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Nintex 365 Workflow Email Attachments - Cant Find Answers

  • 14 April 2015
  • 8 replies
  • 55 views

Badge +6

Hello everyone,

 

I have Nintex 365 running for SharePoint online and I am wanting to send an email with attachments.

 

I've spent a long time online trying to find answers but I still have no answers.

 

My email looks a lot like this:

 

TO: Helpdesk

Subject: {Current Item: Job Number}:{Current Item: Site Name}

Body: Please find attachments here: {Current Item: Attachments}

 

The finished product looks like this:

 

FROM: no-reply@mycompany

subject: NE15013:00003 : Water Houses (RES)

Body: Please find attachments here: TRUE.

 

Instead of showing "TRUE" for attachments how do I actually attach these documents?

The workflow is linked to a LIST with ATTACHMENTS field. There are usually more than one attachment and the form was built in Nintex forms 365.

 

Hope someone can help me.

 

Best Regards,

 

Andrew

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Best answer by eharris04 16 April 2015, 06:09

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8 replies

Badge +17

Andrew,

I've never known SharePoint to send attachments from a workflow.  This would slightly defeat the purpose of SharePoint storing one version of the truth, if you sent that version out via a workflow.

Instead of sending the attachment, have you tried sending the url of the attachment in the email so that when the person gets the email they can click to view the document?  I know this works very easily.  Also if the list item for the email notification contains attachments, if they click on a relative URL for that item, they should be able to see the attachments on that item as well.

Badge +6

Hi Eric,

I understand that at the moment the attachments property is just a Boolean indicating whether attachments exist or not (hence the return of true or false)

I know of methods that can use a workflow to take a document from a list and then store it in a library. Currently I am attempting to create a dictionary variable to store the URLs and call the web service using REST to loop and retrieve the URLs for the attachments. These workflow variables can then be emailed and it will most likely be the URLs being sent in the email this way.

I'll try a few different things but after your advice I probably wont spend too much time on this if it doesn't work. The people we're sending these documents to will not have access to our SharePoint so they are unlikely to be able to follow any URLs to list items or documents. I will most likely inform the users of our helpdesk system to attach documents manually once the workflow has sent the email to the mailbox for forwarding.

I'll return to this page with my findings, but it does seem that there are little/no resources online that suggest this is possible. I have a feeling I'm going to be marking your answer as correct in the future.

Thank you for your reply.

Andrew

Badge +6

Hi,

I’ve looked into this with the Nintex and at present it looks as though support is only there for sending URL
links rather than sending the documents as attachments
.

The way I work around this is to have the workflow email my site mailbox, with the template 'body' and relevant item properties I need but without the attachments. From the mailbox my helpdesk team can manually attach documents to the email and forward this out.

(My workflow needs to send these emails to the mailbox anyway)

There does seem to be a demand for this kind of action though, I've even seen plumsail are trying to sell an add on to SharePoint Designer with the 'send email with attachments' feature. Hopefully someone will see this one day and there'll be an answer they can share with us for Nintex.

Andrew

Userlevel 5
Badge +13

"it looks as though support is only there for sending URL links rather than sending the documents as attachments"

Hey Andrew Heron, can you show how you did this?? I'm working with a business need on this right now.Our use case is that we have policies that are reviewed on a schedule. A workflow kicks off to notify the approvers of their responsibility, and directs them to the display item form (as they need to change their approval status). But, it's a document library and I'd also like to send them the link for the document in Word Online to make the navigation smoother as there's no easy transition from the display item to the document without scrolling through the library to the "correct" name.

Badge +9

Nintex release sending Attachments with emails a while ago in Office 365 - you just select the radio button in the Email Action, it's not possible in tasks or actions though currently.

If you have Nintex forms you can but a label on the form and have the workflow populate a column in the library with a link to the document e.g. <a href="documentlink" target="_blank">Name</a>

You can also build a string for the document link to send via email which will open in word online you just need to add a parameter at the end of the URL.

Userlevel 5
Badge +13

I know how to send an attachment, I want to send a URL to a document. I do have Nintex forms, and I know how to create a link, but I'm not linking to the same document every time so I need to be able to dynamically reference the appropriate document. I have been trying the "Build a String" but I'm not sure how to get the Document url instead of the Item/Properties url. I posted this question here​ basically outlining what I'm looking for.

Badge +17

Courtney,

Use the Query List action to query the document library. Grab the Shortcut URL or Source URL and output that to a collection, then extract it from there. Should give you the URL to the document you need which can be referenced inside an email or a task description.

Hi,

can you show me how to insert a link to an attachment from the list into an email task? Thanks.

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