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WORKFLOWS & FORMSDEPLOYMENTpresented by
Table of ContentsIntroduction3What Are Workflows4What’s Nintex?5And The Question Is 6The Current Process7The Risks of This Process8Is It Better With Nintex & Sharegate?9Streamlined Process with Nintex & Sharegate10About Sharegate11
IntroductionI’m sure many of you will agree when we saySharePoint is a very large and capable platform, with awide range of features and functions. From security andgovernance to document management, Intranets, socialand web content management, Its capabilities are huge, almost limitless. In this eBook,we will take a look at one of those features in particular- Workflows and Forms.3
What are Workflows, andWhy Would You Need Them?Every company, no matter their size, uses some kind ofworkflow or business process automation to improveproductivity. Think of a new employee joining thecompany; he needs a desk, an email account, anintroduction, fire safety training, maybe even businesscards to be created and printed. Let’s take another example - document approval in itssimplest form. An editor creates a document, submitsit to his manager for review, and it's publishedafterwards. Two common examples for manyorganizations, these workflows can be both complexand simple. SharePoint offers some rich workflow features, butthere are certainly some gaps . For example,communication with line-of-business systems usuallyinvolves custom development, and the workflowdesigner in SharePoint Designer has several ‘quirks’ thatlimit its usefulness. 4
What’s Nintex?Yes, SharePoint has its limits, and it's a good thing toknow them.Thankfully, as it's often the case, the Microsoft PartnerNetwork have stepped in to solve the problem. In thiscase, it's Nintex with their highly popular NintexWorkflows and Forms products.For those not au fait with Nintex, their tools allowbusiness users to create awesome workflows and formswithout any kind of customization. In the case of onboarding a new employee, Nintex is able toautomatically create Active Directory accounts, whichwould ordinarily involve heavy and complex customdevelopment.The Nintex visual designer allows business users to buildpowerful tools fitting their specific needs with ease.5
And the Question Is:Why create a workflow in a development environment instead ofdoing it straight into production?When complex workflows must bedeveloped, it’s good practice to do so ina separate development environment. Adeveloper can create the workflowthere, without interrupting “business asusual”. It would be risky to do this in aproduction environment as this maybreak other things, resulting in a poorexperience for end users and even lossof time and money as people cannotget on with their jobs, not to mentionpotential data losses.Once the developer is done with thecreation, a tester can then try thisworkflow before it's deployed to astaged environment for a business userto test further. This testing process maybe complex, especially if the workflowor form integrates with line-of-businesssystems. Only once it has passed alltests should the workflow be moved toa live system, or productionenvironment as it's often called.6If the solution uses an ‘Out of the box’SharePoint workflow it's very difficult tomove it between environments, andmaintain all of the data and auditinformation needed.
The Current Process of Creating andCopying Workflows Between EnvironmentsLet’s assume the tool you use to createand develop workflows is SharePointDesigner. The process to copy an out-ofthe-box SharePoint workflow betweenenvironments from development, tostaging, to production, will normally looklike the following:1. A developer creates theworkflow in a developmentenvironment2. A QA developer examinesthe workflow in thisenvironment3. If it is approved, theworkflow is recreated in astaging environment4. The developer and testerboth test the workflow in thestaging environment75. A business user then teststhe workflow in staging. If anyissue is found (which is likely),the process starts again fromthe beginning6. If the business user ishappy, the workflow isrecreated in production7. Developer, tester, andbusiness user test theworkflow in production
The Risks of ThisProcessAs you can see, there are a lot of manual steps involved.There’s some obvious disadvantages; even with veryhighly skilled people, errors will inevitably be made.Besides that, the process is repetitive work. If you’restriving for efficiency, this wouldn’t score particularlyhighly.Visual Studio does allow packaging workflows as atemplate, to help and enable deployment acrossenvironments. The downside is that it's for veryadvanced users only.Click below to read the TechNet article on thedifferences between developing workflows inSharePoint Designer vs Visual Studio.LEARN MORE ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES8
Is it better with Nintex &Sharegate?In short, yes. Nintex Workflows cannow be created in a developmentenvironment , and then copiedautomatically to staging usingSharegate. There's no room for errorhere, the workflow is duplicated to thedestination environment. The same istrue for promoting to production.This process allows developers toeasily fix issues in workflows thatwere created directly in production.Instead of trying to fix the issues inproduction, the workflow can becopied to a development environmentfirst . You can then make all thechanges you want to find theproblem, without interrupting theworkflow on production.Every company has workflows.Automating them using SharePointworkflows will bring efficiency and is lessprone to errors than manual processes.While out-of-the-box workflows inSharePoint are quite rich, in most cases,you'll find that they're lacking features.Nintex is an awesome add-on forSharePoint to create advanced workflowswithout any technical knowledge orcustom development. But they need tobe put together using the right process,with proper testing. This involvesmultiple environments and systems. Ourrelationship with Nintex now means wecan help take the pain out of this processto let you focus on improving yourproductivity.9
Streamlined Process withNintex & SharegateWith Nintex & Sharegate, no need to spend long hoursrecreating Workflows, worrying about quality issues,asking different parties for their input at different stagesof development. Nintex' Workflow Designer is intuitiveand easy to use while Sharegate moves things throughsimple drag & drops.1. Create or edit the workflowCombine the two, and you get a three main steps tothis process. You create/edit the workflow, test it anddeploy it. That’s it!2. Test the workflowAs easy as 1, 2, 3.Repeat these steps for any given environment and yougot yourself a simple solution to your workflowmigration mayhem.3. If it is approved, it’s deployedSince you copy a proven workflow instead of rebuildingthe whole thing, you get the insurance everythingworks at destination. Now that's smooth sailing!DEPLOY MY WORKFLOWS & FORMS NOW10
We areSharegate was born in 2011 from the observation thatthe available SharePoint tools were way to complicatedto use, thus distracting users from improving theirbusiness proficiency. We have built a simple to use, yetextremely powerful Management tool for SharePoint,Office 365 and OneDrive for Business. We believe lifeshould be Just Damn Simple, dealing with SharePointincluded.We aim to be your SharePoint & Office 365Management one-stop-app. Migrate anything fromworkflows to multiple Site Collections from a farm orversion to another can be done with a single drag &drop. Run reports to ensure your company data are safeand identify potential threats. Manage your content toguarantee the compliance of your entire environmentswith bulk edition, metadata preservation, and muchmore!Sleep tight at night, using Sharegate.11
Your #1 Tool to Simplify SharePoint& Office 365 ManagementDeploy Your Nintex Workflows and FormsSTART MY FREE 15 -DAY TRIAL sts and LibrariesPortalNameContent TypesSite ColumnsUsersGroupsPermission LevelsWorkflowsManaged Metadatahttp://mysites.office365.comSharegate Team SiteSelect AllAddressNameTypeCurrent siteSite Collections /chris/Demo es/dev/51 itemsSharegate Team Site http://sharegate.sharepoint.comSubsites (3)Copy4 items
Nintex & Sharegate 1. Create or edit the workflow 10 2. Test the workflow 3. If it is approved, it's deployed With Nintex & Sharegate, no need to spend long hours recreating Workflows, worrying about quality issues, asking different parties for their input at different stages of development. Nintex' Workflow Designer is intuitive
