Best practices to Design Nintex Forms for performance

This document addresses design considerations and best practices for creating high-performing Nintex Forms for Office 365. 

Design Considerations: 
While there are hard limits on certain elements within SharePoint, several factors can impact the performance of your Nintex form. Here's a breakdown of these factors: 

• Number and Size of Rules: Complex and numerous rules can slow down your form. 

• Number of Controls: Adding more controls may increase form loading time. 

• Custom CSS Size: Extensive custom CSS code can affect performance. 

• Number of Plugins: Using numerous plugins can add complexity and potentially slow things down. 

• Number of Lookup Controls: Minimize the use of lookup controls, as they involve data retrieval. 

• Number of SharePoint Columns: A large number of columns displayed in the form can affect loading times. 

• Number of Variables using Lookup Functions: Similar to lookup controls, these variables require data retrieval and can slow down performance. 

Indicators of Performance Issues: 
Signs of performance problems include slow loading times, lengthy form imports, and even timeouts during the import process. 

Improving Form Performance 
Here are several strategies to enhance both user experience and form performance: 

1. Break Up Forms and Use Redirects: 

• Configure forms to redirect to other forms, URLs, pages, or lists based on button selections. 

• This approach allows you to segment your form into sections and minimize controls on a single page, improving performance and user experience. 

2. Leverage Content Types: 

• Utilize content types to reduce the number of columns displayed in your form. 

• Content types also allow you to create multiple forms within a single list, which is helpful for breaking down lengthy forms. 

3. Simplify Rules: 

• The complexity of your rules, not just the number, can impact performance. The number of controls referenced within the rules also plays a role. 

• Utilize groups where possible to limit the number of referenced controls and simplify your rules. 

4. Break Up Forms Across Pages: 

• Splitting your form across multiple pages can improve user experience by making it less overwhelming, even if the total number of controls remains the same. 

5. Minimize Controls: 

• Include only the essential controls in your form. You might have a list with 40 columns, but users might only need to fill out 10 of them (assuming others are updated manually). 

6. Optimize Lookups and Variables: 

• Minimize the use of lookup fields and calculated fields on the form. 

• Queries to display content take time, especially unfiltered queries without optimized indexes. 

• Since data from a single lookup can be used in multiple places, avoid creating multiple lookups to the same source.