Spring has sprung here in North America, and I am happy to share that the Nintex Forms for Office 365 developers and product management team have certainly not been hibernating over the past several months. In fact, they’ve been busy engineering some notable enhancements for you.
In this post, I’ll share these capabilities that will certainly make your forms design and user experience in Office 365 better than ever!
New Features and Enhancements
- Form Variables have been added to the designer: This allows a user to calculate a value using runtime functions and named controls. The value can then be bound to a SharePoint column or stored in the form metadata for later use.
- Changed the List Lookup maximum item limit to 5000 items: This means you can store more items in dropdown lists, check boxes, and multi-selects.
- Improved form loading times for responsive forms: The faster your work loads, the faster your work goes.
1. Forms Variables:
Form Variables are a logical way to store dynamic metadata in your forms and then manipulate it with ease.
This will allow you to build sophisticated calculations and data strings that render completely seamlessly for your users. Typically, this type of work would have had to be done in an awkward way – using calculated value controls (which wouldn’t work when hidden) or complex JavaScript. Now, you can click on the Forms Variables icon on the Ribbon:
Once you open the Form Variable dialog, you can easily create variables. Simply give them a name, choose a data type (generic, integer, decimal, currency, and string), choose whether or not you want to store the variable data in a SharePoint column or leave it as unbound data within in the form, and lastly, choose the formula you want to use to build the variable metadata.
Below is an example of a form variable that captures Boolean truth logic using the and Runtime function:
The true power of this form variable? If I now open another control (for example, a calculated value control) I can now see the form variable I created – referred to as “_Test Variable 1” – in the list of Named Controls in the metadata selection panel:
2. ‘List Lookup’ Threshold Increased
We know that there are scenarios – such as working with item SKU’s, parts lists, sites, equipment lists, employees, and more – where your list lookups in SharePoint may return many items. Nintex Forms for Office 365 now allows you to look up 5,000 items and store them in dropdown lists, multi-selects, or checkboxes.
This will allow you to build sophisticated cascading lookups across your forms with ease. The best part? This is a backend enhancement which requires no additional design changes or configuration by the user.
3. Improved Form Loading Times for Responsive Forms
The Nintex team has enhanced the way that the responsive forms engine renders forms and controls metadata under the covers. Similar to the list lookup improvements, this is a transparent change to the backend of Nintex Forms and does not require any additional forms design or configuration changes.
Forms will simply load faster and perform better across browsers that will be used to “consume” or view them. When your forms load quicker, you can get your work done more efficiently.
Why Are These Features and Enhancements Important to My Business?
These improvements to Nintex Forms for Office 365 are designed to give your process automation designers a powerful set of capabilities that will help improve human interactions in your solutions – using a user interface – which improves your ability to satisfy business requirements and dramatically increase user experience and satisfaction.
Ready to try Nintex for Office 365 for yourself? Contact us today, or get a free, 30-day trial here.
