Nintex WorkFlow for SharePoint 2016
December 19, 2017

Nintex WorkFlow for SharePoint 2016

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

Software Version

Nintex Workflow for Sharepoint

Overall Satisfaction with Nintex Workflow

Nintex WF allows end users to build complex WFs easily for their site or dept without needing to use SharePoint Designer, which opens up backdoors for less experienced users to cause damage to the site. The visual interface is also helpful for other people trying to open up WFs that other people have built and trying to understand what was done, and what changes need to be made to update it. Its integration with Nintex Forms makes it even more powerful. The majority of the new site requests that we receive these days require using Nintex to accomplish the customizations required to meet the specifications.
  • Integration with Nintex Forms to allow prompting users for input to use in the WF, such as allowing end users to click "Create New Project Site", getting a form to filling the Project Number and Project Title, then creating the new site from a Project Template that is configured and populated automatically, running the process with Administrator Permissions so that the end users don't need to be give permissions to create sites themselves outside of the WF process.
  • A single copy item step WF can be added to a page library and added to the item menu in the library so that any page can be clicked on and copied to a new page and then edited. This also keep users out of SP Designer, and it even works on Publishing libraries which don't allow "Open In Explorer".
  • Nintex WF can run a web query, a list query, or an LDAP query. We can pull any information from Active Directory and populate list items on the fly, or just keep the data inside a WF variable such as contacting a person's Manager for an approval, then rolling up to that person's Manager for a secondary approval.
  • Nintex WF is still limited by the SharePoint WF restrictions, for example, a WF definition file larger than 1 MB doesn't open or save with causing an error. With all of the power that Nintex gives us, we are often running into the tiny WF size restrictions.
  • Nintex WF creates error Emails for every error with references and links on what you can go to in order to read about the error, but they are often not helpful in determining the issue. Issues must be troubleshot manually by turning actions off, testing individual actions or sets, creating WF History steps that write variables to the log, etc. Ad even then some errors are very difficult to figure out.
  • The Nintex WF Flexitask, used for an Approval process, will kill the process if one person declines, or, if a majority declines, but does not let you select to have all approvers give their response without terminating the process until the end. That means you don't have a log of who has issues that need to be addressed to remedy the concerns. Creating a separate Flexitask process for each approver allows all to respond, but then the WF size grows past the maximum file limit for SP WF.
  • Positive impact, allows us to build custom SP solutions using point and click and regular SP users rather than paying developers to create custom solutions that SP doesn't support out-of-the-box.
Well suited for small to moderate WFs. Not well suited for large WFs or WFs that query and parse a text file from a reporting system and then create/update a SP list every hour, because the Nintex History logs fill up and the system comes to a crawl. You have to continuously work on purging the history lists while being careful not to purge data needed for WFs that are running long-term. There should be a single check box to disable/enable writing to the history instead of needed to edit every single step in the WF one at a time and opening the settings for the step to check that box.

Nintex Process Platform Feature Ratings

Process designer
9
Process simulation
7
Business rules engine
8
SOA support
8
Process player
8
Form builder
8
Model execution
8
Social collaboration tools
9
Dashboards
7
Standard reports
7
Custom reports
6
Content management
8