New Office 365 Workflow New Feature: Conditional Start

Conditional start is an exciting new feature recently introduced for Nintex Workflow for Office 365 that gives designers now have more control over how workflows are triggered. Normally, a workflow is kicked off when an item is created or modified. This new feature lets you set a condition or expression that must be true for the workflow to start.

For those unfamiliar as to why this is a big deal here is an example: You are working on a document that you will later circulate for approval. You do not want to trigger the approval workflow when you upload the draft version. You want the ability to update the document multiple times and kick off the workflow only when it is ready. A great situation for conditional start.

The “Conditional Start” feature has been in Nintex Workflow for SharePoint on-premises and Nintex Workflow Cloud. Nintex for Office 365 has had a similar feature call “Run if”. This method is less efficient because it triggers the workflow when the item is created or modified, and then checks to see of the “Run if” condition is met. “Conditional Start” prevents unnecessary workflows by checking whether the condition is met before triggering the workflow.

To use this feature select “Settings” from the workflow designer ribbon.

Scroll down to “Start options”. To use conditions, you need to enable these conditions in “Start when items are created”, “Start when items are modified,” or both.

Next, click “Add condition.” You will have the option to create an expression to check the value of an existing column of the list and compare it to a value.

Conditions within conditions are supported.

Once you are done, click “Save”. Your workflow will only start when you create/modify an item AND your condition is true. You can also go back and modify existing workflows.