Nintex Workflows Best Practices for Development

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KENT DEL CASTILLO

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Senior Consultant

@kentdelcastillo

linkedin.com/in/kentdelcastillo

kdelcastillo@bandrsolutions.com

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Nintex Workflows – Best Practices for Development

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Avoid Getting Throttled in SharePoint Online

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Avoid Getting Throttled in SharePoint Online

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Limit the number of requests – internally or externally

Limit the number of updates

Prevent excessive looping iterations

Include pauses in your loops

Workflow Version Control in O365

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Workflow Version Control in O365

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Export your workflows whenever changes are made

Save workflows to a document library with versioning enabled

Include descriptions of what changed in each version

Workflow History List – use it!

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Workflow History List – use it!

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Output data as well as comments

Use a new history list instead of putting everything in the same one (use a separate Task list too!)

Consider using a logging toggle

End-user friendly log output

Don’t log within loops

Set Error Notifications

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Set Error Notifications

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Set to someone who will understand the errors

Set it to an error list

Use Workflow Constants

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Use Workflow Constants

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Workflow Constants are globally set values available to all workflows at the specified level (web farm, site collection, or site). Use workflow constants to store credentials, URLs, LDAP paths, SQL connection strings, and any other values that need to be used in multiple workflows. NOT SUPPORTED IN O365

Child Workflows

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Child Workflows

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Break up large workflows so that smaller units can be reused

Use breakout workflows to hide complexity

Too many can increase complexity

Only allow one workflow to affect an item at a time

SP2013 can start SP2010 workflows only

Process recycling

Better performance

Easier testing

Processing Load

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Processing Load

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Reduce actions that have a heavy processing load like ‘Execute SQL’ or ‘Query LDAP’

Actions like ‘Log to history list’ or ‘Build dynamic string’ are very light

Break out heavy actions into separate workflows

Update actions should be processed in small batches to ensure they are committing in the correct order

Use Action Sets in Your Design

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Use Action Sets

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Makes designing workflows easier

Better readability

Group logic together

Easier to see where child workflows can be created

Maintain State

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Maintain State

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Maintain where the user is in the workflow

Allows the workflow to continue in case of termination

Can help with migration

Helps with testing

Testing

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Testing

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History List is your friend

Don’t forget the Audit Log

Test ALL paths!

Test with real data

Don’t forget about speed

Double-check outputs

Represent users permission levels

Were all requirements met?

Other Best Practices

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Other Best Practices

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CamelCase your variables

Customize task notifications

Add a workflow to the Workflow History list to send alert on error!

Fill out the description

Establish variables at beginning

Label your actions! Please!

Capture dates of approval steps

Think about O365

Questions & Feedback27