Skip to main content

Vanessa Larsen's Blog

Go Search
Home
About Me
Resources
 Help (new window) 
 

Vanessa Larsen's Blog > Categories
Another cool action in Nintex 2010

Another reason to love Nintex 2010:

You are now able to make sure that the workflow you programmatically start doesn't commence until the first workflow completes. 

Run an action as a workflow Owner in Nintex 2010

Recently I've taken advantage of a cool feature in Nintex 2010 – run as workflow owner:

Nice!!! This allows you to run the action with more elevated permissions than the workflow initiator. This is especially handy when needing to update list items that the initiator may not have access to, without having to call a web service. I've found that this feature is available with most available actions that don't specifically require credentials.

One thing to look out for is that if run a parent action as the workflow owner, such as a condition or 'run if', this will mean that any child actions will also run as the workflow owner. In this case, this checkbox will disappear for the child actions (as it's no longer required).

Long Term Delegation options with Nintex Workflow

Nintex workflow provides a feature to delegate your tasks for a period of time, i.e. when you go on leave. This feature can be enabled by enabling long term delegation in through the Nintex Global Settings in Central Administration.

One issue with this is if assigned approvers in workflows do not delegate their tasks prior to becoming unavailable, the process will stall until the task is delegated by a site collection administrator or the approver returns to the office.

Options

To address this issue, there are two options to consider:

  1. Ad-hoc Delegation

The individual tasks will need to be manually delegated by a site collection administrator.

Advantages

Advantages of this option would include:

  • This can be a feasible solution if requests to a site collection administrator or site owner to delegate tasks occur infrequently and in small numbers.

Disadvantages

The following disadvantages can include:

  • If a large amount of tasks are required to be delegated, this can be a time consuming process for the site collection administrator.
  • Delegates may be required to submit a Help Desk request if they require a task to be delegated to them and the assigned Approver is not present to do so.
  1. Long Term delegation

There is the ability to turn on Long Term delegation through the Nintex Global Settings in Central Administration , which will allow a site owner to delegate on behalf of others for a set period of time for sites they have full control access to only.

 

Advantages

The Advantages to this option would include:

  • This can reduce the burden on system administrators as delegates with the correct permissions can set up long term delegation for any required tasks without the need to request assistance.

Disadvantages

The following disadvantages can include:

  • Enabling Long Term delegation allows the site owner to turn on long term delegation on behalf of another issue. This could potentially result in a site owner delegating tasks for a senior manager (for example) and then approving these tasks without the manager being aware. Considerations
  • Implementation of this solution involves an IIS reset, therefore would cause an outage to your SharePoint environment.