Nintex Workflows - SharePoint Saturday

							Greg Postlewait
   Who the heck is this guy?
   A few slides
   Demo
   A few more slides
   Q&A
   Hit the tiki bar
   Greg
    ◦ 15 years+ professional IT experience.

    ◦ Developer, independent consultant, architect, team lead,
      administrator, technician, manager, developer.

    ◦ Delphi, Perl, PHP, C#, ASP.NET 1.1+, Interbase, MS SQL
      Server 6.5+, MySQL, Oracle 7.3+, Paradox, Sybase

    ◦ Credit collections/law, financial services, government,
      health care, manufacturing, travel, warehouse.

    ◦ MCP, ASP.NET web development, windows forms
      development
   Presently

    ◦ Manager of Web Operations at Amerigroup
      Corporation in Virginia Beach, VA

      Responsible for SharePoint administration and
       customization.
   I DO NOT WORK FOR OR HAVE ANY PROFESSIONAL OR
    CONTRACTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH NINTEX, OR, RECEIVE
    ANY KIND OF COMMISSION, KICKBACK, OR BENEFIT FOR
    THE SALES OF THEIR PRODUCT (DAMMIT!).

   THE CONTENT OF THIS PRESENTATION, INCLUDING THE
    SLIDES, DEMONSTRATION, DISCUSSIONS, OPINIONS, OR
    JOKES (ESPECIALLY THE BAD ONES) ARE 100% ON ME AND
    DO NOT REPRESENT THAT OF MY EMPLOYER, NINTEX, OR
    ANYONE ELSE.

   YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY; DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND
    EVALUATION. DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT BEFORE
    MAKING A PURCHASE DECISION, ALTER BUSINESS PLANS,
    RUN FOR POLITICAL OFFICE, OR CHANGE CAREERS.
                                      Nintex is a registered trademark of Nintex Corporation.
                                SharePoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
                                                     Greg is my name and I’m not giving it up.
                the first few didn’t count
we really are going to start talking about
                        Nintex Workflows
   SharePoint is a series of contradictions
    ◦ Its wonderful, and its aweful
    ◦ It solves many, many problems and creates many
      more.

   What the heck is SharePoint really?
    ◦   A collaboration tool?
    ◦   A file repository?
    ◦   A document management system?
    ◦   An application hosting platform?
    ◦   A database?
   Its all of the above
    ◦ Robust workflows tie all of these things together and
      create many opportunities

   Nintex Workflows allow end users to automate
    their business processes without relying on IT to
    build them something. And its pretty cool.

   This presentation will talk about the product, its
    pros and cons, and what ANY workflow tool can
    do for (and to) an organization.
   A depiction of a sequence of operations,
    declared as work of a person, mechanism,
    or group.

   A process of repeatable steps that satisfy a
    business need.
   You already know that SharePoint provides an
    environment for users to create, collaborate, and
    store business information. But you can also attach
    custom business processes to these documents or
    list items.

   Workflows can be as simple or complex as your
    business processes require. They can be initiated
    by a user, or, a workflow can be kicked-off by an
    event, such as creating or updating a document or
    a list item.
   SharePoint out-of-the-box

   SharePoint Designer

   Visual Studio

   Nintex Workflows
   Rather basic, but still relevant
    ◦   Approval*
    ◦   Collect feedback*
    ◦   Collect Signatures*
    ◦   Disposition Approval*
    ◦   Translation Management*
    ◦   Three-State




* MOSS only
   SharePoint Designer
    ◦ Intended as a power-user tool, its really a
      development tool.
    ◦ Good for simple, static workflows.
    ◦ Fancier stuff requires experience.
    ◦ Your SharePoint admins just love it

   Visual Studio
    ◦ Best option for complex process automation
    ◦ Can you say… change control?
    ◦ Requires an expensive skillset
Full Power of .NET, WF, etc.
Significant complexity, development time




Visual design
Wide degree of sophistication
Rapid development time




Wizard-based rapid design
Limited feature set
Limited sophistication

Limited set of use cases
Only available with MOSS
   It’s a pretty cool tool! Drag and drop, 100% in the
    browser.

   End users and power users can create meaningful
    workflows to automate business processes.

   Create workflows in hours not days.

   IT folks can automate a lot of their tasks (with the
    enterprise version).

   Support for change control (import/export).
   Workgroup
    ◦ Limited to 5 sites

   Standard
    ◦ Unlimited sites in your farm

   Enterprise
    ◦ Integrate with Exchange, MOSS features
    ◦ Account provisioning
    ◦ User profile management
Possibly the coolest you will see all day
   Nintex does not replace the need to actually
    define and build a process…



   … it enables the execution of the process!
   This is a sample workflow based on an actual
    process improvement project, not the final
    workflow for this project.

   Goal is to standardize the way servers are
    requested from and processed by
    Infrastructure Services.

   Project yielded a detailed business process
    and a workflow.
Manual
Process




          Workflow automation steps
(finally!)
I don’t like them either, but I get paid by the slide!
   Reporting webparts that detail
    ◦   Workflow history
    ◦   Workflows currently in progress
    ◦   How quickly review tasks are completed
    ◦   Workflow tasks assigned to you
   End users will be creating workflow
    that will become critical to business
    operations!
    ◦ Isn’t that the point?
   Think the pros and cons of MS Access
    “applications” created by power users.
      Because that always works out well.


   SDLC/Change control policies
      All the things we want to avoid but know we can’t.
      Like… testing?!


   BCRP
      What happens when version 241 of their workflow
       deletes an important list?
   Training and support
    ◦ Nintex has a great website with walk-thru’s and
      demos
    ◦ Users will still ask questions… will they ask you?

   Governance
    ◦ How does this fit into your corporate big picture
      and rules of play?
   If your workflow history is
    auditable/reportable/looked at…

    ◦ Just like SharePoint workflows, workflow history is
      kept for 60 days… then purged.
      Looks like this changes in SharePoint 2010, and can be
       disabled.

    ◦ Store critical workflow information in a list or
      external data store.
   Greg Postlewait
    ◦ greg@tropicalcode.com

   Blog
    ◦ http://www.tropicalcode.com


   Vendor website
    ◦ http://www.nintex.com