What tasks can an Average SharePoint User perform?

  • 27 January 2017
  • 5 replies
  • 2 views
S
Badge +9

I'm compiling a list of why users in our company should bother with Nintex? We've only just come live on Nintex about a month ago.  

By Average SharePoint User, I'm not talking about programmers. I'm not looking at doing funny things with Active Directory, Web Services, or Database Connections--although I'm aware they are there and can be used by programmers.  Since I work for NASA, I'm not looking for more Rocket Science Approaches.

Here is a list of tasks I've started:

  1. Notification of a Document Upload or New Item Added to a list.
  2. Start of Approval Process on Item or Document
  3. Create New List or Document Library 
  4. Filter an existing List and Create a New List based on the filtered data.
  5. Update a Summary List
  6. Send Email Notifications at Specified Intervals from List Dates via a Timed Site Workflow
    (Send Weekly or Monthly Reminders)
  7. Change Permissions on Items after they have been added
  8. Update Fields in the same list item or other fields in other lists
  9. Delete ListItem that match filtered criteria
  10. Sent notifications and escalations at various stages of document processing.
    1. Monitor for Specific Value (like a Status Column) and generate emails
  11. Perform complex edits on Item and send email notifications if invalid data is entered
  12. Split Group Fields into individual users (maybe be a little more on the complex side)
  13. Perform Lookups from Multiple Lists to produce an email.
  14. Automatically compile attachments for emailing on a timer process
  15. Check In/ Check Out Documents
  16. Copy Items to other lists with Identical Structure (possible archiving)(Could be combined with Deleting the Original Item)
  17. Updating an entire list with new value--possible default.
  18. Start Workflow either on Creation, Modification, or Modification based on some condition

Please add to this list of tasks that help you do your job.

SharePoint isn't all the most helpful in getting tasks done.

5 replies

rhia
Userlevel 6
Badge +15

Hi Stephan Onisick‌:

I think the power of Nintex is not in the individual actions themselves, but the combination. AND the fact that you don't need to be a programmer to run some of these workflows and get things done. 

An example - our sales person needs to be able to give out demo accounts to our environment, but he doesn't have access to AD (I know you said "no funny things with AD" but this is an example of a non programmer needing it) and wouldn't know how.

I built a simple form for him to say who needs access, when the expiry date is - and the workflow builds a unique login ID, and emails him the PW and the userlogin ID. Easy, and he doesn't need to bother our AD guy.

So - is that a "daily task" - maybe not, but I am certain you'd find areas in your consulting practice where such things might help tasks get done quicker when they don't need to wait on another party. 

Now that I've kind of said that part ... I'll think up other tasks...

  • Review daily tasks and who has done what to see if you need to push anything further (or maybe start a reminder notification - if that hasn't been put in already!)
  • Update a calendar without needing to check for conflicts yourself
  • Get documents / items reviewed with advanced logic like "all users must agree" or "majority must agree" or "first reply" etc without needing to have a human coordinate all of that
  • End workflow on a particular condition
  • Delegate automatically if someone is out of the office

There's just a few to start... the issue here, Stephan, is that this list is a big one!

Workshopping with the team on things they do in SharePoint will 100% find you ways to use Nintex that can save them minutes, or hours - and in some cases, days. It's crazy. This is why I love Nintex so much.

Good luck in your endeavor! 

P
Userlevel 4
Badge +12

Hi Stephan,

I'd agree with Rhia that you shouldn't focus on actions in the first place. Bringing Nintex to your people is great. Think of a demo workshop where you demo some scenarios to interested people of your departments and let them think about which processes they hold (by that I mean small and medium-sized processes). I think that practice is best as we never could imagine what daily tasks everyone in a company has to cope with.

If you get good feedback invite those people and give them a workshop on how to model processes with Nintex so that they can build their own processes and train others to do so too.

Before that you better have a look in Nintex Config and set up some permissions to your actions. I think you don't want everyone to be able to write to your Active Directory or call web services. So only permit actions that are not harmful (manage list objects, query lists, loops and stuff) but disable actions like write to SharePoint profiles, Active Directory Integration and so on.

This way you'll easily raise the consumption in your company and still keep everything safe.

Kind regards,

Enrico

P
Badge +8

Hello Stephan Onisick‌ – it's great to see some other HSV folks on the community!

Adding to what Enrico Knapp‌ and Rhia Wieclawek‌ shared – I believe the reasons why an organization should "bother" with Nintex extend well beyond it's individual actions. There's only so much time and money available to an organization to address internal automation needs and oftentimes many small/medium processes miss the cut.

Nintex significantly reduces the time (and ultimately money) it takes to automate processes, allowing organizations to be more agile and address a greater number of needs with the same bandwidth by it's Power Users and internal IT team.

One thing I'd recommend adding to your list is user-defined actions (UDAs). UDAs are a great way to empower average SharePoint users with powerful capabilities unique to their organization. Since they obfuscate the actions they contain, your users can benefit from some complex workflow processing without being aware of "how the sausage is made."

Best Practice for Workflow Design - User Defined Actions 

rhia
Userlevel 6
Badge +15

Is HSV Huntsville? 

P
Badge +8

‌ haha right, Huntsville, AL. wink.png

Reply


View our Community Site Map

Nintex Community Sitemap
Terms & ConditionsCookie settings