Set Window Title in Nintex Forms for O365

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Disclaimer.  This post is about an unsupported hack.

Over at Nintex Community (registration required), there was a question about how to change the Nintex Form for Office 365 window title.  So a user can differentiate the different forms.  Here's a picture that shows the problem.

My buddy Dan Stoll poked me all the way from America in some ungodly hour.  But in my delirious state, I still remember I wanted to write about window.postMessage this year and the problem seems related.

So I went and did some

Investigative Digging

My Office 365 Form is hosted on

https://johnliu365-724b9f945a8c4d.sharepoint.com/FormsApp/NFLaunch.aspx?...

The form part itself is hosted on

https://formso365.nintex.com/Pages/FormsPart.aspx?...

Because the domains are different - JavaScript within the form can not affect the parent window.  So, as noted in the community thread:

window.parent.document.title = "test"; //wouldn't work

To go beyond IFrames, we need to look for PostMessage - this method allows javascript from any frame to send messages to another frame.  The drawback?  The parent page has to be listening to it - otherwise it'll just be discarded.

So I find the FormsPart (child) page, has this function

PostMessageToParent("openWindow", urlToOpen);

That posts json messages to the window.parent frame.  In the form:

{
  action: “openWindow”,
  data: “urlToOpen”
}

And NFLaunch.aspx (parent) page has these functions:

// first receive here
var onmessage = function (e)...

// then here
var SPAppIFramePostMsgHandler = function(e) ...

The function seems to only handle resize.  But I have an idea how to go on.

Hack

Remember, you can only hack what you have control over.  In this case, you have your own Tenant. 

1. Pop open NFLaunch.aspx
Tip:  go to https://johnliu365-724b9f945a8c4d.sharepoint.com/FormsApp/_catalogs/masterpage/
Then you can open in explorer via WebDAV
Then in explorer, navigate back up to root


2. Insert this helper function to 'listen' to a particular setTitle message.

//take a peek at the data send up, handle "setTitle"
//is totally unsupported by nintex
//read about this hack at http://johnliu.net/blog/2015/12/set-window-title-in-nintex-forms-for-o365 
var peekData = JSON.parse(e.data);
if (peekData && peekData.action == "setTitle") {
    document.title = peekData.data;
}
//end peeking

3. Save NFLaunch.aspx

Now back in the Nintex Form Designer

4. Send messages from the child to the parent

Result

Check out the Window Title!

Summary

  • Nintex Forms already do a bit of messaging between Frames
  • We piggyback it to send our own message
  • Needs a small unsupported hack in the parent form
  • If child form sends message that nobody understands at the parent level, nothing would happen.  So the hack should be quite safe.

Happy New Years

On the last day of 2015, I hope the year has been good to you.  Here's to an amazing 2016 and I'm sure there will be much joy from Microsoft, SharePoint and partners like Nintex and us at SharePoint Gurus.

 

Nintex Work Inspired Breakfast Seminar - Sydney

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I'm now a Nintex vTE (Virtual Technical Evangelist).  Continuing my company SharePoint Gurus' strong partnership with Nintex.

I had the pleasure of presenting Nintex Tips at the Work Inspired Breakfast Seminars - Sydney event on May 15.

http://www.nintex.com/company/events-webinars/2015/5-15-2015-work-inspired-breakfast-seminars-sydney

As I wasn't sure of the audience, I decided to cover the simple Nintex workflow scenarios and diving deeper into the complex - developer minded (heavy API stuff) at the end.

  • Site Workflows
  • Scheduled Workflow
  • Iterating through Query SQL
  • Recursive CAML Query
  • Regex Options in the Regular Expression Action
  • XSLT to clean up complex XML namespaces
  • And finally, pre-caching json queries in Javascript based applications (great for javascript charts that needs lots of data)

It was quite interesting that the Nintex Breakfast is targeted at existing Nintex customers and really just show casing what they can do with tools they have already got.  So there was no hard sell - just "you can already do this".  There was a bit of discussion from the tables regarding various techniques and tricks.

Timing wise, some were able to stay to end (developers) for the last few demos while many had to go after 9:30am.  Still a great experience and will look forward to more of these events in the future.

I've previously worked with Dan Stoll and he's always a great show.

Nintex Workflow - Lazy Checkin Everything Workflow

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Doing quite a bit of client-side JavaScript (AngularJS in fact) and checking in and out lots of files that sit within Style Library.  At the end of the day, I just want something that will go through everything and check them all in for me.

Nintex Workflow time

  • Query List of items still checked out to me
  • Loop through list
  • Check-in
  • Bonus: Run-As-John

Query List

Create a Site Workflow, add a Query List action then set the filter.  Collect "URL Path" and "Checked Out To" fields to separate collection variables.

Important: Make sure you tick Recursive

Hit Run Now.
I want to change this part of the Query to Current User.

<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="CheckoutUser" />
<Value Type="Integer"><UserID Type="Integer" /></Value>
</Eq>

Hit the Execute button - looking good. 

Return to Configure Action.  Make the same change to the CAML query.

Loop and Check-In

Wrap up the rest of the Workflow.  After the Query List, set up a For Each action and loop through each URL in the URL Collection.

For each URL, run the Check in item Action.  Set it to check in by URL.

Insert Witty Comment.  Log an entry to History list for testing.

Laziness Complete

And done.  Workflow runs, John's files are checked in.

Bonus: Run-As-John

Sometimes, you might want to let a colleague check in your files on your behalf.  Nintex let you set up workflow within an Action Set to run as the Workflow Owner.

Summary

  • Now Everyone can check in all John's Mess!
  • Put this on a weekly schedule.