Saving information from Nintex Form to a new connected field without losing its value

  • 13 November 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 18 views

Badge +1

Hello Everyone,

In our Nintex Form, not all controls (single line of text, number etc.) were connected to Sharepoint list column. (Because of column limitations in Sharepoint lists) But information entered to those controls were saved somewhere anyway. So when we saved the form and then open again, they would show up.

We used this form like that for some time. But now we need to save information from some of those controls to their respective Sharepoint list columns for all of the items. We created new columns in the list and connected the controls in the form with list columns. But we noticed, once we open the item either in Display or Edit Form, those controls (that normally save information within) would automatically delete their values because of new empty connected columns.

We originally hoped that once we connected those fields to new columns, we had to open all items in edit form and save them again, and this way we would save their values to the columns. But apparently it doesn't work like that :) 

Do you have any idea how can we achieve that withouth manually entering all the data again?

 

Thanks a lot


2 replies

Badge +12

@orkun .....SharePoint list items are saved as form data and it's in XML format. Maybe using Query XML and Update XML you can update the new columns and see if that works for you.

 

I haven't tested this scenario but I have used Repeating Section's XML to create items in Child list and then write it back to parent list.

Userlevel 6
Badge +22

Hi,
All unbound controls metadata is stored in a hidden column called FormData in XML format.

To see what is in the column create a new Multi Lines of Text Column configured as plain text.

Then create a workflow that reads the column and writes it to the multi lines of text column.

Example:

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Once you have the XML and you know what you are working with you can use the Query XML action to extract the information you want and then use an update Item action to write it to the new column.

The new connected controls on your form will now display this information.

Any new items created will use the new connected columns so this only needs to be done once on the previous items in the list.

You could use the one workflow to update every item in the list.

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