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Multiple Forms and 1 workflow scenarios

  • 21 August 2017
  • 7 replies
  • 140 views

Badge +9

Hi All,

 

We have a customer who has purchased Nintex Standard edition (5 Workflows and 25 Forms).

 

The customer wants to use a self-service Employee module which should have the following.

  • Leave Request Form.
  • Expense Claim Form.
  • Asset management Form.
  • HR On-Boarding Form.
  • Etc etc .. (Customer will add more forms at later stage)

  

They want to use 1 or 2 Workflows for all these forms and minimize the workflows.

I told them that each Form will have different business process and there will be different approvals. They said most of approvers will be same.

My Approach is:

  • Combine all the forms into 1 Nintex form.
  • And when a user can choose leave request, expense claim, Asset management, and HR On-Boarding from the Drop Down.
  • If a user selects leave request from the Drop-down list, then we display only Leave Request within Nintex form.
  • But I don’t know, how can I manage workflows part. Can I use a flag within the workflow which passed the Form selection criteria (such as leave request drop down) and workflow users that flag that based on the form criteria?

 

Please suggest any I can achieve this?  

Tomasz PoszytekAndrew Glasser‌ ‌

Thanks, in advance.

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Best answer by rhia 21 August 2017, 06:13

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7 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +15

Hmm - I'm envisioning a parallel action set with RUN-IFs for each form-type branch, and then have hidden checkboxes in your field (maybe "LeaveSelected") where "IF Leave Absent selected, {Self}  == YES" for each form type.


Run your RUN IFs based on that checkbox. "RUN IF LeaveSelected == YES". Put your "Start Workflow" into that RUN IF box. (Or your entire WF if you have too many, I guess ... not really a great idea but, if that's all you can do .. then..)

Would that work for you?

I would highly discourage your user going this route though -- many different forms packed into one. They're going to run into issues, and it's going to be a pain in the ass to maintain, I'd imagine.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

If you plan to have a dropdown on a form to choose a right type then can use this selection in the workflow. I would suggest the "switch" action for the beginning, to maintain type-specific data and when it comes to approval to merge branches. 

 However as Rhia wrote I also highly discourage you doing it that way. Be aware of the workflow limitations in terms of number of actions. Going above 100 can cause problems with publication.

 Also you will need to face many challenges regarding making actions generic, ex. one task action but having type-related content etc...

 Regards

 Tomasz

Badge +9

we would definitely increase support hours if customer is going this way.!!  ..  making form and workflow is one thing, but maintaining additional forms which is customer is keen would be real nightmare for us to support the project.

Thank you so much for your advice        

Badge +9

Thanks a ton for pointing out Workflow limitations Office 365 Workflow Action Limitations

Your help is much appropriated..   

Userlevel 6
Badge +13

Are the workflows complicated?

Workflows that are less than 5 actions are counted towards your subscription I believe (provided they don't contain certain actions or start another workflow).

We've got about a dozen that are just straight forward Approval tasks, send an email, job done.

Userlevel 6
Badge +13

With regards to the form size, you could get around this by using Content Types on the list, so it's 5 separate forms. All of them would still start the workflow but the workflow would follow a different path depending on the content type selected. Again, beware of the workflow action numbers, but I'd have thought quite a lot of them could be reusable and using references rather than standard text in the emails for tasks would allow you to use a single task for approval of different forms. You could even create a separate list with your text, and then reference this in your task form using a calculated value lookup to change the text in the task form depending on the content type that was submitted. 


There are ways, but tread with caution.

Badge +9

Thanks ‌ for valuable inputs 

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