You may run into an issue with your Nintex Services not starting on your non-central administration servers as in this image:
You can attempt to browse the web and Nintex support pages, but they will be of little help:
It turns out that the services did not get installed as part of the solution deployment. In otherwards, the Nintex Services are missing on your SharePoint server.
In this case, you have to install the services manually in order to start them and have your server be compliant. The three services are:
- Nintex Connector Workflow Queue Service – (C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\BIN\NintexWorkflow\Nintex.Workflow.Connector.QueueService.exe)
- Nintex External Relay Service -(C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\BIN\ExternalPlatform\Nintex.External.RelayService.exe)
- Nintex Workflow Start Service – (C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\BIN\NintexWorkflowStart\Nintex.Workflow.Start.Service.exe)
You can manually install these services to the other servers by running the .net installutil utility (Except in the case for two of them you have to use the “sc” tool). Note that there are two versions of this tool, 32bit and 64bit. If you use the wrong one, you will get the dreaded “System.BadImageFormatException”, and if it does successfully run, the service won’t be visible to SharePoint due to Nintex “programming practices”. The install tool is located in:
- C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\InstallUtil.exe
The series of commands in an administrator command (cmd.exe) window would be:
- sc create “Nintex Connector Workflow Queue Service” binPath=”C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\BIN\NintexWorkflow\Nintex.Workflow.Connector.QueueService.exe” DisplayName=”Nintex Connector Workflow Queue Service” start=auto
- C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\InstallUtil.exe “C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\BIN\ExternalPlatform\Nintex.External.RelayService.exe”
- sc create “Nintex Workflow Start Service” binPath=”C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\16\BIN\NintexWorkflowStart\Nintex.Workflow.Start.Service.exe” DisplayName=”Nintex Workflow Start Service” start=auto
Why do you have to use “sc create”? Because the internal name of the Queue Service is actually “Nintex Connector Workflow Queue Service Recycle”. For the other, the name ends up being “NWStart”…SharePoint doesn’t like it when services don’t match what they expect!
Once you run the install commands, the services will display in your Services applet:
Once they are installed, switch back to Central Administration, click “Start” on the servers. They should now start without error and your servers will be in “compliance”!
Enjoy!
Chris