Connection between On-prem and Online

  • 24 April 2019
  • 5 replies
  • 4 views
G
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The Knowledge Base how-to's indicate there is a method to connect between on-prem and online - "the connection between SharePoint 2013 or 2016 and SharePoint Online is one way only (On-Prem -> SharePoint Online)." No details were provided.

 

Is this connection available with Workflow Cloud or is it elsewhere?

 

We need a method to send a document from on-prem to our cloud tenant or to run a workflow on the cloud tenant to get the document from on-prem. What options does Nintex provide to achieve this level of connectedness?

 

TIA,

 

Gerard

5 replies

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@gman This can be a little tricky to think through as its not a Nintex issue but a platform thing nonetheless.  

 

Does the document have to start from on-prem? If not you could use the "Start Workflow in Nintex Workflow Cloud" to kick off a workflow and then use the generate document action to generate the document. 

 

The trick here is trying to get a document back into the on-prem environment. I have attempted a few options in the past, but its not fun. You could email the document back to an email enabled library then route it from there. 

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eharriz04, thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately the documents originate from on-prem. However, your suggestion leads to another possibility. Initially one would push documents originating from on-prem to online - this is the connection method I was considering.

 

An alternate method would be to pull content Online from an on-prem location. Although the Online account would still need access to on-prem that could be handled via AD accounts. By using the Start Workflow in NWC, if I could pass the target documents URL to the workflow, the NWC workflow could copy it into the online library.

 

It still is surprising to me that NWC has the abilitty to connect to all these third-party applications but not SP on-prem. That seems like a huge oversight.

 

Thoughts?

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NWC is cloud product so the first set of connections are cloud based. That being said you can connect NWC to on-prem using the start Nintex workflow cloud action.

 

Alternatively, can you store the document in the cloud (template) and then pass the data to NWC and use doc generation to generate the document. My assumption based on what you are saying is you mean starting an Office 365 Nintex workflow which is different than an NWC workflow that is separate from any cloud environment. 

 

So in your scenario, the document doesn't have to generate on-prem, but can be initiated from an on-prem process, unless someone is actually uploading the document to an on-prem site or server. If that is the case, you could create a cloud-based form that allows them to attach the document and the metadata or information which then starts a workflow in the cloud to process it. Lots of options depending on the business process.

 

What are the steps and end goal needed for this process?

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eharris04, I hear what your saying about NWC being cloud based. Yet I'm able to get connectors to reach into my intranet and connect to our enterprose apps like SAP. I'm also able to connect to cloud apps like SP Online. What appears to be missing is a way to connect into my SP On-prem. With connections available for all of these I could then manage information & documents between these separate enterprise resources.

 

Here's how I understand and visualize NWC. Please correct me if I'm off-base.

1738iDBD9372C80DEC5D3.png

 

The initial business need is to push documents originating from on-prem to our (non-hybrid) online tenant. It seems reasonable to be able to connect to On-prem in the same way one would connect to Online; enabling NWC to manage the flow of information between any connected resource.

G
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Although this solution doesn't reside within NWC, it does meet the need originally posted - sending documents from On-prem to a Online tenant. In order for this to work you'll need credentials to the online tenant that allow "contributing" permissions or higher.

 

Within the Nintex Live module there are a series of external access actions that Nintex Workflow can use. These actions include creating items in lists on O365, or uploading documents to O365 or Onedrive.

 

I found I could utilize the  "Office 365 Upload File" action to achieve our goal of moving selected documents from our On-prem library to our Online tenant, via a workflow running in the On-prem library. The action has the following parameters:

2115i6E2F2FCC6B186632.png

 

What you'll need to note is that the Folder Path indicates you need a UNC path. This may work if you're copying into a folder (I didn't test it), but in my case I'm copying to the root of the library. To copy to the root of the library you need the library name, not the path name. In my case the library name is "OC Documents" but the path name is "OCDocuments". Only using the library name would work. The other two parameters are as expected.

 

There are also options to overwrite existing, and to add fields. You will need to provide credentials to the Online tenant. You can also get various result parameters as shown.

2116i444811157FAC1D50.png

 

This fills the gap in a big way interms of connecting your on-prem resources with your online resources. Hope it can be of use to others.

 

Gerard

 

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