Start workflow on Delete Item!!! Really?

  • 26 May 2015
  • 3 replies
  • 233 views

Badge +11

Hello All,

We may or may not have come across a situation where creating Event receiver is not feasible on delete item event. This is a hack on the functionality where you can start a workflow when item is deleted. This involves creating a delete item workflow and adding that as a quick action menu item. So here is how to do it:

  1. Create a custom list.
  2. Configure permissions on the list so that users will not have the ability to delete the items. For this, I create a new permission leavel as "Contribute - No Delete". Once this is completed, users will not see the option to delete items within this list.
  3. Blog1.jpg
  4. Next, we want to create a workflow that we want to start when item is deleted. Click on List tab, Create a workflow in Nintex workflow.
  5. Open workflow settings.
    • Enter Title
    • Select the option - "Enable workflow to start from the item menu".
    • Menu Item label would be "Delete Item". Menu item image URL-"_layouts/images/delete.gif"
    • Menu Item Position - 0. For other positions on the quick menu, see the list at the
    • Save the settings
  6. Blog1.jpg
  7. Now lets create few actions in the workflow. In this workflow i'm going to send email to the person who created the item that the item has been deleted by workflow initiator. Next action would be to delete the item. This action has to be run as Workflow Owner because users do not have permissions to perform delete operation.
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  9. Thats it. Publish the workflow and create item in your list. Use menu item to delete it and you should receive an email.

Blog1.jpg

Extras:

List of Quick launch menu positions:

0 – Top Position

200 – Second position

255 – Third position

898 – Fourth position

900 – Fifth position

1000 – Sixth position

1050 – Seventh position

1100 – Eighth position

1175 – Ninth position

2000 – Last position

 

As an additional step, i also customized the Start workflow page as below.

Blog1.jpg

Hope its usefull.


3 replies

Userlevel 3
Badge +12

Nice one, but if a user is Site Collection administrator, he sees two Delete Item links in ECB.

Badge +4

Nice, but is it possible to do the same thing in office 365 (online). Because i couldn't see the below properties in nintex office 365 workflow settings page.

Badge +11

Nintex workflow for O365 does not support starting the workflow from Item menu.

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