Nintex XChange Asset Review

Nintex earlier this year unveiled a community portal for community members to provide helpful contributions to the Nintex user base called Nintex XChange.  It follows along with the "App marketplace" style of the Office 365 app store. 

To date there are 80 contributions, here are my ratings (5 highest) on all of them with some extra data points at the end:

AssetId Name Comment Rating DeploymentType AssetType Platform
3686 Uber Price Estimate UDA Uber price estimate UDA…sweet! 5 Workflow Template;UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
3947 Multi-Step form for Office 365 An example of how to make a Nintex Form that is multi stepped. This is pretty freakin awesome! 5 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3968 Data One 4 PowerShell Woah…running Server Side OM in a Nintex Action…Cool! Comes with intellsense and everything…dang! 5 SharePoint Solution Custom Action Nintex Workflow
3949 Parsing XE.com data – UDA Currency convertor UDA, nice! 4 UDA UDA Nintex Workflows
4210 How to Create Cascading Choice Controls – Nintex Forms A mix of CSS and JavaScript to implement cascading drop downs. Good Stuff! 4 CSS; JavaScript CSS; JavaScript Nintex Forms
4237 Extract Lookup ID A regular expression to get the item ID from a lookup control. 4 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
5896 Wunderlist UDAs for Nintex Workflow On-Prem A UDA that wraps Wunderlist API REST Calls. Actually made me go sign up so I could check it out…interesting! 4 UDA User Defined Action Nintex Workflow
3894 Nintex Add-in for Outlook Nintex Add in for outlook. A simple app that looks for links in an email to notify a person that it is a Lazy Approval task. 4 Add-In Add-In Nintex Workflow
3943 Visual Studio Post Deployment Script – ALCM A VisualStudio Post Deployment script for deploying your Nintex Artifacts to SharePoint from Visual Studio. Very handy! 4 PowerShell PowerShell Windows
3896 Show Repeating Section as table in List View A script to show a repeating section as table in SharePoint View 4 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3897 Custom Validation for Nintex Forms An exmaple of how to write your own JavaScript custom validator. Very helpful! 4 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3903 Generate an HTML document with dynamic data Interseting take on generating a document from metadata in HTML format 4 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
3923 Iterate through documents in a Document Set Workflow that iterates through all the files in a document set. Coolness… 4 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
3925 Archiving a List Item with Workflow History A UDA that backs up workflow history from one instance to another. Interesting pattern. 4
3936 Terminate Old Instances of a Workflow A UDA to terminate old workflow instances. Interesting… 4 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
3937 Business Days Validation for Forms Business day calculation JavaScript. 4 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3939 Convert Forms to PDF w/ Workflow Convert a form to a PDF using workflow. Pretty sweet use of out of box technology. 4 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow; Nintex Forms
3706 Sending a TXT w/ Nintex Workflow How to send a SMS with Twilio via a web request – nice! 4 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow
3723 Latitude and Longitude UDA How to get Latitude and Longitude via web request – nice solution 4 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
3607 Start Workflow with PowerShell Useful powershell script to start a nintex workflow 4 PowerShell PowerShell Nintex Workflow
3729 Resetting Repeating Sections A custom action to reset the items in a repeating section. This is actually pretty darn handy! 4 SharePoint Solution Custom Action Nintex Workflow
3841 Using the SharePoint REST service inside Nintex Forms An example of how to query SP REST endpoints using JavaScript 4 JavaScript JavaScript All
3876 Tab-based Layout Solution How to make your forms tab based. Very helpful! 4 CSS CSS Nintex Forms
3891 Embedding Signature Pad using JSignature.min.js An example of how to use JavaScript to embed a signature pad into your Nintex Forms. 4 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3892 Splitting Text – RegEx Example of a regex usage in Nintex Workflow 3 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow
3858 Parsing Nintex Forms Repeating Section Solution – O365 A second type of master-child form using workflow to break out the items. This one is for Office 365. Similar to 3385. 3 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex O365
3859 Get Recurring Events – UDA UDA to get recurring events…not bad… 3 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
3846 Dynamically Generated Hyperlinks JavaScript to generate hyperlinks to document in a Form and in O365 3 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex O365
3847 Create Salesforce Lead via Nintex Workflow Creates a SalesForce lead via Nintex Workflow 3 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow
3848 Dynamic approvers for douments Workflow for doing dynamic approvals on a document. Another basic pattern, but helpful if you haven't seen the pattern before. 3 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
3758 Nintex Form File Attachment Validation Settings Nintex form that only allows an upload of PDF files 3 Nintex Form Nintex Form Nintex Forms
3385 Parent/Child Forms/Workflow Solution An example of how to use the repeating section of a nintex form to drive list item creation via workflow. Pretty basic pattern, but useful if you haven't done it before. 3 Nintex Forms
3725 Set image based on location in Forms Set an image based on GeoLocation 3 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3726 Start a workflow & wait w/ Form JavaScript to start a workflow from Nintex Forms. Interesting implementation… 3 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3728 SAP Made Easy w/ Zimt SAP Actions from Zimt 3 SharePoint Solution Custom Actions Nintex Workflows
3608 PowerShell Find All Workflows – Part 1 Shows how to get all the Nintex workflows via the NWAdmin tool. More for reporting than anything else. 3 PowerShell PowerShell Windows
3613 Safely purge items from history list – PowerShell PowerShell script to purge the workflow history list. 3 PowerShell PowerShell Nintex Workflow
3940 Add a Site Workflow Link in O365 A way to add a link to Nintex Site Workflows to quick nav 3 Other Other SharePoint
3895 Replace Text – RegEx An example of using regex to do a replacement 3 RegEx RegEx Nintex Workflow
4073 Layer2 Cloud Connector A data connector for Nintex Workflow. Doesn't really give any helpful patterns of why you should buy/use it. 3 SharePoint Solution Custom Action Nintex Workflow
4137 Theobald Software – ERPConnect Services  Theobald Software – ERPConnect Services 3 SharePoint Solution Custom Actions Nintex Workflow
4017 Delete Attachments – UDA UDA to delete attachments 3 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
4018 What Changed – UDA UDA for tracking what changed in an item 3 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
4019 Random Number – UDA A UDA that will generate a random number 3 UDA User Defined Action Nintex Workflow
4060 Panels UI Magic with Nintex Forms for Office 365 Another example of how to do a "Stepped" or "Paneled" nintex Form 3 CSS CSS Nintex Forms
4153 Action Task Reminder – Site Workflow Another pattern around task reminders. 3 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
4155 Dynamic button label Dynamic button label via calculated value and events 3 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
4157 Remove Permissions UDA UDA to remove permission down to read only 3 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
4174 Set Manager in a Nintex Forms People Picker Control A javascript code snippet (must be paid for), to populate the manager of a people form control. I'm betting no one has really paid for this… 2 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
4063 Simple email validation for forms Basic email reg ex. 2 Regular Expression Text Nintex Forms
4147 Document Review and Approval (State Machine) Workflow An example of a workflow to do review and approvals. 2 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
3950 Document Review Reminder Process Basic reminder pattern. 2 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
5974 WYSIWYG Business Cards in Office 365  SharePoint  Online using @Nintex Forms and Workflow apps for @Office365 A video of how to build a business card application with preview capabilites 2 Video Video Nintex Forms
6071 Trigger a Nintex Workflow from DropBox w/ Zapier Just a walkthrough of connecting your external start to Nintex Workflow for DropBox/Zapier. 2 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow
6072 Trigger a Nintex Workflow from OneDrive w/ Zapier Just a walkthrough of connecting your external start to Nintex Workflow for OneDrive/Zapier 2 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow
6073 Trigger a Nintex Workflow from Salesforce w/ Zapier Just a walkthrough of connecting your external start to Nintex Workflow for SalesForce/Zapier 2 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow
6082 Trigger a Nintex Workflow from Zendesk w/ Zapier Just a walkthrough of connecting your external start to Nintex Workflow for Zendesk/Zapier. 2 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow
3941 Upload ULS Logs to Doc Library – PowerShell A powershell script to upload ULS logs. Kinda odd, but I guess? 2 PowerShell PowerShell Windows
3724 Hide Form Footer How to hide the Nintex Form footer 2 CSS CSS Nintex Forms
3772 Birthday UDA A UDA that figures out the day of the week you were born on. Fun, but not very useful. 2 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
3797 Replace Empty String Variable A UDA that will replace an empty string with something else. Hmmm… 2 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
3798 Site Creation Workflow Workflow to create a site. 2 Workflow Template Workflow Nintex Workflow
3820 Set Placeholder Text Hints for Text Box Controls Just some javascript to show sample text in a text box on your Nintex Form. Pretty basic. 2 JavaScript JavaScript Nintex Forms
3853 Create user group in your SharePoint Site – UDA A user defined function (UDF) for Nintex 2010 that allows you to create a SharePoint groups 2 UDA User Defined Action Nintex Workflow
3854 Remove user group from SharePoint Site – UDA A user defined function (UDF) for Nintex 2010 that allows you to removew users from SharePoint groups 2 UDA User Defined Action Nintex Workflow
3855 Add user to a SharePoint group – UDA A user defined function (UDF) for Nintex 2010 that allows you to add users to SharePoint groups 2 UDA User Defined Action Nintex Workflow
3856 Remove user from SharePoint group – UDA Remove a user from SP Group 2 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
3857 Math Power – UDA Math Power UDA…funny comments… 2 UDA UDA Nintex Workflow
3893 Extract Text – RegEx An example of how to run a regular expressions against some text. Not very helpful. 2 Other Text Nintex Workflow
3887 Sample Case Summary Template – Salesforce SalesForce case study doc…for DrawLoop stuff… 2 Guide Guide Drawloop
3888 Sample Cover Letter Template – Drawloop SalesForce case study doc…for DrawLoop stuff… 2 Guide Guide Drawloop
3889 Sample Quote Template – Drawloop SalesForce case study doc…for DrawLoop stuff… 2 Guide Guide Drawloop
3590 Theobald SAP – Connector Theobald SAP – Connector – looks like it has absoltely nothing valuable to do… 1 ? ? ?
3614 <Xchange Template – Delete this field and replace with your title> Hmm…nada here… 1 ? ? ?
3948 Expense Report Solution – PointBeyond supposed to be an expense form, but nothing here 🙁 1 Other Other Nintex Forms
3944 Build a Nintex form – pt 1 of 3 Simple tutorial – should probably not be in the XChange 1 Guide Guide Nintex Forms
3945 Build a Nintex form – pt 2 of 3 Simple tutorial – should probably not be in the XChange 1 Guide Guide Nintex Forms
3946 Build a Nintex form – pt 3 of 3 Simple tutorial – should probably not be in the XChange 1 Guide Guide Nintex Forms
6111 SharePlus & Nintex Integrated Solution : Introduction Nothing but a 3rd party adverisement/marketing slick 1 Guide Guide Nintex Workflow;Nintex Forms
4209 Nintextionary – Nintex Actions Dictionary Have no idea what this does or why it is posted. Doesn't seem to have any assets at all! 1 Other Other Nintex Workflow

Platforms:

  • 44 Nintex Workflow
  • 25 Nintex Forms
  • 3 Drawloop
  • 3 Windows
  • 2 ?
  • 2 Nintex O365
  • 1 All
  • 1 SharePoint

Deployment Types:

  • 15    UDA
  • 14    Guide
  • 13    JavaScript
  • 10    Workflow Template
  • 5    SharePoint Solution
  • 5    PowerShell
  • 4    Other
  • 3    CSS
  • 2    NULL
  • 2    ?
  • 1    Add-In
  • 1    CSS; JavaScript
  • 1    RegEx
  • 1    Regular Expression
  • 1    Nintex Form
  • 1    Video
  • 1    Workflow Template;UDA

Top Views:

  • 3771 – Convert Forms to PDF w/ Workflow
  • 2330 – Terminate Old Instances of a Workflow
  • 2135 – Nintex Add-in for Outlook
  • 2055 – Parsing Nintex Forms Repeating Section Solution – O365
  • 2018 – Set Placeholder Text Hints for Text Box Controls
  • 2009 – PowerShell Find All Workflows – Part 1
  • 1915 – Document Review Reminder Process
  • 1906 – Build a Nintex form – pt 1 of 3
  • 1868 – Custom Validation for Nintex Forms
  • 1855 – Tab-based Layout Solution
  • 1810 – Iterate through documents in a Document Set
  • 1808 – Using the SharePoint REST service inside Nintex Forms
  • 1800 – Splitting Text – RegEx
  • 1800 – Parent/Child Forms/Workflow Solution
  • 1734 – Start Workflow with PowerShell 

Top Likes:

  • 17 – Nintex Add-in for Outlook
  • 11 – Show Repeating Section as table in List View
  • 11 – Convert Forms to PDF w/ Workflow
  • 11 – Document Review Reminder Process
  • 11 – Simple email validation for forms
  • 11 – Tab-based Layout Solution
  • 10 – Set Placeholder Text Hints for Text Box Controls
  • 10 – Generate an HTML document with dynamic data
  • 10 – Iterate through documents in a Document Set
  • 9 – Business Days Validation for Forms
  • 9 – Using the SharePoint REST service inside Nintex Forms
  • 8 – Embedding Signature Pad using JSignature.min.js
  • 8 – Parent/Child Forms/Workflow Solution
  • 8 – Build a Nintex form – pt 1 of 3
  • 8 – Multi-Step form for Office 365 

Top Contributors:

  • 54 Eric Harris
  • 5 Patrick Abel
  • 2 rbachmann
  • 2 Jesse McHargue
  • 2 Swetha Sankaran
  • 2 Brad Orluk
  • 2 Cassy Freeman
  • 1 Chris Sullivan
  • 1 Christian Tauchmann
  • 1 Dean Virag
  • 1 Frank Daske
  • 1 frankgr
  • 1 jackgelo
  • 1 Jan Eyres
  • 1 Jay Cheong
  • 1 Vadim Tabakman
  • 1 Andrew Glasser
  • 1 Samantha Pugh

 

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Architecture – Deep Dive

One of the hot features of Office 365 and "by inheritance" in SharePoint 2016 is Data Loss Prevention (DLP).  DLP allows you to execute search queries on your content to find possible "Sensitive Data Types".  You can find many blog post on how to setup DLP queries and how to find data, but that is at the high level.  In this blog post, I get into the nitty gritty of how it actually works under the covers.

High Level Steps:

  • UserApp uploads a document
  • Search gather runs (likely every 15 minutes)
  • Search content indexes the content
    • Ceres engine executes flows, one such Flow is called "Data Loss Prevention"
      • DLP Flow runs
      • DLP Flow looks for keywords
      • DLP Flow looks for regular expression matches
      • DLP excludes invalid "test" values
      • DLP Flow adds "SensitiveType" crawl property data
  • Ceres adds data to the index
  • User queries for DLP data using the "SensitiveType" managed proprerty

Deep Level Steps:

Most of the major work happens in the Ceres Flow.  It uses a "configuration" file of sorts from the "Microsoft.Ceres.DataLossPrevention" .NET Assembly in the GAC.  You will find a "defaultCLassificationRules" resource file in this assembly.  This file is called a "RulePackage" and contains Rule Packs. Currently for SharePoint 2016, there is only one rule pack, Office 365 may have more. Opening this file you will find the following:

  • Entities
    • High level container of a particular "end user" data type
      • US Driver's License Number – there are different in almost every state
      • Canada Driver's License Number – different in each of the provinces
    • Made up of patterns
  • Patterns
    • Made up of IDMatch'es, and Keyword Matches
    • Patterns have confidence levels.  Most expect a confidence level of 75% or higher.
    • Pattern can enforce minMatches (must have at least one keyword, etc)
  • RegEx Expressions
  • Keywords
    • Keywords may be case sensitive – most are not
  • Localization strings – these are used for the rendering and matching of keywords

Patterns:

  • Credit Card Number
  • EU Debit Card Number
  • US Social Security Number
  • US Individual Taxpayer Id Number (ITIN)
  • Canada Social Insurance Number
  • UK NINO
  • UK Driver's License
  • German Driver's License Number
  • German Passport Number
  • UK NHS Number
  • France INSEE
  • France Driver's License
  • Canada Driver's License
  • US Driver's License
  • Japan Driver's License
  • Japan Resident Registration
  • Japan Social Insurance Number
  • Japan Passport Number
  • Japan Bank Account Number
  • France Passport Number
  • US/ UK Passport Number
  • SWIFT Code
  • US Bank Account Number
  • ABA Routing Number
  • DEA Number
  • Australia Medical Account Number
  • Australia Tax File Number
  • Israel National ID Number
  • New Zealand Health Number
  • Spain SSN
  • Sweden National ID
  • Australia Bank Account Number
  • Australia Passport Number
  • Canada Bank Account Number
  • Canada Passport Number
  • Canada PHIN
  • Canada Health Service Number
  • France CNI
  • IP Address
  • IBAN
  • Israel Bank Account Number
  • Italy Driver's license Number
  • Saudi Arabia National ID
  • Sweden Passport Number
  • U.K. Electoral Number
  • Finnish National ID
  • Taiwanese National ID
  • Poland National ID (PESEL)
  • Poland Identity Card
  • Poland Passport Number

Regular Expressions:

Here are some of the regular expressions that DLP flow is looking for:

  • <Regex id="Regex_france_cni">(^|s)(d{12})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_uk_electoral">(^|s)([a-zA-Z]{2}d{1,4})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_canada_health_service_number">(^|s)(d{10})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_canada_phin">(^|s)(d{9})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_canada_passport_number">(^|s)(D{2})(d{6})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_canada_bank_account_number">(^|s)(d{7})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_australia_passport_number">(^|s)([A-Za-z]d{7})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_australia_drivers_license_number">(?ix)(?:^|s)(?=(?:[A-Zd]{2}d{2}[A-Zd]{5})(?:$|s|.s))(?=(?:[A-Z]{0,2}d){4,9})(?!(?:d{0,9}[A-Z]){3,9})[A-Zd]{9}</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_australia_bank_account_number">(^|s)([0-9]{6,10})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_sweden_passport_number">(^|s)(d{8})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_italy_drivers_license_number">(^|s)(D{1}[^b-uw-zB-UW-Z])((w{7})(D))($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_ipv4_address">(^|s)((?:[0-9].)|(?:[0-9]))(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?).){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)(?!(?:.[0-9])|(?:[0-9]))($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_ipv6_address">(^|s)((?:[A-F0-9]{1,4}:){7}[A-F0-9]{1,4})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_israel_bank_account_number">(^|s)(d{2}-d{3}-d{8}|d{13})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_saudi_arabia_national_id">(^|s)(d{10})($|s|.s)</Regex>
  • <Regex id="Regex_usa_bank_account_number">(^|s)(d{4,17})($|s|.s)</Regex>

Keywords:

Keywords are important for deciding the confidence level of a particular pattern.  If a keyword is found, then the confidence goes up.  Here are some examples:

  •  UK Nino contains:
    • national insurance number,national insurance contributions,protection act,insurance,social security number,insurance application,medical application,social insurance,medical attention,social security,great britain,insurance
  • UK Driver's License:
    • DVLA,light vans,quadbikes,motor cars,125cc,sidecar,tricycles,motorcycles,photocard licence,learner drivers,licence holder,licence holders,driving licences,driving licence,dual control car

Keep in mind that your SharePoint on-premises environment will always have a static rule pack unless you download and apply updates.  Office 365 will continually get updated rule packs to enhance the DLP engine features so you will be more protected against sensitive data "leaks".

Enjoy!
Chris