Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. Nintex

We've used lightning forms on literally dozens of our SharePoint sites now and it's just excellent, especially because it doesn't interfere with our ability to governance and administer the sites

The Nintex K2 platform is not only efficient and developer-friendly, but the support provided by the vendor is also highly commendable. The platform's ease of use and robust functionality make it a preferred choice for developers, while the vendor's exceptional support ensures smooth implementation and ongoing assistance, enhancing overall user satisfaction.

Incentivized

• Simple user interface - users of the forms intuitively aware of how/where to input information. This is in part due to being able to show or hide different questions or areas of the form, and making them required or not, based on previous answers.
• Low/simple code - building complex forms with automation and multiple dependencies or lookups is relatively easy once you get started. You have the power of JavaScript to use and do some quite clever things if you can get to grips with it - a lot of solutions are only a Google away.
• As it is based on SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with the rest of the M365 suite. Things like PowerAutomate enhance its functionality even further.

• Easily build approval process using email and assign a task actions in Nintex Workflow
• Easily manage security at item level with O365 permission action in Nintex Workflow
• Easily use Rule in Nintex Form to build the Input Form and manage the events

Incentivized

• The styling of the form can sometimes be slightly awkward to use depending on what you're looking to do. For instance, if I was looking to highlight fields that users have missed (left empty), I would need to set up a validation for that question and then set a style for that particular field for when it is invalid. When you have a large and complex form with lots of dependencies, this is awkward.
• Support for complex and niche issues is slightly lacking in my experience. I submitted a helpdesk ticket for help with a strange issue I couldn't figure out, which took several weeks to get a response to. Because it is niche, it's more difficult to find an answer by searching the internet. Luckily, knowing there is likely to always be a fix if you find the right place/use the right formula, I manage to resolve the issue with some trial and error.
• It is disappointing that Lightning Forms does not integrate with the MS Lists app. Having the ability to access the form through the list app would add in a lot of useful functionality, including a better experience for users when taking photos to add as attachments.

• Difficult to fix flows that are in process (such as re-assigning a task for someone that is OOO or has left the company).
• Nintex support team does not have resolution SLAs (only acknowledgment SLAs). Occasionally this has led to key issues taking weeks to resolve.
• The number of integrations available is impressive, however, sometimes key methods are not available within an integration. This has been improving significantly in the past 2 years as the platform has matured.

Incentivized

Renewal is mainly on the fact that Nintex is so widely used and it would be impossible to migrate all of these existing workflows to another engine. Third-party lock-in within SharePoint is pretty strong, which makes it difficult to move to something else. Our Nintex database is well-over 100 GBs. Nintex email support is very good, and I've been impressed. The Community however is non-existent and filled with unanswered questions.

Incentivized

It is very user friendly both to me who is building the content (with little background knowledge of coding etc., other than what I have picked up from using products like PowerAutomate, PowerBI, a bit of html etc.) and to end users of varying levels of IT proficiency. This has been extremely important as we have used the forms to make relatively large process changes, and need to have our users on board and seeing that it is actually easier than it was before.

Nintex Workflow does exactly what it is advertised to do: make workflow development fast and easy. It doesn't provide very much new functionality, but it isn't really supposed to. When I am working with a client on a SharePoint project, I am always happy if I hear that they use Nintex Workflow, as it makes workflows much easier.

Incentivized

The Nintex Process Platform has never crashed or had any availability issues during my usage. However there was an issue that was of my own making that caused a slowdown of the system. I had set up a process to run once a day and check for employees on a list that had certain parameters selected, and for some reason that I had to troubleshoot, the process instead ran constantly, which filled the cache quickly. I ended up having to dismantle that process so the system didn't crash.

Incentivized

Unlike any other process automation product out there. Not only is it a low-code, easy to use tool for building processes in environments like SharePoint or Salesforce, they have really started to expand their tool-set by offering tools to manage other things like process mapping, RPA, mobile,etc.

Incentivized

Some support has been okay, but in one instance of a fairly complex problem, the support team were not able to provide me with a fix within a few weeks, before I was able to find a workaround myself.

The support team works as fast as they can and they are usually fast to solver the issues. Sometimes they need more time to solve one of them because our workflows and so on are more complex than usual clients.

Incentivized

The trainer addressed the smallest queries in a friendly and timely manner; He walked us through all the necessary products we were using

Incentivized

I used the Nintex training software, it was easy to watch and follow along. It didn't go too fast and was descriptive enough to understand what the steps needed were in order to produce efficient workflows and user friendly forms.

Incentivized

1.Start with Simple Workflows: Begin with basic workflows to gain user confidence before tackling complex processes.
2.Involve Stakeholders Early: Engage business users and IT early to align workflows with real business needs.
3.Comprehensive Training: Invest in user training to ensure smooth adoption and reduce resistance.
4.Leverage Prebuilt Templates: Use Nintex’s templates to speed up implementation and maintain consistency.
5.Iterate and Optimize: Continuously improve workflows based on user feedback and performance metrics.

Incentivized

We were using Microsoft Forms, SharePoint Lists and PowerAutomate to attempt to do much of what we are currently doing. Functionality is very limited in comparison. The ability to make questions required based on previous answers was a massive improvement from normal SharePoint List forms and has greatly improved the quality of data. Also just the very visual display and customisation is much better.

I was not part of selecting Nintex, but I think Nintex does a better job of generating linear flowcharts vs. Microsoft Visio because it automates the majority of the process of creating process maps. (Microsoft Visio is better for creating flowcharts that are not linear. because it is less automated and more flexible.)

Incentivized

The scalability is really bottlenecked by the imagination of the user. I was able to make processes for my own personal usage, making my daily tasks easier. I was also able to make processes that affected hundreds of employees, making large standardization and efficiency gains. So either way, the system is used the same way, and I was the limiting factor.

Incentivized

• We changed the process by which site colleagues report repairs on behalf of customers. Instead of emailing them into a shared inbox, they now report them using a lightning form. We have seen a great improvement in the time taken for our team to log the repair issue from the time is arrives with them.
• We anticipate that streamlining our void property reletting process by using a SharePoint kanban board view with lightning forms (providing a single platform for all things void) will reduce avoidable days vacant and therefore reduce our void loss.

• People have woken up to the amount of overlap after mapping their processes.
• People can be resistant to process changes. You need to have the support from above or support from the 'business' that you are process changing to be able to see the positive impacts.
• Numbers talk. if you can get a general salary figure from your HR dept to show savings for 'employee bands', then when you present reports, they will be all the richer in data.

Incentivized