Nintex vs. Power Apps

Nintex is constantly releasing new updates to the process platform. We are partially mapping out our current processes and have already seen areas where we can reduce the overlapping work of various staff members. Process mapping and the platform take time, no matter how easy the tool makes it (it's easy). If you don't have the time or resources to commit to process or experience improvement, you may need to look internally to see if your business C-level is ready to 'improve' things. We learned this the hard way until we were able to show results.

PowerApps is well suited for "quick-wins" and fast prototypes of business solutions. It also is beneficial for situations where business partners and developers work together - it allows the business folks to provide a "quick-and-dirty" prototype which is then fleshed-out by developers that are trained experts on the platform. The interactive and easy to understand representation of the solution allows business partners to "see" the solution and add, remove, or correct aspects of it themselves. It provides a common view and understanding of the actual solution across business units and tech teams. PowerApps, being a low-code\no-code platform is not well suited for business processes that require many complex computations or large amounts of custom code - such as solutions that are better architected as Web Site or "full-blown" desktop solutions. There are solutions that are just not easy or quick to accomplish in a low-code\no-code platform. Enterprise Architects should know the difference, however business partners often try to create a solution and only when stuck because it becomes too complex do they engage a tech team for assistance - at which point there are sunk-costs involved and hinderences to re-platforming the solution

• Easily build approval process using email and assign a task actions in Nintex Workflow
• Easily manage security at item level with O365 permission action in Nintex Workflow
• Easily use Rule in Nintex Form to build the Input Form and manage the events

Incentivized

• Power Apps has formats that are pre-built that don't require any coding which makes it easier to achieve your vision. This does become a challenge if your App needs don't fit into that format.
• We deal with a ton of data so the fact that you can connect to any data source in addition to their pre-stablished data connections makes the process a breeze.
• The online learning resources and tutorials are helpful as well for those who are tech savvy.

Incentivized

• Adding Machine learning features like the "Image and Text Automation" component, which allows bots to extract data from unstructured sources like scanned documents or PDFs.
• Natural language processing (NLP) features to understand and interpret human language, which can be useful for tasks like customer service or data entry. mostly for middle east countries where Arabic language is used.
• Integration with external systems where many industries uses their own legacy systems and they need RPA bot to interact with their systems as well.
• Adding More OCR tools for Document data extraction and dynamic content.

Incentivized

• More complicated to understand in comparison with Nintex Forms.
• Complicated to find errors.
• Using PowerApps for SharePoint Forms is a bit complicated by setting up the start and load scenario with a lot of JavaScript.
• Load values, change them by code, and save them back could be easier. Actually quite complicated to handle a lot of variables.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

PowerApps is a great solution and I have spent the last year familiarizing myself with the platform and building custom applications to complete a whole range of tasks such as asset management, custom invoice generation, and item restriction tracking. We as a company have barely begun to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with PowerApps.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The community forums are extremely responsive to questions asked, there is a good body of online documentation and many community posts to draw from. Although the platform has changed, which means some of the posts are out of date and the solutions provided aren't relevant. Of relevance, I read over 400 articles plus documentation to get this first app built in SharePoint, move it to SQL and make it work exactly the way it should.

The trainer addressed the smallest queries in a friendly and timely manner; He walked us through all the necessary products we were using

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We use OutSystems for other processes in our operation but we see that this platform is not able to indentify processes when drawed. Besides that OutSystems requires some basic development knowledge to use it. This makes it not really useable for business units.

Incentivized

Much cheaper, much more customizable, and easier to use. There is not much of a learning curve and the licensing cost is much cheaper. PowerApps does one thing very well, whereas other platforms are mediocre. There is much more customization possible for your in-house workflows that you can build yourself vs using NetSuite engineers to build it for you.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• We have saved our company thousands of dollars by creating our own customer support system rather than using a 3rd party tool.
• The ability to generate documents/PDFs in workflows has solved a great number of process issues for us and groups who had previously been using paper documents.
• Automating many permissions updates through workflows has been a huge time saver for repetitive processes.

Incentivized

• It has given us a focal point for development. We now have the possibility of connecting to mobile and the default SharePoint online interface isn't always easy to manipulate. PowerApps has given us an opportunity to improve our user experience.
• An improved user experience has given us a better shot at compliance. When users don't fight the environment, they don't gravitate towards workarounds or non-compliance.
• As lists and libraries change, the platform scales pretty well.
• Having users with the capability to create their own forms and tools has dialed back the app dev need (there is a balance though) and distributed power to the process architects and people who actually need the solutions in the first place—much more efficient model of service delivery: self-service.

Incentivized