Integrating Nintex Workflow 2016 With Sharepoint Server 2016

SharePoint 2016 general availability was announced at the Future Of SharePoint conference in May 2016. The series that discusses the installation of SharePoint 2016 in Azure can be found at C# Corner from the following links:

• SharePoint 2016 installation in Azure-Part 1
• SharePoint 2016 installation in Azure-Part 2
• SharePoint 2016 installation in Azure-Part 3

Nintex is a premium technology partner for SharePoint. With the announcement of SharePoint 2016, Nintex has made the announcement of the general availability of Nintex Workflow 2016 in July 11th 2016.You can go to the Nintex site and request for the trial by filling out the below form.



Once the form is filled out, you will get a trial license on your registered email. It will be a 30 days trial. After this, you can purchase the paid license. After you have the trial license, you can download the Nintex Workflow 2016 executable from here .

In this article, we will see how to set up and integrate Nintex Workflow 2016 with SharePoint 2016.The scope of the article is,

• Install Nintex 2016 in SharePoint 2016
• Import the Nintex license to SharePoint
• Create and Configure Nintex Configuration Database
• Web Application Level Nintex Activation
• Enable Nintex Workflow in Site Collection and Site
• Get Started with Nintex Workflow

When the download is completed, Go ahead and click on the executable.



Click on Next.



Accept the agreement and proceed.



If you are installing it on a multiple server farm, ensure that all the farms are up. Click on ‘Automatically install’ to make a fresh installation.



Chose the products to install and proceed.



Click on Next to get started with the installation.



Once the installation is completed, the entire web front-end IIS Servers will be restarted to update the changes.



Thus, the installation success message appears in the dialog. Currently, we are installing it in a single server farm. I tried installing it in a multi-server farm and the success message is, as shown below. As you can see, it has installed the Nintex service in all front-end servers.



If we go to ‘Solutions Management’ in Central Administration, we can see the deployed Nintex solution files. Nintex Workflow 2016 enterprise features are not installed by default. You can deploy it manually by clicking on the solution file.



Import Nintex 2016 License to SharePoint 2016

The next step is to import the Nintex license. Go to Nintex Administration from Central Administration.



Click on ‘Licensing’ option.



Click on "Import license file".



Browse and import the license file.



Once applied, the license details will show up in the page. Since the license has been applied only to workflow, the Nintex form will still remain unlicensed for which you can request a separate license.



Create and Configure Nintex Configuration Database

Now, we have to create a Nintex Configuration Database to store the workflow configurations and other details. It can act as the single database required for Nintex. However, to ensure high availability, it is recommended to create multiple content databases.


Click on "Add Nintex Workflow configuration database". It will navigate us to the page where we can add database creation information.



Specify the Database Name and Click on OK. This will create the configuration database for Nintex Workflow.



Thus, the newly created Nintex Database has come up in the Administration page. Let's go ahead and check out the SQL Server.



The Nintex Database has been created in SQL Server along with other SharePoint databases. Now, we have to map the Nintex workflow database with each of the SharePoint web application content databases. In order to do that, click on "Manage content database mapping" in the Database management page.



It will open a page where we can create mapping between Nintex workflow database and the SharePoint Content Database.


In order to get started with Nintex Workflows, you will now have to activate it for the specific web application from Nintex administration.

Web Application Level Nintex Activation

You can specify the web application where we want to activate Nintex Workflow feature. If we select the checkbox “All content web applications”, it will be activated across all web applications.



Click on Activate button. This will instantly activate Nintex in the web application.

Activate Nintex at SiteCollection and Site

In order to start using Nintex Workflow, we have to activate the site collection feature “Nintex Workflow 2016” by going to the site collection features page.



Once we have activated the site collection feature, we have to activate the site feature “Nintex Workflow 2016” from the site features page.



This will complete all the configuration required to get started with Nintex workflow in SharePoint Server.

Get Started with Nintex Workflow

Now, go to the list/library. In the library tab, we can find the Nintex workflow option within the workflow settings.



Click on ‘Create a workflow in Nintex workflow’ to get started with Nintex Workflow 2016.



Thus, Nintex workflow designer opens up where we can drag and drop the workflow actions to create a fully-fledged workflow depending upon the business requirements.

Conclusion

Thus, we have seen how to integrate Nintex Workflow 2016 with SharePoint 2016. In the upcoming articles, we will see more of Nintex Workflow in action in SharePoint 2016.