Workflows gave me my day back!
Updated October 23, 2020

Workflows gave me my day back!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Nintex Workflow for Sharepoint

Overall Satisfaction with Nintex Process Platform

My organization was able to use Nintex workflows to compress processes that previously took multiple steps (with multiple points of opportunity for human and technical errors) into a single step from a user point of view. Being able to eliminate the possibility of any one step being forgotten or bottlenecked was great. Additionally, the automation allows for the system to function independent of any one employee being at work, eliminating the fear of the "person who knows how it works" to leave and take the functionality with them.
  • Easy to pick up, very intuitive
  • Scalable for small tasks or large
  • Transparent operation if troubleshooting is needed
  • If a workflow doesn't work, maybe a button to send the entire workflow to customer service of some sort to debug
  • More gui to enhance the drag and drop functionality
  • Options to automate purging history of workflows
  • Less repetitive tasks for me means I have more time to do what's important
  • Being able to track the workflows allows me to verify that people received E mails, even if I don't remember sending them
  • Opens up many more opportunities to make my team more efficient

My current usage of the Nintex Process Platform is integrated into a Sharepoint system that my company uses to build team resources and homepage. In a call-center environment, we often have lists of questions to ask in a diverging branch design, where the answer to the previous question dictates which question to ask next. Nintex allow me to create forms that alter their questions in real time, shifting the questions yet to fill out based on the answers to answers already submitted. This real time flexibility allows for more targeted responses without bombarding people with white noise of questions that are not relevant to their individual inquiries and needs.

Another situation the Nintex Process Platform is used is in employee training tracking. We have a list of all our employees, and due to staggered hiring dates, often they are at different stages of training. Nintex allows us to build processes to track their progress and alert us of upcoming milestones, so that we can update their system access accordingly.

Currently the Nintex Process Platform is available to anyone in our organization who manages a Sharepoint site, which is quite a lot of non-IT people. Supervisors need only ask for access to be granted a portion of our servers to build their own digital playgrounds. A quick tutorial in both SharePoint and the Nintex Process Platform is necessary to get them up to speed, especially those who learned previous versions (a recent update is somewhat different from the previous version). It's almost easier to learn the new system from scratch than to approach it with habits built from using previous versions. However it's not very "code-heavy" so non-IT people can pick it up relatively quickly.
Unfortunately I have not used other products that are similar to Nintex Process Platforms so it's impossible for me to compare it to any competitors. Not necessarily because of a lack of experience, but because Nintex has thus far continued to not only meet our current needs, but prove feature-rich enough to grow along with us as our needs evolve. We've had no need to search for an alternative as of yet.

Nintex workflows are best suited for large companies with repetitive tasks. With large groups that often find their members in different physical or geographic areas, there is opportunity for group think. Tasks that are repetitive and time-intensive are often overlooked as each person thinks it's the other person's responsibility to complete said task, resulting in the task not being completed. Additionally, compartmentalization in tasks with large companies leads to subject matter experts (SME) hording their specific knowledge. When they leave, they often take that knowledge with them, setting back workflow processes and requiring "re-invention of the wheel". Since the Nintex Process Platform allows tasks to not only be automated and repeating but assign more than one employee as the owner, it eliminates those hurdles.

Regarding scenarios less suited for this platform, smaller companies where each task is highly different from the last. On any scale, automation is helpful; however with small businesses where there is a high degree of personalization and uniqueness to each transaction, automation might be more trouble than it's worth.

Nintex Process Platform Feature Ratings

Process designer
10
Business rules engine
10
SOA support
10
Form builder
10
Model execution
10
Dashboards
10
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
10

Using Nintex Process Platform

50 - To my knowledge, Nintex Process platform is mostly utilized by the leadership team in my organization. We are very large so there might be sections that I have no line of sight in, but the functionality of Nintex PP is utilized in our call centers to automate certain administrative tasks, which allows our agents to be on the phones longer and have quicker access to relevant and necessary information.
4 - There might be more, but I attend a monthly meeting where anyone who has questions regarding Nintex Process Platform or SharePoint can bring them before a handful of subject matter experts. If there is an urgent issue that cannot wait for this reoccurring meeting, we can outreach to the meeting leaders, of which there are about 4 people to chose from.
  • Automating repetitive tasks
  • Running reoccurring reports based on certain data thresholds
  • Compressing complicated, multi-step processes into a single button click
  • Checking the current date daily, and when the current date matches the date representing 3 months after initial hire, automatically emailing workforce management to alert them that the 90 day training period had completed
  • Being able to manage PTO requests, informing leaders of PTO requests and automatically approving or rejecting time off if the system finds too many other employees are already off that day
  • Similar to the above issue but regarding training, being able to manage agent schedules and call center volume needs while planning for offline training sessions.
I use the Nintex Process Platform, encourage others to use it, and know that a non-insignificant level of functionality would be lost if the license was not renewed. There are more complicated and labor-intensive ways of simulating the work that N.P.P. does currently, but why would any company want the more complicated, labor-intensive option?

Evaluating Nintex Process Platform and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
I was not the deciding person in purchasing this program.
I was not the deciding person in purchasing this program

Nintex Process Platform Implementation

I was not present at the initial implementation of the Nintex Process Platform, so I cannot speak to how smoothly it went.

Nintex Process Platform Training

I feel the Nintex Process Platform was moderately easy to learn without formal training. A quick Google search to learn what functions the system can offer lets anyone with an imagination think of ways to apply those functions to their company and workflows. After that, a few YouTube videos on the specifics can get you where you need to be.

Configuring Nintex Process Platform

This is somewhat beyond my personal experience with the Nintex Process Platform.
This is somewhat beyond my personal experience with the Nintex Process Platform.
This is somewhat beyond my personal experience with the Nintex Process Platform.

Nintex Process Platform Support

I have yet to utilize the formal vendor support, so I cannot speak to it's efficacy. However, I do expect to utilize them eventually, and the links to them via the Nintex Process Platform itself bodes well that the support team is open to helping and willing to assist in my issues.

Using Nintex Process Platform

I truly value the functionality that Nintex Process Platform has afforded me. It has saved me time, and ensured certain multi-step tasks no longer have portions that fall through the cracks due to my human error. Not a perfect score due to a less than comprehensive built-in training mode, but a few YouTube videos can remedy that.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Requires technical support
Lots to learn
  • Setting up automatic emails based on certain inputs
  • Starting a new process from scratch, or editing current processes
  • The initial learning curve, despite it not being too steep
  • Re-learning the new system compared to the old workflow version

Nintex Process Platform Reliability

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.
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.
Nintex Process Platform is integrated with SharePoint at my company and I find it to be very responsive and quick. I've never found myself angry at the speed or limited in any way from accessing the processes or programs I needed to access. Maybe Nintex should teach Internet Explorer some tips about not being a terrible program!

Integrating Nintex Process Platform

I was not the one to integrate it, however from a user standpoint the integration is seamless.
  • Sharepoint
I was not the one to integrate it, however from a user standpoint the integration is seamless.
I was not the one to integrate it, however from a user standpoint the integration is seamless.

Relationship with Nintex

I was not the one to work with the vendor
I was not the one to work with the vendor
I was not the one to work with the vendor
I was not the one to work with the vendor

Upgrading Nintex Process Platform

  • Seems more user friendly from a user POV
  • More streamlined usability for novice users