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SharePoint Designer Splash Screen

How To: Simple newsletter solution using SharePoint Designer 2013

Some longer time ago I was asked to think about a solution, allowing my client to notify his employes, about changes and news that were being published in the application built on SharePoint 2013. However, client did not want to use alerts, or to develop a dedicated application. No – the client wanted something like a newsletter, which would allow him to sent HTML formatted messages to all users (or SP Groups of users) who were working with the application, or to anyone having account in SharePoint (or to anyone beyond the organization).

Tasks’ permissions in Nintex Workflow for Office 365

In Nintex Workflow for SharePoint (every version), when you use the “Flexi task” action, that creates and assigns tasks to specific users, if you (as a viewer) are not the assignee, workflow tells you that “You are not authorized to respond to this task.” – then to make yourself authorized you have to click the “delegate” link, then to reassign that task to yourself.

How to: Migration of Workflow Constants from on premise to Office 365

Workflow constants are a feature available only in Nintex Workflow for SharePoint on premises, allowing you to store globally used workflow variables in a single place. These variables can be then used across all web applications and site collections in your SharePoint Farm, or just in a single site – depending on the scope where they were created.

There are numerous use cases where Workflow Constants can be used: keep user credentials used for authentication in actions, keep thresholds for approvals, or keep specific dates, which are important for your company operational processes and many more, generally related to the “dictionary” purposes.

Microsoft Ignite 2017

Microsoft Ignite 2017 – what’s ahead of us?

The Microsoft Ignite 2017 conference has just ended last week. It was full of very interesting keynotes, presentations, workshops and demos. I haven’t had the opportunity to be there myself, however I was trying to follow up Twitter and all content being published during the event. This is my summary of the most interesting announcements, specifically for the SharePoint and Office 365.

Nintex Forms

Dynamic repeating section in Nintex Forms – how to

My last project required creation of a dynamic list of approvers for the approval process (a coincidence? ), based on a location and volume threshold. And some other parameters, but this is not a case. At first I naturally thought about a list, that would hold such mappings for me. Then I thought to query that list within a workflow, using filtering to gather only a specific subset and then, using a state machine, to go through and assign tasks.

But there was a catch! Customer expected, that the form should allow to display that list of dynamically gathered approvers and then to show how each one expressed approval. And with the possibility to add or remove existing ones!

Nintex Responsive Forms review

Nintex Responsive Forms review

The new way of building forms has been announced during the Nintex annual conference, formerly called “InspireX” (now “xchange“) during the presentation “What’s planned for Nintex Forms” (you can find it at the bottom of the page here or download the PDF here and a blog post about that is here). At that moment not very much was shown, but as the time went by, more and more facts were being unveiled.

During Nintex Roadshow in Europe, that took place in spring, even more facts and a working beta was presented. Then not that much later, Euan Gamble, Nintex Forms Product Manager, invited me and some other vTEs to the Nintex Responsive Forms Advance Preview.

A week ago Nintex Responsive Forms’ general availability has been officially announced and today they finally reached European Office 365 tenants and are available in upgrade, for customers having software assurance in on-premise Nintex versions.

Office 365 Groups

Kinds and features of groups in Office 365

The post continues the previous one, where I was trying to compare Groups with Teams. Despite the comparison was possible, Office 365 Group is not, what I underlined then, a standalone application, but a security object. Remember also, that Office 365 Groups were first introduced somewhere in 2014. Over the years it was being extended to work with other Office 365 based applications as well to be used in hybrid scenarios with on-premise Exchange.

Since it’s very beginning the narration that Microsoft was building around the concept was, that it is a tool dedicated for groups of employees, that delivers tools assisting and helping in their ongoing work, collaboration and communication.