layout. I then downloaded and installed the Nintex Mobile App on a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 tablet to test. After a bit of configuring, I was able to access the mobile form from both devices. During testing I was disappointed to discover that the attachment functionality works differently on each device. Nintex Mobile Phone LayoutThe attachment functionality on the Nintex Mobile Phone app worked exactly as I was hoping.

This is the third post in my series about the Gestalt Principles as relates to form design. In this post I talk about the Gestalt Principle of Similarity. Of all the Gestalt principles, the principle of similarity is probably the easiest to understand. It states that elements within an assortment of objects are perceptually grouped together if they are similar to each other. To put it in simpler terms, things that are similar are perceived to be more related than those that are dissimilar. Think Twins!!I am an identical twin, so I completely understand this principle as I have been living it all my life. The most memorable question ever asked of my brother and me was “Are you all twins or brothers?” Our answer was always “Yes.” As Figure 1 shows, similarity can occur in the form of size, color, shape, shading or other qualities.

Better to use a "for each" loop when Possible. You might be thinking that you need to use a Loop because you're not certain of the number of executions.  You may have a better idea than you think of the number of executions something will take . I will present an example of a Parent/Child Process that utilizes a State Machine to illustrate this in another article. After some bad examples of Safe Looping Executions times, I determined there had to be a better way.  In a large facility, I wouldn't want to disable Safe Looping because Nintex will be used by a large range of users with different skill levels.  In short, I want the safety provision provided by Safe Looping for the general user population. Infinite Loops can bring a machine to its knees. I began playing with the "for each" loop for a particular application that I had of creating 30 list records. Since I knew I needed to loop 30 times, I added 30 Numbers to a dummy list.  (The list

I recently posted about the Nintex Workflow DocuSign Connector. The post was targeted at using document templates that live at DocuSign, where Nintex Workflow passes in details to fill in fields in the template, before the document is sent to a user for signing. In some cases, you may already have documents that require signing.  These documents don't live at DocuSign, but instead, live in a Document Library in SharePoint.  In this situation, how would you build a workflow that makes it easy to send out the document for signing?  This is topic of this post.  Adhoc Document Signing.  The ability to select a document, start a workflow on it, and send it to a user to get signed. I‌ntroducing the DocuSign Send Document Action Rather than using the DocuSign Populate Template action, here we will focus on just th

Hi Folks, Are you a veteran (or active duty)?  Want some top notch free online IT training?Lynda.com, a LinkedIn company, is a leading online learning company that helps anyone learn business, software, technology and creative skills to achieve personal and professional goals. I personally have used Lynda.com for years and it is some of the best training content I have ever found. If you are a veteran, Lynda.com is offering 1 YEAR of free access to their library. It is an enormous catalog of training content. This is an amazing offer and I hope that many folks here at Nintex Connect take advantage of it.To get access, go to the following link: https://veterans.linkedin.com/These folks have great SharePoint training in their library. If you are self taught, this is a great opportunity to fill in any knowledge holes!

Found this picture I took at InspireX and shared with my team and wanted to share it with you! I recently started to expand our training to involve our Business Analysts so that they can assist in getting other areas on board with Nintex. I use this image (and phrase) throughout as it drives home the idea that Nintex does not require you to be a technical savant and code solutions.  It empowers users to see and hear this as it removes the notions that it is too complex or difficult to do themselves, and once they see how easy it is to demo, that is when I see all the gears starting to move about their ideas and what they want to automate!  So what else do you guys use in your trainings? I am putting together a training packet and will most likely share it once I have it completed to get some feedback!

1. March Mission - Scavenger Hunt!https://community.nintex.com/message/33821#comment-33821https://community.nintex.com/message/33805#comment-33805 2. Mohamed Gathoo, Eric Rhodes, Mike M, Vadim Tabakman, Palesa Sikwane, Andrew Beals,

This is the second post in my series about the Gestalt Principles as relates to form design. The introductory post can be found here​. In this post I talk about the Gestalt Principle of Proximity. Proximity is all about whitespace - the area of blank canvas between objects. To me, whitespace is one of the most important elements of good form design, as the good use of whitespace makes a form look clean and easy to use. Principle of ProximityThe principle of Proximity states that when an individual perceives an assortment of objects they perceive objects that are close to each other as forming a group. In Figure 1 below, the stars on the left are grouped closer together horizontally, so we tend to first see them grouped as rows. While the stars on the right are closer together vertically,

Tasks don’t care if you have to use five products to accomplish them. It’s not their job to care. It’s their job to stare at you until you’re done with them. And so many of the tasks we do — the majority, easily — require us to bounce from one piece of software to another before we’re done with them. Have you seen the Mike Fitzmaurice 's article on the Workflow magazine ? Download the pdf version >>> Workflow Magazine March 2016

Over the last 6 or so months a lot has happened in the Nintex Mobile Enterprise space. Now whether you own Nintex Forms Enterprise or you have usage rights to Nintex Mobile Enterprise, we have made App building really easy. Where a bit more thought comes into it, is the deployment piece.If you were lucky enough to get along to the session at InspireX byTim Walwyn and yours truly, Tim went into a bit of detail on how to deploy Nintex Mobile using Intune while I spoke briefly on how you can build your app, and send out an email to your users to install from. Well, as I partied up in Las Vegas the team in Melbourne has been hard at it, building out more functionality to make deploying the apps as easy as it is to build them. So with that lets take a look at what is now available. If you aren't using an MDM, you can use the built in App deployment options. Firstly you wa

Recently I had a project that required data collected via Nintex Mobile and stored in a SharePoint list to be pushed to an on-premise ArcGIS geodatabase for use in  mapping services. It turns out it is possible to add features to a web map's Feature Service via a Nintex Workflow's Web Request control POST method. However, the documentation and procedure for setting it up are difficult if not impossible to find, vary by ArcGIS server version, and do not pertain to Nintex's specific needs, so I thought I'd write this solution up to share and hopefully make this process easier for other developers. After hours of coming up with generic unspecified 500 and 401 errors, the solution ended up being a problem of URL and post body syntax. I figured it out  working in conjunction with an ESRI developer. It is simple to implement, and works like a charm. I must also give credit to Vadim Tabakman's blog post

Nintex Workflow allows integration with external systems in many ways, it could be using Call Web Service action, Execute SQL action, Query BCS, Nintex connector actions, etc. Nintex Connector actions (e.g. Salesforce or Dynamics CRM actions) when put in a workflow, allows the workflow designer to not have to think about how to talk to the external system. The ChallengesWhat do I mean by "not have to think about how to talk to the external system"? Let us take a look at if the Execute SQL action is to be used for the purpose, the workflow designer will need to know how to define connection string and SQL Query in order to use the Execute SQL action. That required the knowledge on Database Server source, Database, Table, Columns, etc. to be queried. As these are lo

Products: Nintex Workflow 2013, Nintex Workflow 2010 Sometimes it can be helpful to replicate the behavior of the Nintex Workflow Query List action outside of the Nintex Workflow environment. After UI is stripped away, Nintex Workflow executes a CAML query using the SharePoint API to return the values specified in the Query List action. Using this PowerShell script you can replicate this behavior to help narrow down issues with your query (such as List View Threshold violations, Permissions issues, etc.). To replicate the Query List action in PowerShell do the following: Open the Query List action in your workflow.        Change the Editor mode to be CAML editor.        Copy the CAML/XML betw

So I just uploaded a How-To file on using the Twitter action​. But, what good is a How-To document without some details on Why you would want to use the Twitter Action? So, here are two quick thoughts.. Your company sets up a central location to control all outgoing tweets from the corporate twitter account. Set up a simple workflow on a custom Corporate Tweet list list that runs every time an item is added to the list. You company sets up a workflow to automatically post to their Wordpress blog (Using the Wordpress action!) To complete the posting process, they want to Tweet out that a new blog post was uploaded, but only after waiting for a certien period of time to make sure that everything with the blog is in order first.I really like the Twitter action and

I have been creating form and workflow solutions since 2010. And, for a period between 2011 and 2012, that all I did for a small non-profit company. Today, I often cringe when I have to go back and look at the design layouts of my earliest forms. They were functional, but not very pretty. Fortunately, my sense of design has evolved over the years. Experience has taught me what works and what does not work, what looks good and what does not. Recently, I started studying user interface design as part of attempt to better understand the concept of user experience. During my readings I came across a book that described the Gestalt Design Principles and how they related to user interface design. These “descriptive” principles validated many of the design principles that I was already doing. They also opened my eyes to other possibilities in form design.In this series of blog posts, I will describe seven Gestalt design principles and show how they relate to form design. Th

It always pains me to see a company’s investment in software go to waste. I have seen some very expensive software just “sit of the shelf and collect dust” because staff are either unaware of its existence or have no idea what it does, or how it can be used. As a technical trainer, I have always made it one of my primary responsibilities to make sure that staff are aware of the tools that are available to them and also how the tools can be used to make their work lives better. This short article features some of the activities and attitudes that I have used in the past to help increase awareness and adoption of software at companies where I have worked. I have found Lunch & Learns to be one of the most effective activities to introduce a large group of people to a new or unknown software product – especially when I was the one supplying the lunch. At a non-profit that I work for years ago, I was lucky enough to have a modest food budget that afforded me the ability

The intention of this write up is to demonstrate how to pass runtime function - (in Nintex Form calculated value control) - to JavaScript for setting controls' value. It also features the following techniques for extending NINTEX Form capabilities:Capturing of "Change" event from multiple editable controls (i.e. single line of text control) to trigger JavaScript function call Using JavaScript to set form controls' value (i.e. based on data captured during the form filling) Using userProfileLookup runtime function to retrieve Sharepoint User Profile attributes (i.e. Distinguished Name in this example) Hide a calculated value control in form with CSS Style Regular Expression to extract different occurrences of OU in Distinguished Name The outcome of this exercise is shown in the diagram below, where changes made to either Title or Requester