We selected Nintex Platform because we have experience with other products, and we were satisfied with their performance. The integration with SharePoint was a very strong point to help us to decide because we wanted to use SP as a document library.
.NET is well suited for any general purpose solution to a business problem, though if we are talking strictly the framework version - you have to be more or less tied to Microsoft Windows to run it. If this isn't a problem, then it will be able to address and solve any programming project you have.
We use Nintex to automate fundraising outreach at scale. It helps us send personalized emails to a large contact list, and we’d also like to automate follow-ups when there’s no reply. If you need highly customized solutions or clean, fully controllable code, I wouldn’t recommend Nintex. It has many features, but it’s not the same as building your own system from scratch. That said, it can save a lot of time for standard automation workflows.
Integrations with other services using various secure authentication methods, along with the seamless integration with SharePoint, are the icing on the cake. This makes it superior to other BPM tools available in the market.
Flexibility in application development - The diverse configurable properties offer multiple ways to utilise the controls and events, affording the flexibility to expand your scope and enabling the creation and use of processes in a myriad of ways.
The streamlined and efficient deployment process significantly accelerates release management, allowing for faster and smoother implementation of updates and new features.
The user interface of the pages offers a more refined and appealing look and feel compared to most other BPM tools.
.NET is heavily Microsoft Windows oriented, and while .NET core tried to resolve that with MacOS and Linux support, .NET Core is still waiting for wider adoption.
While free for small projects, additional features for big projects can be a little expensive.
Can be resource-heavy upon deployment. We continuously have our more senior staff optimize the code of our junior developers for performance. Other languages are a little bit more forgiving in comparison.
If you are creating a process with parallel subprocesses, there's no way to see, in a single view in Nintex, all the steps for the subprocesses. You have to view each sub-process in its own view, so it's hard to see what's going on at a high level.
There isn't an easy way to filter the processes by another user (not yourself) in Nintex. There is a report that shows processes and objects by user, but that's not as convenient. This is something that I've seen in other tools (OpenPages by IBM) so I am surprised that it is missing.
Nintex doesn't really have a way to capture iterative processes (which we have a lot of). It's designed for linear processes.
We are currently investigating which collaboration platform best suits our needs. Chances are that we move to SharePoint Online and then we're going to also consider the microsoft power platform (power automate and power apps) to develop forms and workflows. Aspecially the pricing model for the cloud is currently a blocking factor to go for the Nintex solution in the Cloud.
The full .NET Framework is an amazing thing and is very robust. We have used it to create console apps, Windows apps, and online apps. When coupled with Visual Studio, development, testing, building, and deploying our applications has become 100 times easier as compared to doing those things manually before. The automation of this process has helped us push out changes to our applications faster to adapt to the ever-changing business requirements.
Based on the on-prem experience with this tool, I believe that they have a lot of potential to help the online version catch up to where the on-prem left off. Nintex developed their online version and it is not as fully formed or capable compared to the on-prem version, and the licensing model scales back what we would have liked to be an expansion or at least continuous improvement of existing flows. It is also not near as user friendly specifically to non-developers and has an uncanny similarity to Microsoft Flow in the online instance. Consistent with my reviews of the tool - I believe they have some good approaches to design thinking that, if translated well from on-prem to online, could make this a clear winner again.
The Nintex Process Platform has never crashed or had any availability issues during my usage. However there was an issue that was of my own making that caused a slowdown of the system. I had set up a process to run once a day and check for employees on a list that had certain parameters selected, and for some reason that I had to troubleshoot, the process instead ran constantly, which filled the cache quickly. I ended up having to dismantle that process so the system didn't crash.
Unlike any other process automation product out there. Not only is it a low-code, easy to use tool for building processes in environments like SharePoint or Salesforce, they have really started to expand their tool-set by offering tools to manage other things like process mapping, RPA, mobile,etc.
You don't often need to reach out to Microsoft for .NET support. If you do, there are forums and websites that have active Microsoft support folks where you can provide feedback or get help. Microsoft support in general is quite good as well, but not cheap. The best support is from the community like StackOverflow.
The support team works as fast as they can and they are usually fast to solver the issues. Sometimes they need more time to solve one of them because our workflows and so on are more complex than usual clients.
I used the Nintex training software, it was easy to watch and follow along. It didn't go too fast and was descriptive enough to understand what the steps needed were in order to produce efficient workflows and user friendly forms.
1.Start with Simple Workflows: Begin with basic workflows to gain user confidence before tackling complex processes. 2.Involve Stakeholders Early: Engage business users and IT early to align workflows with real business needs. 3.Comprehensive Training: Invest in user training to ensure smooth adoption and reduce resistance. 4.Leverage Prebuilt Templates: Use Nintex’s templates to speed up implementation and maintain consistency. 5.Iterate and Optimize: Continuously improve workflows based on user feedback and performance metrics.
The .NET platform has a much longer and broader history than Laravel, so we chose to go with it as the support will be far superior. Additionally, Laravel is tied to PHP, while you can use multiple different languages in .NET. The additional flexibility that .NET provides in the range of types of applications you can build with it sealed the deal.
Microsoft environment does not have the scalability of Nintex; it is perfect for small and medium-sized companies, especially in environments where Microsoft environment is almost entirely used. Although Microsoft offers options to connect to other applications, its platform lacks the development and robustness that Nintex provides. Nintex not only covers Microsoft environments but also Google and other important platforms.
The scalability is really bottlenecked by the imagination of the user. I was able to make processes for my own personal usage, making my daily tasks easier. I was also able to make processes that affected hundreds of employees, making large standardization and efficiency gains. So either way, the system is used the same way, and I was the limiting factor.
There are few factors we needed for our custom development. Below are each of them. We were able to get a satisfactory outcome for each of these factors which made .NET platform a very good choice in developing enterprise applications.
Reusability of codes- Microsoft has given many re-usable codes and components in the framework to help developers do their job effortlessly. With the help of default features, developers can create end-to-end solutions and make the business operations more efficient. As codes and components are reusable, .NET reduces development time and if applications take less time to develop, they cost cheaper and you get faster return on investment.
Easy to maintain- Development cost is one time, but maintenance cost is incurring. .NET apps are easily maintainable, thanks to the configuration settings that can be modified without any need to rewrite the code.
Deployment is hassle free- Deploying software is always challenging and the most common problem developers face in this process is the existence of multiple DLLs. It’s hard to make sure that all DLLs will co-exist in the same machine. .NET framework solves this problem by allowing different versions of the same DLL to exist side-by-side on the same machine.
Security- .NET is one of the most secure web and application development frameworks available in the market. As it’s made by Microsoft, you can be absolutely sure about the security measurements. Hackers can never steal valuable data from your website or apps.
Cross platform friendly- What if you had developed an app for desktop and laptop computers and now after seeing the growth of mobile apps in the market, you want it in mobile version as well? You can easily develop an app that runs on the desktop and PDA without any issue. As you can re-use the codes and utilize the same development environment, your job becomes a lot simpler.
People have woken up to the amount of overlap after mapping their processes.
People can be resistant to process changes. You need to have the support from above or support from the 'business' that you are process changing to be able to see the positive impacts.
Numbers talk. if you can get a general salary figure from your HR dept to show savings for 'employee bands', then when you present reports, they will be all the richer in data.
