Nintex Workflow and Xtensions

Nintex Workflow and Xtensions

What is great about the Nintex Workflow Platform is that it is extensible.  The platform provides multiple opportunities for customers to connect their workflows to their crucial applications, services, data stores, and systems of record.

Nintex provides pre-built connectors, which can be used to link workflows to commonly used enterprise solutions such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamic CRM, Box, and Dropbox.  Nintex also provides extensibility through Nintex actions such as “Call a web service”, “query JSON”, and “External Start”.

What is new is the introduction of the Nintex Xtensions Framework, which enables developers to create custom connectors and custom actions the work seamlessly with the Nintex Workflow Platform to connect to third-party platforms.  Nintex Xtentions currently works on top of the Nintex Workflow Cloud with more Nintex products planned in the future.  In keeping with Nintex’s philosophy, Xtensions is designed so that developers will be able to code and deploy connectors for workflow designers, who can then design workflows without writing code. Nintex is currently developing the ability for developer to create custom start events.  Also in development are custom form controls.  Nintex will create a place in Nintex Xchange so that partners can share their custom connectors and form controls.
 
Nintex Xtensions uses the industry standard in API definition. Custom actions are defined by creating a description of the target API service in an OpenAPI Specification (OAS), formerly known as the Swagger specification.  The reasons that Nintex has chosen JSON and OpenAPI as the standard for their Xtentions framework:

• It has a wide range of tooling support covering major frameworks such as .NET, NodeJS and Java.
• OpenAPI Specification is rapidly being adopted as the industry standard for API description, gaining traction with the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Atlassian.
• JSON is easily readable by both humans and software, and this makes it easy to edit.
• The OpenAPI specification is a definition that is open, reusable, and language-agnostic.

OpenAPI specification supports four authentication templates: no authentication, basic authentication (username & password), API Key authentication and OAuth2. On top of these base templates, Nintex Xtensions has added variations on OAuth2 definitions specifically for Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Graph, Google, and SharePoint Online.

There is a comprehensive SDK and developer documentation that steps users though the basics of API calls and writing basic custom actions.  In addition, the SDK has examples of custom connectors and case studies.