Nintex forms allow you to return user profile information for selected users, the user profile information includes their Preferred Name, department, title, phone, email and more.  See the User Profile values tutorial for a complete list.

What happens in Nintex forms is when you use a people picker field or a reference to the Current User, the value returned is the full login name for the individual which includes the domain (e.g. domainname\username).

Get persons phone number or other profile value

In this example we are going to be getting the person selected in the person or group field work phone number.  See the User profile information tutorial link above for a full list of user profile values you can return.  Here’s our example form with no customization’s, as you can see selecting a user does not populate the phone number:

1. We have to use a Calculated Value to get user profile information, so first delete the Phone number field, then drag a calculated value control where the field used to be.

2. You will notice that the calculated value field is not formatted properly though (text displayed in the top right corner).  To fix the formatting, click on an existing field on your form (like the Person or Group Field), then click on Format Painter, the click on your new field.

3.  This will copy the formatting from the existing field to your new Calculated Value field.  The text should now be centered with a light gray background.

4.  Double Click on the Calculated Value field to open the Control Settings.  Enter a Name for the control and connect it to the field in the list.

5.  Click on the Insert Reference icon next to the Formula field.  In the Formula Builder popup window, click on the Runtime Functions tab, then double-click the userProfileLookup function to insert the function into the Formula field.

6.  Once the userProfileLookup() function in your formula field, click in between the ( ).  Then click on the Named Controls and select your People picker field (Or you could use the Common tab > Current User reference as well).

7.  After your field reference (which will be displayed in red), add a comma, the inside of quotes put the User Profile that you want to return (WorkPhone, PreferredName, Department, Title, WorkEmail, Click here for full list).  Once your formula is done click the OK button.

8.  Your Control Setting should look similar to the example below.  Click the Save button.

Finished Example:  Now when a person is selected in a people picker field, their phone number from their user profile will be returned.

Using Nintex Forms or workflows you can return profile values for individuals specified in people picker fields, the created or modified by persons, or the current user.  To see how to return profile values in Nintex forms, please view this tutorial.

Here is a list of the values that are available from an Individuals SharePoint User Profile:

If you do not have the Title field in your Nintex form, all your form entries will be displayed as ‘No Title’:

The problem with this is you usually need the Title field to display on your list views as it’s the only column that provides a link to the form itself, including the edit menu options (the ellipses), and the title is what is shown in search results.  So if all your forms are titled No Title, no one will be able to tell which form is which when searching.

Solution

Often it doesn’t make sense to make an end user put in a ‘Title’ for the form, instead what we usually recommend is creating a Calculated value to create a unique meaningful title for the form based on values entered into form fields.  See the Creating a Form Title tutorial for complete instructions.

Although there is an option on Nintex Forms Buttons to allow you to setup confirmation messages, this setting should only be used if Causes validation is set to No.
So essentially confirmation messages should not be added to buttons that Save the form, since validation usually needs to occur before the form is saved.

The problem is that the confirmation message displays before validation occurs and before the form is saved.  So if there is a validation problem (e.g. a blank required field), the confirmation message will display, then the missing field validation message will display.  This is confusing for the end user as they think the form submitted because they got the confirmation message.

Solution

Do not put confirmation messages on buttons that Cause validation (usually Save or Submit buttons).

With Nintex forms you might experience either a preview of a Nintex form or when trying to create a new or edit an existing form for the screen to just be blank:

Solution

The blank preview or blank form is caused by either an invalid rule or invalid javascript.  The most common cause is an invalid rule, all it takes is forgetting a closing bracket for example and the form just won’t display.  Unfortunately no errors will display, which is why with Nintex forms it’s a good idea to preview your form after every 1 or 2 new rules are created to ensure you don’t have a formatting problem with the rules.

Example 1: rule is missing a closing parentheses:

Example 2: rule is missing closing quote mark:

Example 3: rule is missing the comma after Field reference and before format:

Any of the examples above would cause the form not to load.  Fixing the rule, fixes the form:

To find which rule is formatted incorrectly, Click on the Nintex Forms tab, click on the Rules option, then check the Show All box.  This will allow you to scroll through all the rules on your form:

With forms you sometimes to need to check the format of fields to ensure they are formatted as you would expect them to be.  Some examples of formatted fields include:

• Email Addresses
• Social Security Number
• A number that is xx digits long (e.g. NPI number is always 10 digits long)
• Only letters and specific symbols allowed

To check the format of the data entered into a field you will need to use the Control Regular expression formula for that field.

To do that, double-click on the field to open the Control Settings for the field.  Click on the Validation + mark to expand the section, for Use a regular expression select Yes.  You can then enter a Regular expression (examples below) and a error message for that field.

Regular Expression Examples

Email Address format

^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$

Social Security Number format

\d{3,3}-\d{2,2}-\d{4,4}$

A 10 digit long number format

\d{10,10}$

Between a 7 and 9 digit long number format

\d{7,9}$

Alphanumeric (no special characters)

[0-9a-zA-Z\s]*

Phone Number with area code (allows either dashes or periods in between the numbers):

\b\d{3}[-.]?\d{3}[-.]?\d{4}\b

Creating your own Regular Expressions

I found a really useful site (http://www.regexr.com/) which I’ve found helpful to create and test regular expressions.

**Please note, do not use either the ^ or $ at the start or end of your expressions on the regexr site, these symbols should only be used on a single line of text field.  The test text on that site is in a multi-line text field so if you use either of those symbols you will get incorrect results.

Example of testing the email formating on RegExr:

In my opinion it’s a best practice to hide the sites left navigation or current navigation from all Nintex forms.  The reason why is if someone clicks on a left navigation link while filling out a form, all the information they entered into the form will be lost.  So to prevent that we just hide the left navigation from all Nintex forms:

How to hide the left nav from forms

1. Open the form in the Nintex Form Designer

2. Click on the Settings option in the ribbon, expand out the Custom JavaScript section on the Settings popup window.

3. Paste the following text into the Custom JavaScript section:

// Hide the left navigation
NWF$(“#sideNavBox”).hide();
NWF$(“#contentBox”).css({“margin-left”:”20px”});

4. Save the Settings and Publish the form.

Finished Example: The form will now open with the left navigation hidden:

You can hide the ribbon that displays above Nintex forms if you want to hide all the form ribbon options:

Please be aware that if you hide the ribbon for the form, you also hide the spell checking option and the ribbon options for the multi-line of text field as well:

Hiding the form ribbon

1. Open the form in the Nintex Form Designer

2. Click on the Settings option in the ribbon, expand out the Custom JavaScript section on the Settings popup window.

3. Paste the following text into the Custom JavaScript section:

// Hide the form ribbon
NWF$(“#s4-ribbonrow”).hide();

4. Save the Settings and Publish the form.

Finished Example: The form will now open with the left navigation hidden:

Instead of trying to change the size of every label and field in your form to make the font larger, instead you can use javascript to make all the labels and fields larger:

Making form fields larger

1. Open the form in the Nintex Form Designer

2. Click on the Settings option in the ribbon, expand out the Custom CSS section on the Settings popup window.

3. Paste the following text into the Custom CSS section:

/* Start: Make label and text fields larger */
.nf-outer {
font-size: 11pt;
}
a.ms-addnew {
font-size: 11pt;
}
input[type=”submit”], button {
padding: 3px;
font-size: 14px;
border:1px solid #999999;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
-o-border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
}
.nf-textbox-wrapper > input[type=”text”] {
margin-left: -2px !important;
max-width: 98%;
}
.ui-datepicker-trigger {
top: 7px;
height: 20px;
width: 21px;
}
.ms-taxonomy-browser-button {
padding-top:5px !important;
}
.nf-attachmentsLink {
padding-top:2px;
}
.nf-form-label label {
padding-top: 3px !important;
padding-left: 10px !important;
}
.nf-filler-container {
padding: 10px 0px 0px 10px;
}
.nf-filler-control-inner label {
padding-top: 3px !important;
}
/* End: Make label and text fields larger */

4. Save the Settings and Publish the form.

Finished Example: The form will now display with a larger font:

Setting up SharePoint list or library filtered views with multiple conditions can sometimes be a little tricky as the order that you put the conditions determine whether the view will filter successfully or not.  Most of the problems occur when creating Filtered views that contain both AND and OR conditions.  The simple rule of thumb I use when contains both is to put the OR conditions before the AND conditions.

So for example if I wanted to create an Overdue Open Tasks view, if I put the AND condition before the OR condition, the ‘Test Issue 2’ item appears in my view even though it doesn’t meet the Due Date is less than today condition:

But if I put the OR condition before the AND condition, now the filtered view works correctly and only returns Pending or In Progress items where the Due Date is less than Today:

To show a little more complex example, I’m going to create a My Overdue Open Tasks view which is basically the same as the view above but now additionally only returns items Assigned to Me.  Again if I put an AND condition before an OR condition, the view returns an item that shouldn’t be there:

But if I put the OR before the AND’s, now the filter works correctly:

Sometimes an easier way to create filtered views with multiple conditions, is to create a calculated field to combine conditions together.  For example you could use a calculated field to mark all ‘In Progress’ OR ‘ Pending’ items as ‘Active’ in the calculated column.  Not only does this simplify the conditions for creating views, but if you ever add a third condition like ‘Waiting on Someone’ that you want to show up in all your views, you can just edit the one calculated column formula instead of having to update all your views.  To learn how this is done see the Using a Calculated field to simplify Filtered Views tutorial.

If you would like to understand the logic behind why the SharePoint views filter like they do, here’s a good in depth post on the Nothing but SharePoint blog:
http://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/2011/08/11/understanding-filters-in-sharepoint-list-views-aspx/

When creating filtered views on SharePoint lists or libraries, sometimes items that shouldn’t appear in the view do appear with filters that combine both AND and OR conditions together.  For example here’s an example of a filtered view where I wanted only items with the word test in the title, and in either Pending and In Progress status.  The problem is an item without the word Test in the Title is returned in the view:

The problem is the order of conditions determine how the the SharePoint filters work.

Solution

When combining OR and AND conditions together, put the OR condition(s) before the AND condition(s):

More Information

For more information on setting up filtered views with multiple conditions:
Filtered Views with Multiple Conditions tutorial

OR you can use a Calculated Column to simplify filtered views:
Filtered views with Calculated Columns tutorial

Creating filtered views with multiple conditions can usually be made simpler by using Calculated Columns to group any OR conditions together.

For example, let’s say you have an Issues list with a Status choice field with the following choices:
Pending
In Progress
Waiting on Someone
Completed
Cancelled

If we wanted to create an ‘Active’ items view, we would probably want to show all items that were either Pending, OR In Progress, OR Waiting on Someone.  Instead of having three conditions in our Filtered view, instead we can create an ‘Active’ Calculated Column that marks all Pending, In Progress, and Waiting on Someone items as Active.  This would make the filtered view much simpler:

This would also make it much easier to add additional active Status choices later, as all you have to do is update your calculated column instead of having to update all your views.

Creating a Calculated Column for a Filtered View

1. Go to the list or library, click on the list/library tab, select the list/library settings option

2. Under the Columns section, click on the Create column link

3.  Enter a column name, select the Calculated type:

4.  Create the Calculated Column Formula, for this type of calculated formula you will want
to combine an IF and OR function together like in this example if you have 2 values:

=IF(OR([Status]=”Pending”,[Status]=”In Progress”),”Yes”,”No”)

Breaking down this structure, the image below shows the text explanation of the part of the color coded part of the formula below:

We actually have to put the OR before the fields with the comma actually representing the OR.  Another example is if you have 3 Status values:

=IF(OR([Status]=”Pending”,[Status]=”In Progress”,[Status]=”Waiting on Someone”),”Yes”,”No”)

=IF(OR(
Then click on field you want to evaluate

5.  Add an equals sign and then the value of the field inside of double quotes:

6.  Add a comma for the OR, then click on the 2nd field you to evaluate, followed by an equals sign and then the value of the field inside of double quotes:

7.  Add a closing bracket, a comma followed by the value you want the field to be if the IF statement is true inside of double quotes:

8.  Add a comma followed by the value you want the field to be if the IF statement if false inside of double quotes, then add another closing bracket:

9.  Once your function is completed, select the single line of text data type and click the OK button.

10.  Your list will now have a new column on it, in our example Waiting on Someone and Pending items are a Yes for Active, while Completed and Cancelled items are a No:

This will make it much simpler to create views as you can now just filter on the Active column:

This article covers the following types of Calculated Column formulas:

• Date and time formulas
• Mathematical (number field) formulas
• Text formulas

Click on the links below to go to the tutorials for:

• Getting Started with Calculated Columns
• Using Calculated Columns to show ‘Active’ Items
• Calculated Columns to create hyperlink columns
• Calculated Columns to display images

**Most of the formulas in this tutorial were copied from the following Microsoft MSDN article:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb862071(v=office.14).aspx

I’ve tried to simplify the formulas from the MSDN article and include screenshots of the formulas to better show how these formulas could be used.

Note
When creating calculated columns make sure the correct returned data type is selected, screenshots have been provided for each group of formula examples.

Calculated Columns or Calculated Fields in SharePoint lists and libraries can be used for many different things.  They can be used for:

• Number or Mathematical equations (this tutorial)
• Date Formulas (add or subtract dates OR  find the difference between two dates)
• Text Formulas (evaluate a field value to see if it matches a specified value(s))
• Create a hyperlink field that can even open in a new window
• Display an image in a field

Calculated Columns are a column type that can be added to any SharePoint list or library:

The calculated column is then displayed on the list or library and can be used in views.

Calculated Date example:

In this example, the calculated column ‘Estimated Completion’ adds the Estimated Duration to the Start Date to come up the Estimated Completion date:

Calculated Text example:

In this example the calculated column ‘Active’ which marks all Waiting on Someone, Pending and In Progress requests as active:

This dramatically simplifies creating views of ‘Active’ requests as now you can just filter the view to show items where Active equals Yes, rather than having to setup 3 filters for each active view:

How to create a calculated column

1. Go to the list or library, click on the list/library tab, select the list/library settings option

2. On the list/library settings page, scroll down to the Columns section and click on the Create Column option.

3.  Enter a Column Name, choose the Calculated column type.

4.  Enter in the Formula, please note that when insert Columns into the formula they will be displayed with Brackets around them.  In this example, our formula will add half of the Estimated Duration to the Start Date:
=[Start Date]+([Estimated Duration]/2)

5.  Finally choose what data type your formula will display

Completed Example:  The Checkin date calculated field is half way between the Start Date and the Estimated Completion:

**For more formula examples, see the Calculated Column Formula Examples Tutorial.

On some lists or libraries you might not see all the fields on that list or library as Columns that can be inserted into Calculated fields.  Some field types like the ones highlighted below cannot be uses in Calculated Columns:

If I try to create a new calculated column on the All Field Types List, I only see the valid type fields listed where I can insert them into the Formula:

The field types that cannot be used in Calculated Columns are:

• Choice (Checkbox)
• Multiple Lines of text
• Person fields (including the Created By and Modified By fields)
• Hyperlink
• Lookup
• Managed Metadata

Work around for missing fields

You can use a workflow to take the value from one of the field types that aren’t allowed in Calculated Columns, and copy that value into a new single line of text field on the list/library.

You will then want to hide the field from the list/library since your workflow will be populating the value.

There are two different ways to hide columns or fields on a list or a library.  Conditionally where you only hide the field some of the time (maybe you want to hide the ‘Completed Date’ column when creating new items), or hiding fields all the time.  This tutorial is for hiding a column from all the list or library forms (New, Edit and View).

**The column can still be added to list or library views though if desired.

Reasons you might want to always hide a column

• Make the field hard to edit or change
• You want a workflow to populate or change the field value
• You no longer need a column for new submissions but don’t want to delete it and lose all the entered data for the existing submissions

Hiding a column from all list/library forms

1. Go to your list or library, click on the List/Library tab, select List Settings.

2. On the Settings page, click on the Advanced Settings option.

3. On the Advanced Settings page, select Yes for Allow Management of Content Types.  Click the OK button to save the setting and return to the Settings page.

4.  On the Settings page, you should now see at least 1 content type in the Content Type section.  Click on the Content type.

5.  On the List Content Type page, click on the Column you want to hide.

6. There will now be 3 column setting options, choose the Hidden option.  Click the OK or Save buttons until you return to the main Settings page.

Completed Example:  The hidden column can still be shown on views:

But it will not be shown when creating a new item, editing a item, or viewing an item:

You can validate the number of or even the type of attachments attached to a Nintex form using a new setting in the Attachment field itself.

Double-click on the attachment field on the Form:

On the Attachment Control Settings, expand the Validation section

You can set the minimum number of attachments, maximum number, or specify what file formats are allowed to be attached to the form.

So for the example settings above, the form gives me an error if I don’t have at least 1 attachment.  And the form will only allow doc or docx file extensions, if I try to attach a different file extension a popup error box appears:

You can hide panels or fields in Nintex forms by using the isMemberOfGroup inline function.  This function would appear to have several undocumented limitations though.  This tutorial is detailing the limitations of this function, see the How to hide a field or panel in Nintex forms article if you are looking for instructions on how this function is used.

No special characters allowed in group name

The group names that you include inside of the isMemberOfGroup function cannot contain special characters such as an ampersand (&).  If you group does have any special characters in it’s name, you need to change the group name so it will work to hide fields.

Two group limit

You can setup the isMemberOfGroup function to check 2 groups using the OR inline function:

But it would appear that 2 groups is the limit.  If I try to include 3 or more groups it does not work:

Two group number of group members limit?

When using the isMemberOfGroup for only one group, I’ve been able to successfully have it work for large groups.  But, when using the function for 2 groups I’ve sometimes had it not work when 1 or both of the groups have many members in them.  I’m not sure what the exact number of group members limitation is, nor could I find any documentation about this on the Nintex site.

SharePoint Calculated Columns or fields can be used to create clickable links, these links can also be configured to open in a new tab.  To make the URLs clickable, you have to save the Calculated Column as a Number data type.  I know this is totally crazy, but the number field type will for some reason render html in calculated fields.

Creating clickable Calculated Column links

In this example our list has a single line of text field called ‘Search Topic’, this is the topic you should search for if you want to find more related information about the list item.  What we want to do is display that Search Topic as a clickable link that does a google search for that topic when someone clicks on it.

1. Click on the List/Library tab, click on the List/Library Settings option.

2. On the Settings page, click on the Create Column option.

3. Enter a name for the Column, choose the Calculated type.

4A.  Enter the formula in the following format:
=”a href='{Insert URL Here}’>{Text to display}</a>”
Inserted Columns must have double quotes and ampersands: “&[Inserted Column]&”
Example Formula:
=”a href='{Insert URL Here}”&[Inserted Column]&”‘>{Text to display}</a>”
=”<a href=’https://www.google.com/#q=”&%5BSearch Topic]&”‘>Google Search</a>”

4B. Example where list column is used for text displayed in Calculated Column
Add “&[Inserted Column Name]&” between > AND </a>

4C. Example where link will open in a new tab
Add target=’_blank’ between <a AND href=

Completed Example: We now have 3 different calculated fields that all do a google search for the text entered into the items ‘Search Topic’ field:

If your inserted column is blank

If you are using a column in your URL and if this column is not required, this could create a URL that doesn’t work.  Because your URL will only be partially completed as the inserted column reference will be blank.

For example let’s say we deleted the Search Topic for Test #2 in our list, example 4B will now also be blank because it was set to show the Search Topic as the link text but example 4C will still have a link, but the link won’t work because it’s missing the search topic:

Fix for examples 4A and 4C

Since both of these examples use static text for their links, we will need to edit the formula to ensure that the link text is only displayed if the column (Search Topic) actually has a value entered.

On our calculated column formula, we will need to a add an IF ISBLANK operator.
Add IF(ISBLANK([Inserted Column Name]),””, between = AND “<a
Also add a ) at the very end of the formula:

Now the calculated column will be blank if the Inserted Column is blank:

More Calculated Column Tutorials

Visit the SharePoint Calculated Column Overview for a full list of calculated column tutorials.

Using the FormatDate() date function, you can choose to make a date or time display however you would like on your form:

The table below shows the different date and time formatting options that can be used with the FormatDate() function.  For more examples of formatted or calculated dates, please see the Calculated Values Example Tutorial.