Tag: Nintex Forms

#Nintex Forms magic with panels for Office 365

Posted on by Swetha Sankaran, Microsoft MVP - Office 365

This post is about multiple panel buttoned forms layout to traverse through various sections of Nintex forms for #Office365 in #SharePoint Online lists.

Create a completely customized Nintex forms for Office 365 SharePoint Online list. The home panel has button interface to traverse through different sections of the forms as required. Customization include switching the panels with button click in the home panel, custom control designs and scripts. You can download this for reusable script & css in form settings.

Dependencies: Nintex forms for Office 365, Script, CSS Supporting browsers.

Compatibility: Nintex Forms for Office 365

Platform: SharePoint Online

List with three columns: Title, JavaScript and CSS(No, you don’t need those three for this to be fancy )PM1

When you click + New Item > Home PanelPM2

When you click the 1st button:PM3

When you click the 2nd button:PM4

When you click the 3rd button:PM5

Clicking save will submit the entered data to your SharePoint online list.
Here is the sample rule for the panel:PM6

 

VideoBe warned, I type like its my 1958 mechanical typewriter and conveniently forgot to turn off the microphone while recording,
Oops! But you get to watch fun forms in action, so its all cool!Scripts & CSSfunction fnJumpToPanel(panelNo)
{
var txtBoxNumber= NWF$(“#”+txtBoxNumberID);
txtBoxNumber.val(panelNo);
NWF.FormFiller.Functions.ProcessOnChange(txtBoxNumber); //alert(panelNo);
}/*Custom form CSS*/
.btn {
padding: 0 5px 0 5px !important;
border-color: #2e6da4 !important;
border: 1px solid transparent;
border-radius: 4px;   font-weight: 400;
line-height: 1.4285;
text-align: center;text-shadow:1px 1px 2px black, 0 0 25px, blue, 0 0 6 darkblue;}
.panelCustom{
border: 1px solid #dfdfdf;
border-radius: 10px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888888;
-webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888888;
box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888888;
}

Here is the link to the article’s Nintex Xchange Community Connect post: https://community.nintex.com/docs/DOC-4060

Good luck!

Missing Nintex Forms Icon – Fix

Posted on by Swetha Sankaran, Microsoft MVP - Office 365

One of our SharePoint Online site was missing the following Nintex forms items this morning –

  1. Nintex Forms Icon in the SharePoint List ribbon
    NF1
  2. Nintex List Forms Online webpartNF2
  3. Missing new form webpart in the SharePoint page. The page was just blank.NF3

-I had not made any changes to the site and permissions of the site did NOT allow for modifications to pages for other users.
-I WAS the owner of the site with FULL CONTROL
-Behavior was the same on ALL browsers

Having ruled the above out, I went on to research the reason for this behavior. #Nintex Connect always has useful resources and found that there were a couple other who had the issue.

Ref:
https://community.nintex.com/thread/9810,
https://community.nintex.com/thread/9931

Solution was straight forward, remove Nintex Forms app and reinstall it. It does NOT modify the form design in your list. ALL customization stays intact, so no big deal. Below image shows the steps I had to unistall and reinstall the app

NF4.png

Now that we have removed and reinstalled Nintex Forms for Office 365 app in our “SITE”, missing Nintex forms elements reappear in their corresponding sections.

NOTE:

While Nintex Forms items are restored, you still need to:

  • Customize the List form in Nintex and publish it once again. You will notice that all your custom designs are intact.
  • Open your Nintex List Workflow and republish it. (Especially if you have task forms that are customized.)
  • Re-add the webpart in your SharePoint page and set the required webpart properties.

If they aren’t done, then SharePoint smartly users its OOTB form to display custom list and Task list items. Not the pretty Nintex. 🙂

Items to also keep in mind:

This happens in specific site, NOT the entire site collection/tenant. So NO need to fret/worry about OTHER site Nintex Forms.  They remain unaffected.

While I could not pin point to find out what caused this, I am happy the fix was easy enough to implement and NO loss of data/time or even energy.

And thats why I love the simplicity of Nintex and cloud collaboration.

Good luck!

@Nintex Workflow Professional Certificate

Posted on by Swetha Sankaran, Microsoft MVP - Office 365

Today I took an exam and added Nintex Workflow Professional Certificate to my list of official certifications. Target audience for the certification are experienced forms and workflow creators. Questions covered designing, creating and debuggins Nintex workflows and forms concepts. #Excited to have taken the test as it was the high point of my day!

Nintex tells me I am skilled at creating Workflows and Forms! WOOT!!

NintexWorkflowProCertificate.PNG

Nintex for Office 365 – Lazy Approval

Posted on by Swetha Sankaran, Microsoft MVP - Office 365

The much awaited Nintex Lazy Approval action for Office 365 SharePoint online is here making your approval process SUPER FAST! All we have to do now is to simply type ‘Ok’ or a few other accepted keywords (covers almost all words I could think of for saying yes or no) in the assigned task notification and hit SEND. Right from your inbox without going to your SharePoint environment.

Here’s something for you to try in your cloud as well(weather permitting ofcourse – just kidding!)

App Requirements:

Your organization has purchased a few training resource licenses and your rock-star team of devs/engineers/architects/students/runners/movers/shakers…well you get the idea, want a process in place that will track requests allowing users to avail training for two weeks and then release the hold, so others can book the same.

Solution:
Create a list, setup a workflow, assign a task when resource is requested. Pause the process for two weeks, then continue the process by assign a task for returning the item. On return, release the hold for the resource.

List columns:

Training Requests SharePoint list columns.
Training Requests SharePoint list columns.

Leaving out the default columns(Created, Created By, Modified, Modified By and Title ofcourse we now have

  1. StartDate – defaults to Today
  2. EndDate – calculated by adding two weeks to StartDate
  3. ServiceRequested – Lookup list with names of available resources
  4. Reason- multiline textbox for explaining why you need the resource.
  5. TrainingRequestWorkflow(well, this is your column with status of the workflow)
  6. Requester-You, when you submit the request. Set the default view to show image and title

Customize with Nintex Forms to show the fields as shown below. (I set Requester name to current user and StartDate as Today on form load)

Submit a request for training resource
Submit a request for training resource

Now we are ready to assign requested resources to users via lazy approval process. Image below shows workflow steps. 

  1. Set workflow status to In Progress
    Set workflow status
    1b
  2. Add Time to Date-Assign that to workflow variable dtEndTime
    2a

    Add two weeks, set variable dtEndDate and set it to field EndDate
    Add two weeks, set variable dtEndDate and set it to field EndDate
  3.  Set field in current item– Assign value of dtEndTime to EndDate field in the listSet value of EndDate field.
  4. Assign a task-This is where you set Lazy Approval4a
    Assign a task action values in detail4c4b 4c 4dSet your Default Outcome to (Ok/No), OOTB default is Approved/Rejected.Check the Allow LazyApproval to enable the same. What this does is to email the user when a task is assigned seen in email below.

    4e4f

  5.  If the user replies with OK then set the following actions in the workflow path
    5a
    –Set field in the current item-Title with EndDate
    5b
     –Set Workflow Status to Assigned-Paused And Pause until EndDate
    –Pause Until Date5c
  6. After pausing the workflow for two weeks,  Assign a task just as in step 4. Except, when the user replies with OK, Set the workflow status as Hold-Released. Reset the Title  as ‘Training Available’6a6b
  7. After two weeks/end date, you will receive a notification again reminding you to release the item.9a9b
  8. Once the user replies OK then the list item is updated, and task is marked as complete.7a
  9. If the user replied with ‘No’ then Set Workflow Status as ‘Extend-Hold’ and then Reset Title as seen in the value below. Workflow task is completed.6c7b

Thats it! You are done.  And here is the quick snapshot of all steps at a glance.

Quick snapshot of all the steps.
Quick snapshot of all the steps.

Lazy Approval really makes approval process and task completion faster for users.

This is just an(my) example and one way of solving a request/task assignment scenario with Lazy Approval enabled. As we all know, there are multiple solutions for any task/requirement. Choose what best fits your needs and have fun working smart! 🙂

Office 365 Nintex Workflow: Assign a Task with direct Edit link to the task item

Posted on by Swetha Sankaran, Microsoft MVP - Office 365

Office 365 with SharePoint Online has excellent custom form and workflow options, that is a known fact.

Those who love InfoPath Designer 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 can do A LOT of customized workflows, with multiple approval paths, parallel approvals, conditional task and anything else you can think of or not, with the OOTB actions and steps in SharePoint Designer 2013. I love InfoPath Designer and I love SharePoint designer, there is no secondary thought about that. But what you love need not always be what is loved by all. 🙂

So in comes Nintex. My first time with Nintex Form and Nintex Workflow.

Straight forward request this time.

There is a Sofware Request form, when a user submits request -> Approver A->Approves->Approver B->Approves->Approver A again for further actions.

Creating the custom sharepoint list with the identified fields is nothing new. Once the list is created with your columns(lookups, person/group, multiline textbox, datetime etc.,) Look at your List tab.

Your will see Nintex Forms and Nintex Workflow ready and available to customize the list with.

NintexFFormWorkflow

Click the Nintex workflow and you will be redirected to the NIntex Workflow

CustomWF

The Gotcha! moment came when I was trying to modify the Assign a task action for the first approval step.

The auto generated Email Body of the task notification conveniently prepopulates the body with required task items along with a link to the related item. {Task:Title} redirects the approver to the Task item assigned to her/him. Now, what if I don’t want to go to the item and then click Edit Item and then Approve adding comments? Sounds pretty exhausting just saying that eh!

HyperlinkEditTask

Here’s where I was so proud of myselfl, see that Hyperlink button in the yellow box, I used that to insert Edit the task url with the URL of the Task “Edit Item “. Then removed the ID=xyz to ID= Edit Menu Table Start this inserts the {Current Item:: Edit Menu Table Start} which got the dynamic ID of the task and opens the edit item task for the approver!

Not bad for the very first custom Nintex workflow in Office 365 SharePoint Online eh! 🙂

Trust this post helps someone looking for the quick edit link as well.

Intrigued about the Lazy approval action in Nintex Workflow. I don’t have IM option for notification in O365 SP Online apps. Who knows, maybe I’ll find it soon and post another blog on it soon.

Cause you know, as a great woman(ahem…me) once said

the more you know

the more you know and

the more you share

the more you care!