The easiest way to develop and manage workflows in SharePoint
Updated December 10, 2021

The easiest way to develop and manage workflows in SharePoint

Guy De Backer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Nintex Workflow for Sharepoint

Overall Satisfaction with Nintex Process Platform

We use Nintex Process Platform for a set of workflows across the company. Going from workflows for simple approval to more complex workflows with cascading decisiontrees. The most of these workflows are used by our human resources department. We for instance have Nintex Process Platform combined with a workflow to do the onboarding of new employees. Another workflow is used to order sandwiches.
  • Visual programming
  • More functionality than the out of the box workflows
  • Sharepoint wide workflows and sitebound workflows
  • Monitoring running workflows
  • Debugging
  • More assistance when using REST-API's
  • There was no need to do .Net development
  • The workflows are quite easy to maintain
  • For simple workflows you don't need to have technical skills
We use Nintex Process Platform in our on premises Microsoft SharePoint 2013 platform to implement all kinds of workflows. Going from simple approval workflows over complex workflows for onboarding new employees. Or managing the creation of Microsoft SharePoint sites for managing our cross departmental projects. Thanks to Nintex Process Platform we can develop and roll out implementations for business processes very quickly.
Currently we don't have IT staff implementing Nintex Process Platform Workflows or forms. But as mentioned earlier we have a few non technical IT staff that are able to develop and manage Nintex workflows and forms in our on premise Microsoft SharePoint environment. And thanks to the visual development interface they are able to create and manage their own "applications"
Even though it is a visual programming tool, you still need some knowledge on how to program. I had a training with a business user and he couldn't get his head around certain concepts in the development of workflows. For that reason we keep the development within the IT department. But the forms and workflows developed with nintex can be extremely user friendly.
We don't have users that develop their own forms and/or workflows, as mentioned earlier you need a programmers mindset and not every business user can translate his problem/solution to a user friendly form or workflow.
For the development of forms and workflows by business users, I don't think NPP is the right tool.
Nintex's Process Platform workflow development interface is much easier to use for both technical and non technical IT personnel. We have a partner that helped us to implement the setup and assist us when we run into issues when developing workflows. But because of the visual nature of the workflow integrated development environment we don't need to involve that partner that often. The same goes for the development of forms in Nintex Process Platform

Do you think Nintex Process Platform delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Nintex Process Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Nintex Process Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Nintex Process Platform go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Nintex Process Platform again?

Yes

Nintex has good default templates for approval workflows. But it's also well suited for more complex workflows where more logic is needed in the workflow. It can not be used for hybrid setups where a company has an on premise SharePoint environment and an Office 365 SharePoint online tenant. There is no way to setup workflow between these type of hybrid setups.

Nintex Process Platform Feature Ratings

Process designer
7
Business rules engine
6
Form builder
8
Model execution
7

Using Nintex Process Platform

3 - We currently have 3 users who develop Nintex workflows and forms. But the whole company has access to our Microsoft SharePoint environment, so you could say that we have +1000 users who use the workflows developed by these three developers. We don't have plans to add users to the developer pool in the short term, in part because we are investigating which route we're going to take for the future when it comes to collaboration platforms.
We don't really have internal support for the Nintex platform. As mentioned earlier we have an external partner who supports us in our development and management of the workflows and forms.
  • approval flows
  • ordering of sandwiches for lunchmeetings
  • Automatic creation of project sites
  • Automation of the onboarding process
  • The automation of creation of the project sites
  • the onboarding process where we expose a form to the public internet
  • setting the security on lists/libraries based on end user managed user lists
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.

Evaluating Nintex Process Platform and Competitors

Yes - We also evaluated the out of the box workflow functionality in Microsoft SharePoint using Microsoft Designer. But because designer has been deprecated in the meantime we are convinced we made the right choice. Also because you most of the time you need forms for the user interaction and also that Microsoft technology has been deprecated in the mean time.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
The product feature set of the Nintex Process Platform is so impressively big that compared with the out of the box functionality you initially have a hammer and with the Nintex product you get a complete toolset that allows you to do so much more when it comes to automating all kinds of processes.
The market changes so quick that the evaluation criteria have to change to. In our current situation we're moving more towards cloud solutions and the pricing strategy for these cloud solutions are very different triggering a shift from CAPEX to OPEX which is not always easy to explain to our management. We also need to investigate the possibilities of of the power platform to see if they can replace Nintex in the cloud.

Nintex Process Platform Implementation

Our partner had very skilled people working on our environment, we were very satisfied with the knowledge of the people doing the implementation
  • Third-party professional services
We partnered with a local partner, that also assisted us in the implementation of our on premisse Microsoft SharePoint environment.

Nintex Process Platform Support

We have a third party supplier assisting us in the use of the product, so they do most of the support tickets. But based on the speed the supplier comes back to us with the right solution, makes us believe the Nintex support is good and swift. Also the support forums are useful.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
None

Using Nintex Process Platform

All in all the Nintex process platform is easy to use, because of the visual nature of the workflow editor it is easy for a non technical person to develop simple workflows. As mentioned earlier, for bigger and more complex workflows the visual interface is a bit more cumbersome to keep a good overview of the whole workflow.
ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • The visual development environment
  • form development
  • exposing forms to the internet
  • debugging
  • editing large workflows