Announcing the Nintex Forms On Prem 2013 SDK


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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 fascination with flowcharts, and I'm glad to be working at a company that uses them as much as Nintex.

Generally I'll be posting weekly updates of the Forms SDK with new content, additional scenarios, code samples, and deeper dives into specific areas. I'm starting with the creation of a custom control for Nintex Forms, and will then move on the following week to using the Nintex Forms Web Service API. You can use the API to access your Nintex Forms for importing, exporting, updating, and deleting your forms.

You can find the SDK here!

Upcoming (planned) topics include:

  • Nintex Forms Object Model
  • Nintex Forms Control Reference
  • Nintex Forms PowerShell cmdlets
  • Using the PowerShell to install and manage custom inline functions for your forms
  • Working with Nintex Forms XML
  • Library of JavaScript snippets

In addition, I'm interested in your feedback and solutions. Our conversation will help me prioritize content to write for future updates. I'm very curious to learn about your needs in modifying, extending, and managing Nintex Forms. Also, if you find anything that needs to be updated, let me know.

Look forward to talking to you.


16 replies

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Thank you!

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This sounds great - I am looking forward to following this.

Regards

Leif

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Very nice Matt Briggs​! I'm really curious to check out what you have in store for custom controls and a JavaScript snippet library.

Thanks for sharing!

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Paul Crawford​ think we need to keep a close eye on this - exciting times

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Busy working the JavaScript stuff, thanks Patrick!

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Hi Nick,

I am also using the Nintex Mobile App, but is somewhat disappointed in what features are in it.

Will the API help me doing something about this? For example something like have lookup controls default to the values last used by the user? In the browser version I solve this in Javascript and using cookies, but stuff like that aren't available in the mobile app.

Regards

Leif

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Hi Matt Briggs​, will this also cover automatic deployment of list and task forms? (related articles​)

Regards, Christian

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Hi Matt,

I'm currently creating a bunch of powershell cmdlets for our Nintex Workflow Dev's to get nwf Files automatically extracted. It would be great if I can do the same for Nintex forms. In the current SDK I can't see any functionality to solv that case - can you tell me if we get this feature soon?

Thanks

Roman

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Sounds great!

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Hi Christian,

I will be including a code sample for a console application that will use a WCF client to retrieve, publish, and delete list forms using the Nintex Forms Web Service API. This will enable you to perform an automatic deployment of a list form. So that is coming soon!

There is information in the current Nintex Workflow SDK for On Prem 2013 about deploying workflow XML to SharePoint. Since task forms are stored in the workflow XML, you might find the following info useful: http://help.nintex.com/en-US/sdks/SDK2013/#Operational/SDK_NW_OPS_WorkflowsPublish.htm%3FTocPath%3DNintex%2520Software%2…

When I am finished with this iteration of the Forms SDK, I'll try to write up a walk through of interacting with task forms and the workflow XML in a scenario for deploying workflows with task forms to SharePoint.

Thanks! Matt

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Hi Nick,

This API is focused on the Nintex Forms On Prem 2013, and then I'll have 2016 to work on. I took a look on user voice to see if people had suggested the look up to default for the last entry by the user, and didn't see anything that matched exactly. Can you suggest at Nintex User Voice? Customer Feedback for Nintex or if you find a similar feature for mobile, vote it up. I saw there was a 100 votes for JavaScript with the Mobile App: 6 - Nintex Mobile Apps: Hot (73 ideas) – Customer Feedback for Nintex

Thanks for your note!

Matt

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Hi Roman,

I'd be curious to hear more about how you using PowerShell with Nintex.

The set of PowerShell cmdlets that are specific to Nintex Forms don't include migration commands. They are more specific to working with the NF database managing things like inline functions. However, you can use PowerShell, I think, to interact with the Nintex Forms Web service to retrieve, publish, or delete list forms. I have used PowerShell to work with O365's endpoints and haven't worked yet with the On Prem endponts using PowerShell (just C#). I'd love to hear if anyone has works with PowerShell and web services regularly? So far my take is that authentication is the tricky issue.

I'll be posting the reference to the web service later this week, and then next week I hope to have a blog post with a walk through.

Cheers!

Matt

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At the moment I created a few very simple Powershell cmdlets using C# to interact with the workflow webservice (Extract Workflow, Publish Workflow). The main usage is for development and deployment. Since we are working in staging environments at our customers we need an option for automatic SP provisioning (where we use SPMeta2 or PnP) and Nintex Workflow deployment. As far as the solution is tested we may publish it on github.

I didn't found any documentation to Nintex Forms Webservice in the SDK documentation (http://help.nintex.com/en-US/sdks/SDK2013 ) - is it available somewhere?

Thanks

Roman

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Hi Roman, Sorry you went looking for it. But thanks. I'll be posting 'chunks' of the SDK for a while. It will be posted with this Friday's SDK update, and then posting a blog post walking through the steps the following week. I'm getting some  feedback on it. I look forward to seeing your solution on github if you post it. But if you are already working with the web service with your cmdlets, then these end points will allow you to retrieve and publish forms to SharePoint Lists... Matt

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Thank you Matt !!! this is what i was looking for !!!

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Looking forward to your posts!

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