Introduction - DRDLR



Rural Development and Land ReformAssessment of workflow software solutions reportAuthors: Gugu DladlaReview by: Date prepared:2018-10-23Document version:0.1Document status:DraftCompany ConfidentialNoticeNo part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the Department of Rural Development & Land Reform.Document enquiries can be directed to: Office of the CIO, Network Management Office Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, 184 Jeff Masemola Street (Jacob Mare Street), Pretoria orPrivate Bag X833, PRETORIA, 0001Document Amendment HistoryAdd all amendments from the first time that the document was createdVersionDateStatusDescription of amendmentAmended by0.123/10/2018DraftFirst DraftGugu DladlaDistribution ListNameRepresentingRolePhuti LekgauOCIO Director: ICT SolutionsRoy NaidooOCIODirector : Service ManagementInbaan MoodleyOCIOChief Information OfficerGlossary of abbreviationsAdd all abbreviations used within this document here in alphabetical orderAbbreviationDescriptionOCIOOffice of the Chief Information OfficerTable of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u 1Introduction PAGEREF _Toc528071818 \h 42Methodology PAGEREF _Toc528071819 \h 43Results and Recommendation PAGEREF _Toc528071820 \h 44Recommendation PAGEREF _Toc528071821 \h 5IntroductionThis document summarizes the results of the evaluation of software solutions that can integrate with SharePoint to extend the functionality of workflow and forms design without writing boiler plate code. This exercise was prompted by the growing need for the ICT Solutions: Applications development directorate to deliver applications that are innovative, can automate processes and integrate easily to any of the existing technology stack (i.e. SharePoint 2013, Oracle database, CRM, and MS SQL server) without writing boiler plate code in order to deliver application faster at low cost. Comparison of selected workflow solutionsSources used for selection of software vendors include Gartner. The three vendors selected for the evaluation included: K2 ,Nintex and MicrosoftBased on demonstration session and information gathered from Gartner the following criteria was used to evaluate suitability of the platformEase of Integration with SharePoint, other existing platform such as Oracle databases, rest and soap servicesEase of development for forms and validationMobilitySecurity & GovernanceDeployment modelsAnalyticsPricingCriteriaNintexK2Microsoft Flow and Power AppsPricing and licensing modelPer ProcessR 103,875 per 5 processesUnlimited number of users per processNamed user modelR 5,083 per userNamed user modelDepartment licensed for 1000 users on the Enterprise AgreementIntegration SharePoint Web services/ Soap servicesSoap servicesCRMMS SQL ServerOracleSharePointInstallation, requires own serverCRMMS SQL ServerOracleSharePointCRMMS SQL ServerOracle integration requires additional licenseInfrastructure and DeploymentOn-Premise Installed on SharePoint as an app On-premiseInstalls on its own serverOffice 365 Cloud-based SharePoint gateway for connecting to expose data on premise to cloud environmentEase of developmentNo-code app developmentResponsive and Customizable FormLow-code app developmentResponsive and Customizable FormsNo-code app development on power apps cloud platformMobile PlatformAndroid and IOS supportAndroid and IOS SupportDeployment modelsCloud-basedOn-premiseHybridCloud-basedOn-premiseHybrid AnalyticsSupports Built in and customizable reportsIntergrates with Power BISupported customized report built with Power BI Reports basedSecurity and GovernanceSupports Active DirectorySupports Active DirectoryNintex Forms vs PowerAppsLet’s start with comparing the forms tools. Both are powerful ways to create forms, however there are some significant differences that should lead you to choose over the other based on your need:Learning CurvePowerApps is being positioned by Microsoft as a tool for business users, however in my experience it has a bit higher of a learning curve than may be marketed. Though the tool allows you to write Excel type functions for your business logic the concepts of data objects, properties and accessing those properties can quickly confuse a business user who doesn’t have at least some light coding exposure. For me this places PowerApps primarily as a IT Pro/Power User tool.Nintex’s Responsive Form design experience is much easier to learn and users can quickly create a responsive form without worrying too much about aesthetic layout or pixels. When dealing with business rules Nintex does require users to use JavaScript syntax to write Boolean logic, however they assist with buttons for logic operators and a future release will provide a much better, non-development rules builder (that already exists in NWC). Nintex’s Classic Form designer is also pretty easy to use but form builders need to handle layout in a way that is similar to PowerApps. This experience does still have a leg up on PowerApps as the rules builder is still more intuitive in my opinion.Who Owns the FormWith PowerApps, all forms are owned by a single user, typically the designer. The current advice from Microsoft is that when deploying a form to production you would use a production service account (yes it would require a license) that would own all forms in production.?Nintex’s Forms are owned by the List, Library or Workflow. Users have the rights to create or edit forms, but any other user who has rights can go in and update or publish those forms. In my opinion it makes Nintex a much more enterprise ready solution at this time.Mobile and Desktop Form DevelopmentCurrently PowerApps’s development experience is very much a mobile first design focus. Though Microsoft is in the process of rolling out PowerApps fully embedded in SharePoint lists (overriding the default form) it still uses a slim portrait view that is mobile ready. This could very well change in the future but there is not enough known about the roadmap at this point.Nintex gives you a number of choices around how your form should be displayed. In SharePoint you can use their classic mode which allows you to design different layouts depending on the users’ device. Thus, your form on a desktop would look much different than on an Android phone, for instance. This design style allows you to customize each form by writing JavaScript to create complex forms.?Nintex also just released a Responsive Design experience, which is even easier to use and is targeted to business users who want to create forms without any knowledge of coding. The resulting form is completely responsive so looks good on a desktop or a phone and it intelligently stacks the fields and labels based on the device’s window size.Native OS ControlsThis is a small difference, but worth mentioning: Nintex forms will use the native controls for your mobile devices. That means you’ll get the iOS date picker on iOS and the Android date picker on Android. With PowerApps you’ll get the same controls across all devices which can lead to potential usability frustration for some users on mobile devices.Cloud, On-Premise and OfflinePowerApps requires you to use the cloud based offering. There is no on-premise installation (or plans as of yet) that allows you to run your PowerApps in your own environment. You can connect it to your on-premise data using a?data gateway?which must be installed and configured on your on-premise servers. Nintex has a SharePoint 2010, 2013 and 2016 version that all install into an on-premise SharePoint environment.Additionally, offline usage for PowerApps is difficult at this time, though possible. Nintex Mobile handles offline form submission and task completion very efficiently, queuing up data to send once your connection is plex FormsNintex’s Classic form builder allows for complete extension through JavaScript, which, combined with custom REST services means you can pretty much make it do anything you want. PowerApps also allows for very complex form build using custom connections to your data and Azure Functions. At Microsoft Ignite 2017 Microsoft talked extensively about this tool not having a development “cliff” which is where you realize the form tool is no longer powerful enough to handle what you want to do and if you want to achieve your goal you have to start from scratch building a new form from the ground up (custom development for instance).I do find that in building forms in PowerApps you have to rely on the controls and the functions that PowerApps gives you so you’re at the whim of what the tool can do, or have to work creatively around the limitations, as opposed to the vast ability of JavaScript which is well known by many developers. That being said, Nintex Classic Forms experience is only available in SharePoint (both on premise and online), which means your complex forms would live in SharePoint. PowerApps (soon) will also have the ability to surface in a SharePoint list or library, but since it was developed outside of SharePoint first it has an advantage, which bring us to:Stand Alone, Form Based ApplicationsHere’s where PowerApps really lives up to its name and has a strong advantage over Nintex. If you’re looking to build a standalone application that maybe doesn’t even connect to SharePoint, PowerApps may be a good fit. It has the ability to connect to a ton of data sources, including the Common Data Service, allowing you to build mobile first, line of business applications a lot faster than you could in the past. You can get Nintex to do this, but it’s not as intuitive as doing so in PowerApps.Nintex Workflow vs FlowIn this section I’ll mostly focus on a comparison of Nintex Workflow for SharePoint (online and on-premise) and Flow but I do mention NWC a little bit. I expound on NWC a bit more in the next section.User ExperienceSince Nintex’s introduction their focus has been on creating an extremely easy to use workflow creation tool. Compared to SharePoint designer it was no competition, Nintex won every time. Flow closes the gap a bit, but Nintex still does have an edge in their user experience.?Neither tools use your standard BPM Notation, so both do require you to think a bit differently about your workflow. Nintex’s recommendation has been to stop diagramming your workflows in Visio and instead just build them directly in Nintex. This way when the flow looks right you just have to make it functional, half the work is already done. I’ve seen this be very successful and the same could be said for building a workflow in Flow.?In my experience, Nintex handles variables and transferring of data from one action to another a bit more intuitively than Flow does. I prefer the action pane Nintex provides for dragging and dropping actions compared to Flow’s add button and search for action model, but I can certainly see others liking Flow’s experience better.State MachinesState machines allow you to create a workflow that doesn’t have a single, straight forward path. Imagine a workflow where there is an approval step. If rejected a task gets assigned to the submitter to review and resubmit. This workflow could go through any amount of iterations of this approval cycle. State machines make this easy to define in a workflow process and Nintex wins big here. Currently there is no way to easily create a state machine workflow in Flow, you have to work around the limitation.Who Owns the WorkflowSimilar to PowerApps, Flow’s are owned by a single individual or account. In Nintex the workflow is owned by that list, library or site. See “Who Owns the Form” above for more details on my opinion here.Simple Looping / Conditional EvaluationsLooping is possible in Flow, you can do a For Each and a Do Until. This is much better than what SharePoint Designer provided (even the latest 2013 iteration), however they’re a little clunky to work with. Nintex gives you three looping types, For Each, Loop with Condition and a Loop N Times. Setting them up is pretty intuitive and you can create some complex looping if necessary.Cloud and On PremiseJust like PowerApps, Flow is only cloud based. This means your workflows will only run in the cloud and to access on premise data you need to use a?data gateway. Nintex installs into SharePoint on premise or runs in SharePoint Online in the cloud.Feature SetsBoth Flow and Nintex have over 100 actions with 10s of connections to other systems. You’d be hard pressed to do an exact functionality comparison of all innate actions or 3rd party connections (a task for another day). If anything, at a high-level glance it feels like Flow may have surpassed Nintex in their off the shelf 3rd party connections from a quantity perspective. That being said, both have the ability to make REST calls, so any connection that doesn’t already exist can be made through API calls from both.Document GenerationDue to Nintex’s acquisition of Drawloop, Nintex has a document generation feature built right in to their workflow tool. The user experience is intuitive and you can quickly create a document template, map properties from your workflow into the document and quickly be generating Word or PDFs. Flow has no innate functionality for this (though you could probably build it using REST calls to a 3rd Party Doc Gen company like HotDocs –?). For any process where a document needs to be generated, Nintex has a big advantage here.Initiation OptionsFlow uses pre-built 3rd Party connections or a scheduling service to initiate workflows. There are quite a few events from connections already built (169 triggers at time of writing). It’s worth taking a look through them just to see what’s possible, as the list is quite impressive.Nintex has a few options for initiation. With the SharePoint workflow platform, it’s your standard list/library item created, modified or manual start. There is also a scheduled site workflow option. Nintex Workflow Cloud extends the initiation capability to much more, using the idea of connections similar to the way Flow does. The number of off the shelf connectors are less than Flow, however there are two things to note in NWCOne, is the ability to create a form as the imitation of the flow. This gives you the ability to use the Nintex Responsive Form builder to build a form that can be anonymous and either browsed to directly or embedded in any website.?Two, is the ability to have your flow be externally started. When this is selected and you publish your workflow you are given a REST endpoint with instructions on how to call that endpoint from ANY other system. That means you can start a workflow from any code or system that can call a REST endpoint. I’ve even seen NWC workflows kicked off from a Flow workflow.Nintex Suite – Additional Features in the SuiteWhen you purchase Nintex using their subscription pricing you get access to Nintex Workflow and Forms for SharePoint (On-Premise & Online), but you also get access to their Nintex Workflow Cloud and, depending on your subscription level, Nintex Hawkeye which provides functionality above and beyond forms and workflow. These are included in the package so it’s important to factor them in when discussing cost justification.Nintex Workflow Cloud (NWC)Not all workflows make sense in SharePoint. That’s why Nintex created NWC, for those times you want to automate a process but it doesn’t have anything to do with SharePoint. Comparatively, NWC is much more like Flow than Nintex workflow in SharePoint. Both are cloud based, both use connectors for initiation and interaction with other systems. NWC has their form builder and external start as a differentiator as well as a different user experience that I find to be more intuitive. There is also task assignment and management in NWC, which you don’t get with Flow. All of the differentiators that I discuss above for Nintex for SharePoint vs Flow also apply to NWC vs Flow.HawkeyeHawkeye is a business intelligence tool that will help you get a better understanding of what workflow is doing for you and how you can get more out of it. With Hawkeye you can inspect your workflows as a whole (across all Nintex environments cloud and on premise) and see inventory, usage and many other statistics. This allows you to track your ROI, manage the health of your workflows and identify places for process optimization in existing workflows. To help with this latter point, Nintex Workflow contains some Hawkeye actions that let you log information to the Hawkeye database which you can then use for even more granular analysis and optimization. Depending on how much time you want to commit to continuous improvement, this can become very powerful and for the right process help you identify ways to save thousands of dollars.All the data from Hawkeye is viewable from prebuilt Lenses (which use PowerBI) or can be accessed raw and imported into your favourite data visualization tool like Tableau.App StudioNintex Enterprise edition allows you to publish Nintex Forms as actual branded apps that can easily be downloaded and installed on mobile devices. Imagine having your company time-off request app on all your employee's phones, giving them the ability to easily submit their requests at any time, and then initiating a workflow. They'd never know it was Nintex that was powering it as you get to completely brand it as yours.App Studio also gives you the ability to push content to your employees through these apps. For example, you could push out the employee handbook or time off policies in the same apps as the time of request form. This puts the information right where it's needed.Final Note on NintexWorkflow, Forms, Hawkeye, NWC & the App Studio; all of these things are Nintex’s bread and butter. They are an established company with a good vision and they will continue to iterate on these products. PowerApps and Flow are just a small piece of the Microsoft suite. Admittedly Microsoft shows a very strong commitment to these platforms, however at any point in time they could discontinue them and go a different direction (Anyone remember MS Access’ return to fame in SharePoint 2013?).ClosingHopefully this (longwinded) article helps you to better see the strengths and weaknesses of these products from a features perspective. I do believe that each use case needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis and there are certainly times when PowerApps and Flow are a great fit. The other times you can rely on the Nintex Suite to provide your company great value for automation and form creation. I have personally found with many clients that the above differences are enough to justify the cost of Nintex and when a company adopts the platform, there is always a return on investment that outweighs the cost.Though I’ve worked with all these products extensively I’m certainly not perfect. Additionally, they are both changing rapidly, so it’s possible this information will go out of date the day after I publish it. Due to these two facts, please feel free to reach out to correct or update any of this information. I hope this can remain a good reference for customers considering Nintex, PowerApps and Flow. I’m also open to discussing any of these topics in more detail so please feel free to?reach out to me?if you’d like to discuss your particular use case and I can help guide you based on my parison of selected workflow solutionsNintexProcess-centric model driven composition,?Nintex is a workflow engine?intended to shorten development time and features graphical modelling, a metadata repository, and workflow. It is built on top of SharePoint’s workflow engine and makes sense for an organization looking to make the most of the SharePoint workflow capabilities.It reduces the need for specialized technical skills to create and manage workflows, provides visibility into the process by business users, and depicts the workflow graphically. Similar to when you should use SharePoint workflow, Nintex is a good fit when the process you want to automate is highly structured, requires only the most basic of analytics, uses only simple business rules, and doesn’t need to integrate with any systems outside of SharePoint or O365.Usage ScenariosOAC — Opportunistic Application Composition?– This method uses the BPM platform to quickly compose an application. The process may include the orchestration of IT sen/ices that have preconfigured adapters, but typically orchestration focuses on human-centric tasks. Workflow complexity is low and has limited dynamic behaviour (typically isolated to simple decisions that only examine process instance data) or is unstructured, collaborative, and ad hoc simple task management.Most of these third-party products aim to make it easier for less technically savvy workers to build, maintain, and edit workflows.SummaryNintex is one of the easiest solutions for your business users to learn and use themselves. This makes it a powerful tool for the technology team to empower business users to automate simple processes and edit as they need with minimal support from the IT team or external contractors. The downside is that Nintex architecture suffers from the same shortcomings as the SharePoint workflow, and upgrades to SharePoint could break or adversely impact your workflows.If you’re using SharePoint on premises (especially if you’re on SP 2010 or older), Nintex will consume additional resources. This could mean adding additional Web Front End (WFE) servers to your farm, and since Nintex licenses by WFE, it’s going to cost you. Lastly, Nintex doesn’t handle highly complex, long-running processes, nor anything with hundreds of steps. Keep it simple with Nintex and you’ll be just fine.K2K2 is both an application – centric and process-centric model driven composition. It is an Intelligent Business Process Management Suite, iBPMS, which is used to shorten development time, as well as to compress the number of review cycles for process improvements. It allows business users to collaborate with the IT department across all phases of the process life cycle, and features dynamic + ad hoc types of non-routine work with analysis of in process performance and external data. It is a .NET based solution that features easy integration with other Microsoft technologies as well as service- enabled enterprise systems.K2 blackpearl?allows people to build and run business applications, including forms, workflow, data analysis, and reporting. K2 natively integrates with SharePoint, Active Directory, Exchange, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, and more. It uses visual tools to build reusable components that utilize LOB and web-based data. K2’s Smart Objects provide a single view of business entities and are easily configured to connect to nearly any system within an enterprise or on the web.Work?ow complexity is low and has limited dynamic behaviour.Usage ScenariosOAC — Opportunistic Application Composition –?Citizen developers use the BPM platform to quickly compose an application. The process may include the orchestration of IT services that have preconfigured adapters, but typically orchestration focuses on human-centric tasks. Work?ow complexity is low and has limited dynamic behavior (typically isolated to simple decisions that only examine process instance data) or is unstructured, collaborative and ad hoc simple task management.CPI — Continuous Process Improvement –?In this scenario, the platform is used to measure the business outcome of an existing process and improve the results of the outcome through iterative improvements to the process. Workflow complexity is low and has limited dynamic behavior.IBO — Intelligent Business Operations –?IBO addresses the challenge of creating smarter, more agile and more innovative processes, which enable organizations to outperform the status quo and exploit new business opportunities. Implementing processes that use operational intelligence results in a better decision making and improved knowledge worker collaboration.DPs — Digitalized Process –?This is a type of intelligent business operations that manages the interaction of people, businesses, and things in digital marketing or digital business. Digitalized processes are designed for change so that these interactions (that is, the work) can be adapted in real time to capitalize on business moments.CM — Case Management –?These solutions treat a case as the primary aspect of work to be managed for a successful outcome. Cases do not progress serially or predictably. There are multiple dependent workflows and associated object types, such as data, content, people, machines, and policies. These interdependent relationships are the key architectural challenge. Case Management as a process style is now being applied in many sectors beyond government, legal, and insurance, including healthcare, banking, higher education, and retail. Some solution providers offer cross-industry case management?frameworks, while others offer industry and domain specific ones. CM solutions address four different use cases that use varying degrees of structured and unstructured processes as well as structured and unstructured data.BT – Business Transformation –?In this scenario, senior business executives want to make a game changing play and rethink one or more business processes. We see this scenario in organizations worldwide that are strained by significant industry changes brought about by regulatory changes and the global economic recession. This is, in many ways, a culmination of the previous use cases but is a significant departure from the current approach to business operations.SummaryK2 blackpearl has been around for a long time and as far as we know, is one of the only Microsoft partners with a workflow tool that Microsoft actually uses internally. It is capable of tackling your most challenging workflow and business transformation needs. Though it integrates with SharePoint, this is a standalone engine. They do offer their K2 Appit model where, because none of the products are built on SharePoint’s workflow engine, you will not be affected by Microsoft’s upgrades to SharePoint or any future deprecation. It’s an expensive tool, but they’ve rolled out a much more flexible pricing model that enables organizations to get started without incurring the full cost up front.Digitalized processes are designed for change so that these interactions (that is, the work) can be adapted in real time to capitalize on business moments.In ConclusionYou should use SharePoint workflow for managing simple tasks related to content that lives in the application itself. If you have to code, consider a BPM solution that is the right fit for your entire organization, and you have the skillset to support. It’s worth noting that these BPM platform solutions are not the cheapest, but they will often be exactly what you need.Before you make the final decision about which workflow to use, make sure to look across the organization to see what processes you have and evaluate the future needs of those teams instead of focusing on a single business unit or business process.Don’t let budget be the deciding factor in your approach, because the cheapest solution can ultimately end up losing you more money in the long run than you would have spent doing it the right way the first time.Recommendation ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download