Cool ways to use Nintex Workflow

Recruitment workflow

Gerald — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:50:55 GMT

We use a SharePoint site to manage the staff recruitment process. It contains the notes for all the interview stages, the person's details, their location, and the job role is crossed referenced to our corporate website open job roles. Nintex Workflow is used to manage the document flow, approval, escalation and notifications.

Batch Start Workflows

Vladlen Rotshteyn — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:00:53 GMT

I know its easy to batch cancel workflows, but I was not able to find a straight forward way to batch start workflows at a list/document library level. The solution I have posted allows you to specify the criteria on which files you want to start a workflow on. You could run it on ANY file in the library, even if it doesn't meet the criteria you are looking for and it'll loop through the collection and start as needed on the right files.

The Scenario:

- Doc Library with minor and major version docs

- Want to start workflow only on documents that has a status of final as defined in a list column

The setup:

- Create a view that shows all files as flat without folders

- Display the ID column

- Sort By ID, first by ascending to get the ID of first item in list; note it for later. Then sort by descending, taking note of the highest ID listed

The Workflow:

- Set both the count and IDcount variables to the lowest ID identified above

- Set the loop condition to run until it is less then or equal to the value of the highest ID identified above

- Define your scenario to selectively start wf on list item that qualifies

- I told it to look at the ID of each entry and then see what the "Lifecycle" column says for that particular item with that ID

- Source: your list or document library

- Field: The field you are comparing against

- When :ID

- Equals: Variable IDCount

- Then I define what the Lifecycle Field is supposed to contain in order to satisfy the condition of the run-if; in my case I want it to only run when it says "Final"

- Make sure the none of the files that will meet the run if criteria are not checked out otherwise the wf will fail out at the first instance of a checked-out file it tries to run a wf on. You could always throw in a force checkout action into the loop to avoid problems.

- Then in the web service call, define an account that can run the action, define the workflow you want to batch run, and define and parameters you want to pass off

- Publish WF and start on any item in that library

Depending on how much processing power you have and the amount of docs that need to be processed, run this over night or over a weekend to avoid disrupting system performance for other users.

Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions or questions.

Thanks!

Document Expiration handling

tommyg — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:13:35 GMT

Within our HR department there was a need to have documents with various expiry dates (AWAs, EBAs etc)... here is how we came up with a multi-tier warning for these documents...

Firstly, we created a new Site Content Type called Document with Expiry Information, based on the standard Document Type.

Create the following columns for this content type;

Expiry Date - date that the document will expire
Expiry Notification - user(s) / group(s) that will be notified via email
Expiry Comments - free form text for any extra comments regarding the expiry (not required)
Expiry Warning - Integer - number of days prior to expiry to send first warning email

Once this is done, you can then attach this document type to a document library. We are now ready to create the Workflow...

Create 3 new Workflow variables;

Expiry Warning Days - simply used to take the above field and switch it to a negative number
Expiry Warning Date - Calculated at runtime
Expiry Overdue Date - Calculated at runtime

Set the Workflow to start when items are created/modified

Now, to create the workflow;

Check if the content type of the document is Document with Expiry Information. If not then end the workflow immediately
Calculate variables

Expiry Warning Days - maths calc - Warning days * -1
Expiry Warning Date - Expiry Date + Expiry Warning Days
Expiry Overdue Date - Expiry Date + 30 Days

Create a parallel action, the first branch handles the emails as follows;

Add a Run-If - Expiry Warning Date is greater than date when action executed
Add a Delay until Expiry Warning Date
Add an Email notification - sending to Expiry Notify

Expiry email

Covers essentially the same steps as above, using the Expiry Date this time.

Overdue email

Covers essentially the same steps as above, using the Expiry Overdue Date this time.
Then finally, add an end workflow task

Now, the other branch of the parallel action simply terminates the workflow if the document if modified (and the workflow will then restart)d

Add a wait for item update
Set it to wait for the modified date to be not equal the modifed date (as in checking itself)
Then add an end workflow task

That's it. The run-if checks for the dates being in the future is important, because if the date is in the past - the workflow will simply sit there waiting for the date and not continue.

Basically at the end of this - you should have an email that is sent to the requested notifiers x number of days before the item is due to expire, then another one when it does - and finally (if they don't change the expiry date) another one 30 days later.

If you want an export of the workflow, let me know - hope someone finds this helpful

Cheers

Tom

New Starter Processing

Kara — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:19:04 GMT

The New Starters Form has been created to improve the process of preparing for a new staff member. An InfoPath form is completed by the new starter’s manager and submitted to a Nintex Workflow. The details of the form are sent to the IT, Facilities, Payroll and People & Culture departments to allow them to prepare the appropriate items for the new starter. The workflow keeps track of the progress of this processing stage and alerts the manager once it is complete.

How to get the delegated user of a task

leandropilan — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:20:30 GMT

Hello guys! I originally wrote this post at my blog, but I also would like to share it here on the forum as well.

http://workflowexperience.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-get-delegated-user-of-task.html

---

The current build of the nintex workflow 2007 (11004) isn't capable to get the delegated person by itself. Explaining better this scenario, the idea is to know when a User Task (e.g.: Flexi Task or Approval) is sent to a specific user, but this user have delegated all of his tasks using the task delegation from Nintex.

After searching for many days for a solution, I found a way to solve the problem. On this post I will show how is possible to get the user name of a delegated user. But one question before I start: Why do I need that? Well in my case, I needed the user name for 2 reasons:

Update a list collum with the name of the user who handled the task;
Give this user permissions on the List Item;

In my scenario, I was blocking the permissions for specific users, as a requirement of the Workflow. In order to give the delegated users correct permissions to view or modify the List Item, because for the workflow, just the original approver have permission, not the delegated. Just to clarify, I'm not talking about the task itself, the delegated user for who the task is assigned, get the permission to the task automatically from the workflow.

OBS: The approach described here don't works for direct task delegation on the action, it just works if the user delegates all of his tasks. A good example of how to handle a directly delegated task can be found here:
http://connect.nintex.com/files/folders/wflowactions/entry436.aspx

Below the workflow is explained step by step.

1. A new List was created, with the name "Delegation Test" and added a new colunm "Person" of the type "Person or Group".

2. The workflow is quite simple, I only have a FlexiTask which is assigned to the initiator. To make the scenario more real, I removed the permissions of all users and give just permissions to the initiator.

3. Before continuing, It's necessary to setup a variable to use later. It's a variable to store the Initiator User name. I gave the name "initiatorFullUserName". This variable is necessary because Nintex don't allow to use Common lookups in Comparison Actions.

4. The Flexi task must run in parallel with the Action Set used to get the delegated user. It' s necessary because we need to get the delegated user after the task is assigned to him. Approving or reject just send the Initiator a message.

5. Now we really will work with the delegation part. In order to get the delegated user, we will use the Nintex Workflow Web Service, available in every SharePoint site (e.g.: http://mysite/_vti_bin/nintexworkflow/workflow.asmx).
To handle this, we will invoke the "GetRunningWorkflowTasksForListItem" Method. For who are not used to the Nintex and Sharepoint Web Services, I will make a post in the future specifically for this topic, but now, I will only explain this method.

6. In order to configure the action, we need to provide some parameters, "List Name" and "ID" of the Item, all available as lookup data on the workflow, in "Commom" and "Item Properties" respectively. In order to store the results of the Web Service call (we need it to get the delegated user) I created a text variable, called "wsresult". It's also important to select the result format as "Xml", in order to insert a <xml>
tag on the result.

7. Here is a important step: On the XSL Transform textbox, we can create a Xpath query to filter the result. Bellow is the XSLT used for our example. Using it, we get exactly the user name of the person for who the task is assigned. I will not explain how the XSLT works in details because it's not the point here, but I recommend a website for who wants to study it: http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"

xmlns:ntx="http://nintex.com">

<xsl:template match="/">

<xsl:value-of select="xml/ntx:UserTask/ntx:AssignedTo/ntx:UserID"/>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

8. The last configuration of this action is to Capture the errors. We need to do it, because errors will happen! Yes can sound a little bit strange, but when we run the FlexiTask and the Web Service call in parallel, the webservice always runs first, and the task is not assigned. In order to avoid a workflow error, we capture
the error and keep the task running until there is no user name on the variable wsresult, using a "Loop" action. I have defined the variable wsresult as "string.empty" before the WebService call, to avoid a possible errors using a real empty string.

9. When the Workflow leave this Loop Action, it will have the name of the user for who the task is assigned. Now, we need to check if the username returned by the workflow is the same of the user assigned to the task (in our case, the initiator). If it's a different user name, it means the task is delegated!

10. Now, having the username, it's possible to do anything with the workflow, depending on the requirements. In my case, I will give the delegated user view permissions on the item, and will update the list adding the name of the delegated user to the "Person" field.

11. Bellow I will post the full workflow image. I hope it is useful!

Lazy Approval and Custom Task Notifications

sharepointbits — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:19:10 GMT

On a recent project I needed to support task reminder functions not supported by the default Nintex Task Reminder activity. The client also loves Lazy Approval to be able to support efficient task approval completion from mobile phones.

Lazy Approval works by appending a correlation token to the subject line of task notification emails. When a user replies to the email, the token is used to correlate the email back to the original task.

Lazy Approval is supported out of the box on the Task related activities like Approval Task and Task Reminder, but there is no out-of-box way to add them to custom notifications. I needed to be able to add the same Lazy Approval token to custom task notifications and task reminder notifications, so I wrote a custom Inline Function to support this.

Your can read the full post and download the source from my blog:

http://www.sharepointbits.com/blog/2009/8/14/nintex-workflow-lazy-approval-and-custom-task-reminders.html

Combine Nintex Workflow with Windows PowerShell

mbender — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:04:59 GMT

You know that Nintex Workflow enables organizations to build complex workflow processes quickly and easily using a web browser interface. However, advanced users may have sophisticated requirements that are not readily supported yet by Nintex Workflow. For such users who want to create functionalities as quickly as never before, Data One has developed a one-of-a-kind tool: Data One PowerActivity.

Microsoft Windows PowerShell command line shell and scripting language helps IT professionals achieve greater control and productivity. It is easy to adopt, learn, and use, because it works with your existing IT infrastructure and existing script investments, and because it runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003.

Data One PowerActivity enables the seamless integration of arbitrary PowerShell scripts with Nintex Workflows (no tedious deployment process as with regular SharePoint development!) and offers additional functionalities to integrate PowerShell and SharePoint developments. It also features a browser-based script editor with syntax highlighting for convenient script composing.

Some sample scenarios that have successfully been implemented using PowerActivity:

Create Web site upon item creation, set individual authorizations for Web site
Create Web Service proxy on-the-fly, call Web Service
import and parse XML file from file system
... anything Windows PowerShell can do

Benefit from Nintex Workflow to automate your business processes and administrative tasks. Reach your goals even faster now using Data One PowerActivity, the ideal tool for rapid development, prototypes, proof-of-concept studies and agile SharePoint development.

Contact us today for an individual demonstration or check out more cool stuff on http://www.ilovesharepoint.com/. Or get your live demo at BASTA! Spring 2009, where Data One as exclusive sponsor for the SharePoint Special Days will feature Nintex Workflow 2007 and Nintex Reporting 2008.

Antonio Tassone
http://www.dataone.de/en/

Risk and Compliance Management

Eben — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:39:20 GMT

The following solution was implemented by one of our global customers:

Risk & Compliance Solution

The Risk & Compliance solution is a combination of 10 InfoPath forms and two Nintex Workflows. Each month senior members of the Management Team are required to submit a Compliance Report and/or Risk Change Report to ensure the company meets their legal obligations. In the case of a breach of compliance or a change in the risk status a workflow process is kicked off and the Compliance Manager is notified of a potential problem. SharePoint and InfoPath are used to meet the UI and security requires of the solution; while Nintex provides the workflow. The workflow includes an approval process and updates the security settings of each item to maintain privacy.

How have you used OTB MOSS webservices ?

DanS — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:03:44 GMT

Thought it would be sweet to share with everyone different solutions you've had to different problems.. And how you used Webservices to sort it..

How many black balloons ?

DanS — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:55:34 GMT

ok so this isn't very nifty or very challenging.. But for those eco minded office spaces here's one for you..

We have a ping sweep setup that logs back all PCs and associated users to a txt file.. This txt file is sent to our ECO Office reps.. Anyway,, until now they sort of sat on this data, and every now and then they would send out a please explain to the users in question.. At our office we have a 100% turn off desktops after workhours, unless you state you need to leave it on for some reason. Amazingly they have seen some quite good energy reducion from the the practice.. Anyway.. I digress...

What the eco office staff do now is enter in the amount of PCs left on over night into a SP list.. A nintex Workflow calculates the amount of black balloons it is (approx PCs times 34 - I'm unsure of the source of the information, it is what I was told)

In a content editor webpart, using the source window copy and paste the following (edit to suit)

<TABLE style='WIDTH: 100%' summary=''>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD style='WIDTH: 145px'><IMG style='BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px solid; BORDER-LEFT: 0px solid; BORDER-TOP: 0px solid; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px solid' border=0 alt='Black Balloons' src='http://<server>/PublishingImages/43099.jpg'></TD>
<TD>
<DIV style='BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px solid; TEXT-ALIGN: left; BORDER-LEFT: 1px solid; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #efefef; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; WIDTH: 180px; PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; HEIGHT: 167px; COLOR: #006666; BORDER-TOP: 1px solid; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px solid;' id=blackballoons1>
<DIV>
<P>
<CENTER><B>Number of computers left on overnight:</B><BR>
<SPAN id=blackballoons><IMG src="http://<server>/Image%20Library/62.gif"></SPAN>
<P align=center><A title="Black Balloon Program" href="http://<server>/Resources/IntPrograms/ecooffice/Pages/BlackBalloonProgram.aspx" target=""><U>
<FONT color=#065077 style='font-size: xx-small'>Click here for more info</FONT></U></A></P>
<SCRIPT language=javascript type=text/javascript>
var BBListID = "{02340083-E51B-4E2A-9511-F7583B43F27E}";
var BBServerURL = "http://<server>/";
var BBSiteURL = "http://<server>/Resources/IntPrograms/ecooffice";
var URLprotocolURL = BBSiteURL + "/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&XMLDATA=TRUE&List=" + BBListID;
var BBxmlhttp = null;
try
{
BBxmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
}
catch (e)
{
try
{
BBxmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
}
catch (e)
{
try
{
BBxmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
catch (e)
{
alert("Your browser does not support XMLHTTP.");
}
}
}
BBxmlhttp.onreadystatechange = StateChange;
BBxmlhttp.open("GET", URLprotocolURL, true);
BBxmlhttp.send(null);
function StateChange() {
if (BBxmlhttp.readyState == 4) {
if (BBxmlhttp.status == 200) {
setInterval("DisplayBB()", 8000);
}
else {
alert("Problem retrieving XML data");
}
}
}
function DisplayBB() {
    var BBxmlDoc = BBxmlhttp.responseXML;
    var BBListItems = BBxmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("z:row") || xmlDoc.getElementsByTagNameNS("*", "row");
    if (BBListItems.length > 0) {
        var BBSelectedItem = BBListItems[0];
        var BBNumber = BBSelectedItem.getAttribute("ows_LinkTitle");
        var BBBalloons = BBSelectedItem.getAttribute("ows_Approx_x0020_Black_x0020_Balloon");
        document.getElementById("blackballoons").innerHTML = '<h3>' + BBNumber + '</h3>approximately <b>' + BBBalloons + '</b> black balloons';
    } else {
        alert('No List Items were returned');
    }
}
</SCRIPT>
</CENTER></DIV></DIV>
<P align=center><A title="Black Balloon Program" href="http://<server>/Resources/IntPrograms/ecooffice/Pages/BlackBalloonProgram.aspx" target=""></A> </P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Ministerial Workflow

Gerald — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:24:19 GMT

We created a document workflow for a government department to track the creation and cataloging of ministerial papers. The workflow includes multiple approvals and escalations, with permissions added and removed accordingly, before sending the paper to TRIM records repository upon final approval

Get Well Soon card workflow

furuknap — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:54:09 GMT

Hi!

I've written and designed a 'Get Well Soon' card workflow, in which employees are asked to provide greetings to sick employees. The workflow is described in the free Nintex issue of Understanding SharePoint Journal that I have worked on for the last couple of months. You'll learn, step-by-step how to develop the workflow and all the techniques used in the workflow, including state machines, working with external web services, automatic task delegation, etc.

The issue also introduces other aspects of Nintex Workflow, including installation and setup, working with the designer, workflow logic, etc.

You can get that issue free from http://www.learnnintex.com/.

Easy extension of Nintex Workflow calculation capabilities (using SQL or Web Services)

parelst1 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:43:49 GMT

I am a new user of NW and I am enthusiastic about developing workflows, but I run into the need to perform more advanced calculations (even at the level of calling user defined functions) from those offered in the standard set of NW actions.

So far I found two methods to achieve this:

A) By using SQL

B) By using Web Services

Here is the description of the first method (using SQL):

1) Create in an MS SQL Server (or other RDBMS) a table with one field (arbitrary field name ) and one record (arbitrary field value). Let us name it xTable.

2) In your Workflow insert "Execute SQL" actions and use SQL commands like:

- select substring('{ItemProperty:Title}',1,3) from xTable (using standard RDBMS functions)

- select dbo.f('{ItemProperty:Title}') from xTable (using scalar user defined functions)

Here is the definition of the simplistic function f just for demonstration purposes:

CREATE FUNCTION f (@x varchar(50) = '')
RETURNS varchar(50) AS
BEGIN
declare @y varchar(50)
select @y = Upper(@x) + '>>'
return @y
END

So this method exploits the capabilities of the SQL language and the RDBMS system.

Now I will describe the (more) orthodox and flexible method (web services):

1) Create a asmx file using notepad or VS 2005 similar to the following:

<%@ WebService Language="VB" Class="TempConvert" %>

Imports System
Imports System.Web.Services

Public Class TempConvert :Inherits WebService

<WebMethod()> Public Function WSF_UCase (ByVal xVar As String) As String

return UCase(trim(xVar))
end function

... other user defined functions ....

end class

Name it xxx.asmx and copy it into : C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\CustomWebServices

where CustomWebServices is a new sub-folder which should be created by you.

2) In your Nintex workflow add a "Call Web Service" Action, put as Url the following : http://yoursite/_layouts/customwebservices/xxx.asmx and now you can calculate your workflow variables using the functions in your xxx.asmx file.

Now you have the (almost) unlimited capabilities and flexibility of web services !!!

I hope that this post will be of some help to some colleagues in the NW community.

Best Regards from Athens Greece,

Stratos Parellis

Employee Onboarding/Offboarding

Kara — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:28:16 GMT

Managing staff turnover involves HR, Finance, Payroll and IT.

Having previously managed this as a manual process, our customer knew they could benefit greatly from automating these processes with online forms, whilst at the same time populating their many disparate systems with the new/ updated employee information. This customer now has 10 InfoPath forms to cover new staff and new clients, as well as updating client profiles and deleting of staff accounts in each of these systems. Nintex Workflow (Enterprise) 2007 is the engine controlling the workflow, and sends the relevant information to the back end systems using web services.

Newsletter content workflow

Gerald — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:39:58 GMT

The newsletter solution utilises content types, the search web service and sharepoint groups to collate and distribute an enterprise newsletter.

Using Nintex Workflow, the search web service is called to return all announcments and events that have been created on the portal in the last week, and have been marked as accessible to the entire enterprise.

Using XSLT, the results are formatted and collated in to an email, which is then sent to users who have subscribed to it's distribution

Maximum Approval/Reject posibilities

frederik@silversandsassociates.com — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:53:44 GMT

We needed a solution to give the customer a maximum of ways to Approve/Reject a request.
Another requirement is that the workflow is 100% reusqble

- The Normal way in SharePoint, Email is send to the user
- Within InfoPath: 2 custom buttons with reject and approve
- Within a SharePoint View, direct way to approve or reject
- My Tasks, whenever the form is approved or rejected, the task should be completed

InfoPath: We added 2 fields
SharePoint: Changed the Form Status field to Choice, and added the 3statusses, Pending, Approved, Rejected
Nintex: 1 workflow that handles all the features
    1 Parallel branch
    Branch Left: Normal Approval Request
    Branck Right: Waiting for a field update, then a condition to check if Approved or rejected, then Complete Workflow task

Within InfoPath we didn't use the webservices as explained in de SDK.

Frederik Van Lierde
http://www.SilverSandsAssociates.com

Document Duplication to IIS

bhinson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:27:45 GMT

We are using MOSS as a private Intranet, and our public web site is a template driven traditional IIS site. We have some instances where we need certain documents published to certain document libraries in MOSS to also appear on the public Web site. Not all documents, but some...

We started trying this with Web Services, which was a hugely overcomplicated task. Accomplishing this with WF2007, however, was surprisingly simple.

With document libraries there are some additional features to Nintex under Publishing, one of which is Copy to File Share. We used this to move a copy of newly published documents to our public web server. Next we used a SQL Interaction to move meta-data to SQL server (name, source, publish date, etc.) Finally, we query SQL server on our public web site to produce pages with details and links to items published in our portal. We are using ColdFusion and .NET for this - doesn't matter what language though - just query SQL and produce the links.

We also added a form element to the document library that essentially is a Yes/No field called Public. If they click Yes, then the workflow is triggered and their document is published to the web.

Bada bing. Our users can kill two birds with one stone.

This was so much easier than using Web Services - ultimately saved us a lot of time and work.

Brad Hinson

Client Statement Adjustments

bpulliam — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:05:47 GMT

My company has a well established paper process that depending on the amount and reason for the adjustment can include up to 4 signatures in order for that adjustment to be authorized to be performed.

This approach had the following shortcomings:

1) Paper gets lost - does not provide feedback without prompting someone to stop doing what they are doing and go track it down.

2) Requires additional overhead to move it around.

3) if an exception occurs, or some other type of wrinkle occur the process breaks down

4) Not everyone does it the same way

5) No reporting support other than a derived report from the system that does not supply the who's and when's from the process

We instituted a SharePoint list (migrating to infopath in the near term) where the requests could be made that Nintex subsequently routes through the byzantine set of approval rules. This did few things...(not all inclusive but some of the more interesting things)

1) Made us scratch our heads at this process, and ask questions like, "is all this really necessary?

2) provide an automated paperless means to accomplish the same task

3) Provide instrumentation so that we can now report things such as out of "X" requests, we reject "X%" whereas before this information was annecdotal at best.

This was all done by a non-it person in the finance department that has little or no formal technical training....technically oriented, but not a true tech.

Other than some funky internal network glitches the process has been low maintenance and does what it does well. Has earned a good reputation w/in the company, I expect we will do more and more of these types of things in the future.

Job Tracking in Accounts Receivable

Eben — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:44:39 GMT

Nintex Workflow is used to facilitate collaboration between a major commpany's AR and their customers. It is also used to raise alerts to management when jobs are overdue.

Summary of core functions:

1. Notify AR managers when jobs are overdue.

2. Notify AR employees when they have been assigned a job.

3. Notify clients when they are required to respond to a query