How many Nintex workflows is \too many\" for a SharePoint List ?"

  • 5 October 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 6 views

Badge +1

I have a question about Nintex Workflow performance in a SharePoint 2013 environment.

Specifically, how many Nintex workflows is "too many" workflows for a given Sharepoint List ?

Let me start by explaining how my project works : I have a SharePoint list that contains a document name, document link and 20 different approver fields.

The initiator enters the document and approvers into a Nintex form to begin the approval process.

A new document starts out unapproved and it passes from one approver to the next.

Each approver in the workflow chain can approve/reject the document.

If the document is rejected, the workflow chain ends.

If the document is approved, it continues to the next approver until it is either rejected or it has been approved by all the approvers on the list.

After the last approval, the workflow chain ends and the document is marked as approved.

For each link the chain, it's possible that the initiator can open the form and change the Approver (Person) at any point before the approver has APPROVED or REJECTED the document.

If the Flex-Task has already been assigned to an given approver then the parent workflow is canceled and a new instance of the workflow with the new approver is created.

Normally, only one workflow at a time will be running on any given document (sharepoint list item).

Here's the rub : Will having 40+ workflows adversely affect the performance of this list ?

Coming from a programming world, I am used to having programs with many subroutines.

With Nintex, I tend to think of Workflows as programs or subroutines.

Is this a good analogy ?

How many Ninex workflows can I use before I start suffering performance degradation ?

Thanks,


2 replies

Badge +16

Do you mean workflow instances (I.e. Running instances of same workflow on an item) or number of published workflows against a list/library?

what you've described sounds reasonable to me.  You can only have 15 actively running workflows at one time and the rest will be queued for you.

Badge +1

Hi Cassy,

Thank you for your reply.

Rusty Watrous

CAE USA | IS Department

Reply