I had a requirement from a client recently for an anonymous form that would allow attachments and then push all data captured (including attachments) into SharePoint Online. My colleagues tried several non-Nintex solutions to no avail, because there seems to be a limitation with allowing attachments on anonymous SharePoint forms.
Nintex Workflow Cloud (NWC) to the rescue!
In this blog post I’m not going to walk through the full solution in detail, but I wanted to focus on one part, specifically, that tried to trip me up while I was working through the development –> allowing attachments onto an anonymous web form.
Here are the steps you will need to follow if you are using an anonymous web form as the start event for your NWC workflow and wish to allow attachments:
1. Create new Workflow in Nintex Workflow Cloud
2. Select Configure Start Event and configure as shown in the below screenshot
3. Select Design Form
4. Drag File Upload control onto form (and any other controls as needed)
NOTE: The File Upload control is new to NWC as of November 2017 and is what you will use to allow attachments on your NWC form. Check out the blog post here in the Nintex Product Blog on Nintex Connect for initial release details.
5. Update control Titles and configuration options as needed
6. Click Done to save form configuration
Now, this is where the form tried to trip me up…
When I tested my form, I received a fairly unhelpful error that “File upload failed” as shown below. This was obviously not much to go on. And on top of that, the File Upload control configuration was so straight-forward, I couldn’t see much else that could be configured to resolve this error.
Eventually, while digging through the variable that was automatically generated when I added the File Upload control to my form, I clicked on the information icon to the right of File Upload and noted the following message.
After a little more digging through the Nintex Help documentation, here’s what I learned. Essentially, because NWC is not a storage solution, in order for your form to accept attachments, you must provide a location for files to be stored when they are captured via the File Upload control.
There is a note in the Nintex Help documentation regarding this (see screenshot below), but it took a bit of digging to get to the resolution.
Note: A default file location must be set up if your form uses this control. If no default file location is set up, then an error message “File upload failed” appears when customers attempt to add files to the form.
Once I followed the steps to set up a default file location, my form worked like a charm. Happy client, happy life – I think that’s the saying… 😉
Ultimately, the File Upload control in combination with the anonymous web form in Nintex Workflow Cloud opens the door for some powerful solutions and I can’t wait to build out my next one!
Nicole Vesser 