Migrating to Nintex Automation Cloud: Setting up for Success

Migrating to Nintex Automation Cloud: Setting up for Success 

The Cloud Transformation team at Nintex has been assisting clients with their migrations to Nintex Automation Cloud over the past three years. We have supported organizations across a variety of industries, ranging from those with a handful of workflows to those managing thousands. Our clients have transitioned from Nintex for SharePoint, Nintex for O365, or a combination of both, to efficiently upgrade their workflow inventories to Nintex Automation Cloud. 

In this article, we will outline best practices to ensure a successful migration. Whether you are managing the migration independently or utilizing our Upgrade Center for support, this guide will provide valuable insights on where to begin and how to navigate each phase of the process. 

Getting Started 

We recommend approaching your migration as a structured project consisting of three distinct phases. This will help you stay organized, allocate the necessary resources, and ensure your workflows are upgraded prior to the deprecation and end-of-life dates for both Nintex for SharePoint and Nintex for O365.  

For more information on these key dates, please reference the article below: 

The three key phases of the migration process are: 

1. Planning & Preparation
2. Execution 
3. Close-Out 

Each phase involves specific actions and tasks that will guide you through the process, ensuring a seamless transition to Nintex Automation Cloud. 

Phase 1: Planning & Preparation 

1. Assign Roles and Responsibilities:  

Proper role assignment is crucial to maintaining organization and ensuring adequate support throughout the migration. At a minimum, we recommend appointing the following key roles: 

• Project Manager: The Project Manager will oversee the migration, ensuring effective collaboration among team members, assigning tasks with clear deadlines, and tracking progress. They will also serve as the primary point of contact for any escalations and will provide regular updates to management regarding progress, challenges, and risks throughout the migration process. 

• Technical Lead: The Technical Lead will work closely with the Project Manager to support all technical tasks, such as configuring test/DEV SharePoint environments, setting up the Nintex Automation Cloud tenant, activating upgrade tools, managing access, and providing any necessary technical assistance. 

• Nintex Workflow Experts: The workflow designers/owners will be essential to supporting the upgrade of workflows and task forms to Nintex Automation Cloud. It is highly recommended to involve team members who are well-versed in Nintex workflows, familiar with their current configurations, and capable of navigating the upgrade tooling effectively. These individuals will play a critical role in managing the workflow transition, including pushing workflows through the upgrade process, reconfiguring actions as necessary, and ensuring that workflows are successfully upgraded and functioning as expected within Nintex Automation Cloud. 

• Additional Team Support: Depending on the complexity of your migration, you may require additional support from various teams, including IT, SharePoint administrators, workflow designers, and UAT testers. Be sure to involve the necessary stakeholders at each stage to ensure they are available and prepared to assist with the migration efforts. 

2. Review your Workflow Inventory:  

There are a couple ways to review your exhausted inventory of workflows. Nintex Analytics is one of the best ways to pull detailed reports of all your active workflows. These reports provide information such as Workflow Name, Workflow ID, action counts, etc. so that you can review your inventory & start to plan what workflows need to be migrated to Nintex Automation Cloud. If you’re unsure if you’re licensed for Nintex Analytics – please reach out to your dedicated Account Manager for confirmation.  

Another way would be to reach out to your Account Manager for support with reviewing your Telemetry data & pulling a report. For O365 customers, we can provide a list of active workflows from the past 12 months, for On-prem customers, a script can be run to provide a list of active workflows from the past 90-days. 

For a deeper dive into finding your workflow inventory, please refer to our article on Using Nintex Insights/KYFW to find your workflows. 

3. Prioritize your workflows for Migration:  

There are several ways to determine your workflow prioritization, and this will look different for every customer. To get started, we’ve outlined some important questions to consider. 

• Questions to ask:  

  1. Which departments/sites/site collections have a higher priority when it comes to migrating? 

  2. How many workflows have dependencies, or call component workflows that need to be migrated together? 

  3. Which workflows are larger, more complex, will take longer to migrate vs. your smaller workflows that are quick wins? 

  4. Clean-up: Which workflows are old, outdated, no longer being utilized by the organization that can be removed from the scope completely? 

For a deeper dive into workflow prioritization best practices, please refer to our article on Prioritizing Your Workflows for Migration.

4. Set up your Environments:  

We highly recommend setting up a SharePoint test/DEV environment for migration. It’s important to maintain continuity of solutions during migration – and a test site gives your migration team the ability to test workflows in Nintex Automation Cloud without affecting your current O365/On-prem production environments. ​For your test site, simply create a copy of your current SharePoint production site, with identical lists & site structure. 

Next, you’ll need to activate the migration tooling. This provides you the ability to learn how to use the tooling and migrate your own workflows at your own pace.​ 

• For SharePoint Online Customers - The migration tooling is built into Nintex Workflow for Office 365 and can be activated by navigating to your Nintex Customer Central portal. You will need your SharePoint online PROD URL & tenant ID for activation.​ 

  • Upgrade Center Page​ 

• For SharePoint On-Premises Customers - The migration tooling is supplied to you once your Account Manager fills out the necessary forms. Once completed, you will receive an email confirming your Upgrade tooling has been activated in your Nintex Automation Cloud tenant, as well as a link to download the required extraction scripts. 

Last but not least, you’ll need to set up your Nintex Automation Cloud Tenant.  

Ensure your Nintex Automation Cloud tenant has been activated. This is where the workflows will be migrated to and tested.​ 

1. Go to the Licenses page in Customer Central ​ 

2. Click on the Add License button and complete the form to request your Nintex Automation Cloud tenant. 

3. After you submit the form, you will receive an email to set up your account. Follow the instructions in the email to access your new Nintex Automation Cloud tenant. 

Since the workflows will be mainly interacting with your SPO data, you will need a data connection created for your SPO tenant on a Service account. It’s recommended to use a service account - not a personal account.  

• Manage Connections​ 

Creating an integration between your Nintex Automation Cloud and SPO tenants will allow you to use the Nintex Automation app within your lists and libraries. This allows for you to easily navigate to Nintex Automation Cloud right from SPO when designing & upgrading workflows.​ 

• SharePoint integration​ 

By enabling Single Sign-On (SSO) you allow for your internal users to easily access Nintex Automation Cloud without having to manage each user.  

• Configure identity federation​ 

5.  Put together a project timeline: While the exact duration for migrating workflows may be uncertain, it is essential to assess your team's capacity, the number of hours they can dedicate per week to the migration, and establish a timeline for the Execution Phase. 

We recommend planning for migration work and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to proceed concurrently. This approach will help maintain momentum and avoid delays. Instead of waiting for all workflows to be fully upgraded before beginning testing, best practice suggests initiating UAT as soon as workflows are migrated and all actions/tasks are updated. UAT testers should perform scenarios and conduct full functionality tests on the upgraded workflows during this phase. 

Once your team members are identified, roles are assigned, environments are set up, workflow priorities are determined, and timelines are established, you will be ready to move forward with the Execution Phase. 

Phase 2: Execution 

1. Push the workflows through the upgrade tooling: Take the aligned scope & workflow priority and push the workflows through the upgrade tooling.  

• For Nintex for O365 customers: when the workflows are ready to be upgraded a message is displayed in the Workflow Gallery when you open Nintex Workflow for Office 365 from a list or site in SharePoint Online. Two new columns named Upgrade availability and Upgrade status are added to the Workflow Gallery to indicate if the workflows are ready to be moved to Nintex Automation Cloud. After a workflow is upgraded, a draft of the workflow is created in Nintex Automation Cloud.  

  • For more information regarding the Nintex for O365 to Nintex Automation Cloud upgrade process, click HERE. 

• For Nintex for SharePoint customers: you will first need to download the  Upgrade Center extraction script package here. Next you will need to import the package file into the Nintex Automation Cloud tenant. Select the checkbox next to the workflow or workflows you wish to upgrade. It is best practice not to upgrade all the available workflows at once: try upgrading one or a small batch to start. Click on “upgrade (X workflows) – this process will take a few minutes, and when you navigate to your Workflows list in Nintex Automation Cloud, you can view the draft versions of your workflows. 

  • For more information regarding the On Premise to Nintex Automation Cloud upgrade process, click HERE. 

2.  Configure the workflows: After the defined scope of workflows has been pushed through the upgrade tooling, you can begin reviewing and updating the actions in your workflows and task forms. If any actions remain unconfigured, you must complete their configuration before publishing the workflow. To identify actions that require attention, refer to the 'Workflow Upgrade Details' for a comprehensive overview. 

3. Perform testing & UAT: Once the necessary reconfigurations and updates to actions are completed, you can proceed with testing. We recommend conducting a thorough functionality test of the upgraded workflows using real-life scenario use cases. This testing will help identify any bugs, issues, or configuration errors, and ensure that the migration meets the needs of the intended users. Additionally, it will confirm that the workflows are fully functional from a business perspective. 

Phase 3: Close Out 
 

1. Publish your workflows to Production in Nintex Automation Cloud: Once UAT has been completed & sign-offs on the upgrade workflows have been obtained, you can now move to publishing your workflows to production.  

Publish to production basic checklist:

1. Un-do any changes made for testing. 

2. Open the respective workflow, change the relevant URL's to point to SP PROD, then Publish it and change the radio button to Production. 

3. Update SharePoint Connections to point to your PROD SharePoint. 

4. Update all Connections to other Integrated systems to their Production counterparts (i.e. WebServices, SQL etc.) 

5. Assign permissions, add tags, add version comments on each respective workflow. 

6. Communicate with process owners. 

7. In SP PROD, go to each relevant list, list settings->Workflow settings-> Remove, Block, or Restore a Workflow-> Then next to the workflow you want to publish to prod select No New Instances and click on OK. 

8. Publish component workflows first (if relevant). 

9. Publish as a production workflow and run a few validation tests. 

2. Deactivate the workflow in your legacy tenant: If the workflow is not deactivated instances can run for the workflow in Nintex for Office 365 & Nintex for SharePoint as well creating duplicate instances. To avoid having the workflow started and running in both Nintex for Office 365/Nintex for SharePoint and Nintex Automation Cloud, you must deactivate the workflow your legacy tenant. 

Any instances that are already in progress for the workflow in Nintex for Office 365 & Nintex for SharePoint will continue to run & complete even after it is deactivated.  

It’s best practice to notify your end-users of the switchover from your legacy tenant to Nintex Automation Cloud & provide support where needed as they navigate the new tenant & upgrade workflows. 

3. Gather Feedback & Continuous Improvement Ideas: Once all your workflows have been published to Nintex Automation Cloud & deactivated in your legacy tenant, it’s recommended to gather feedback from your team members, as well as end-users for continuous improvement opportunities. Nintex Automation Cloud is a new product, and with new features & enhancements, workflows can be modernized & improved to create more efficient workflows. 

We hope this article provides you with some best practices as you start your migration to Nintex Automation Cloud. Whether you’re leveraging support from our Upgrade Center team, or self-serving, treating the migration process as a true project will help your team understand their roles & responsibilities, define a scope & timeline, and ensures your critical workflows are migrated before the deprecation/end-of life dates for Nintex for O365 and Nintex for Sharepoint. 

Need migration assistance support? 
If this seems overwhelming or you're unable to complete your migration to Nintex Automation Cloud before the deprecation/end-of-life dates, contact your Account Manager to explore migration assistance options to leverage support from our Upgrade Center team. 

Additional Resources

• Help Documentation for Upgrading to Nintex Automation Cloud (Commercial) https://help.nintex.com/en-US/nwc/Content/OnPremUpgrade/WorkflowUpgrades.htm  
• Help Documentation for Upgrading to Nintex Automation Cloud (Government) https://help.nintex.com/en-US/gov-us/nwc/Content/OnPremUpgrade/WorkflowUpgrades.htm  
• Using Nintex Insights/KYWF to find your workflows
• Prioritizing Your Workflows for Migration
• Workflow Behavior During Nintex Automation Cloud Production Cut Over – FAQ
• Activating your Migration Tooling
• Using Service Accounts for Connections in Nintex Automation Cloud
• The Importance of Using Test Environments for Migrations