Actionable advice on migrating Nintex Workflow & Forms to Office 365Rebecca ZeyHINES

Owen Runnals GENERAL NETWORKS CORP

AgendaINTRODUCTIONS

MIGRATION CHALLENGES

PLANNING ACTIVITIES

DEEP DIVE• FORMS

• WORKFLOW

CLOSING

Introductions

4

Rebecca Zey

• Senior Business Systems Analyst

• Hines Interests

• 12 years experience with Nintex workflows

• 5 years experience with Nintex forms

• Mother of two

• rzey@hines.com

5

Owen Runnals

• Director of Professional Services

• General Networks Corporation

• MCSD SharePoint developer

• Workflow and forms expert

• Patriots fan

• Father of three

• orunnals@gennet.com

Migration challenges

7

Migration Challenges

Nintex Forms• Not all controls exist in Office 365

• Forms won’t always migrate perfectly

• Migration Tools have limitations

Nintex Workflow• Not all actions exist in Office 365

• Actions that do exist don’t all have the same features

• Some workflows can’t be migrated at all

Planning activities

SharePoint On Premises to SharePoint OnlinePlanning

• Locate all forms in the environment using PowerShell script

SharePoint On Premises to SharePoint OnlinePlanning

• Locate all workflows in the environment using PowerShell script

DeepDiveForms

12

Deep DiveForms• Form fields not connected to list columns

• No user profile queries

• No SQL query

• No web request

• No forms on asset libraries in SPO• Image content type

• Some forms you may want to rebuild in responsive design

13

Form Fields not connected to list columns?• It’s okay to have form fields not connected to lists

• Those fields will migrate when the form is migrated

• However, data in them will not migrate from 2010 to O365.

14

Forms User Profile QueriesPrior to 1/17/2018, you had to use the Query User Profile action. Now you can use rules and calculated values on the form.

15

Forms User Profile QueriesNEW – User Profile Lookup

16

Can’t use Nintex Forms on image content type in O365

• Resolution to issue…

• Use a List library for users to upload images

• Use a workflow to copy the image to an asset library for review based on image properties

17

Changing simple forms to responsive forms in O365

DeepDiveWorkflow

19

Deep DiveWorkflow• Be more aware of # of actions (<= 5 are free)

• No user defined actions

• Permission updates

• Multiselect people fields

• Parse XML to HTML (XSLT)

• Query XML vs Office 365 query XML

• Flexitask vs. start a task process

• REST services are your friend

20

Email Configuration

• Internal vs External Emails

• Emailing SharePoint Security Groups

• Multi-select People Fields

21

Permissions updates

• There are differences in the set item permissions action from 2010 to O365

• In 2010 you could use 1 action to remove permission, and set multiple user permission levels

• If you use the remove permissions option make sure you’re adding back a group with at least read access that contains the workflow initiator

22

In O365, you can only set 1 permission level at a time

23

Multiselect person—copy from one item to another

1) Insert query list and store multiselect person column in collection variable

2) Use a Regular expression action to remove characters [, ] and “ and store result in text variable Regex: [\[\]\"]

3) Use another regular expression action to replace comma with semicolon and store result in text variable

4) Your text variable can now be used to update a multiselect person column in SharePoint list items

24

Parse XML to HTML1) In on premise query XML allowed you to use XSLT for processing XML

3) Need to use query XML for each value you want and store in separate variables

2) No XSLT in SPO only single xpath reference, also only one output per action!

4) Use build string and concat hard coded html with the variables and store in text variable

25

Connection ManagerNEW

26

Query list vs. Office 365 query list

Query list• Current site context only

• Visual Query Builder or OData filter

• Retrieve a single column and map to a collection (5 items matching query would mean 5 values of that column in a collection)

• OR multiple outputs and map each column to a single variable (great for when you know only one result exists and you want to get multiple fields of info from that item)

• Field values are limited to what Nintex provides (no system columns)

Office 365 query list• Connect to other SharePoint sites

• Requires username/password

• Visual query builder or CAML editor, but more manual (no dropdown of fields)

• Ability to include subfolders

• Ability to define return fields

• Store first field from query builder in a collection

• Store all result XML field data in a collection

Assign a Task

• All Tasks require a custom form.• The SharePoint

default form is confusing to most users

Task FormsIn SP 2010, there is a link back to the item from the default SharePoint form which automatically comes through with a customized Nintex task form

This does not exist in O365 via SharePoint task, so by default does not exist via Nintex forms.

In SP 2010, the attachments to an item come through in the default task form as item properties, When you customize the form in 2010 – the attachments are not there.

In O365, the attachments are not available in a default task form or in a custom form.

In SP 2010, the task form comments can be easily captured in the following workflow steps using the workflow context actions.

In O365, capturing the comments is not as simple. It must be customized through a workflow action

29

If all else fails: REST is your friendREST can achieve what can’t be done with off the shelf actions

2) Values: URL: {Workflow Context:Current site URL}_api/ContextInfoMethod: POSTContent type: application/x-www-form-urlencodedBody (Content): {}Provide username & passwordStore response content in text variable: ResponseXml

3) Retrieve Digest Token: Insert Query XMLXML Source: ResponseXmlVariableXPath: /d:GetContextWebInformation/d:FormDigestValueStore First Result in Text Variable: strDigestToken

4) Call any REST service and provide X-RequestDigest headerHeader name (key): X-RequestDigestHeadervalue: strDigestToken

1) Get Digest Token: Add a Web Request action

Questions!

Actionable advice on migrating Nintex workflow & Forms to Office 365

31

References

https://goo.gl/u1P72m - Download this deck!

https://goo.gl/tJcjYY - PowerShell Scripts for Analysis

https://goo.gl/9N4TBT - April 2017 Migration Advice - Tomasz Poszytek

https://goo.gl/Dxo7Bw - Community discussion on 2010 -> O365

https://roadmap.nintex.com/ - Product Roadmap

https://goo.gl/G6JS6q - Sharegate 7 Migration Tips

https://goo.gl/qsTnPq - Contact Owen for help

From the xchange mobile app, select “Survey” from the sessions that you attend

Complete the short evaluation

Click “Submit”

Thank you!

Actionable advice on migrating Nintex workflow & Forms to Office 365

Appendix

36

Library Forms

List library form in O365Image Library Form in 2010

37

• Build your dictionary

• Use the call web service action to gather data

38

• Put the results of the web service action in a temporary dictionary

• Set the initial loopcount variable

• Get the attachmenturl

39

• Get the attachment filename from the web service results

• Build the url to copy the attachment to

• Use the call web service action to write the file to the asset library

40

• Update the asset library image fields

• Query list to get Image GUID

41

• Pause for 2 minutes to allow the item and metadata finish writing before kicking off the workflow on the image in the asset library

• Start workflow in image library (In O365 when an item is created by a workflow, the workflow in that list will not start automatically)

• Pause for 21 days for process owner to review images

• Delete image from List Library so we don’t keep duplicate data