Nintex Gateway release notes

Support for displaying localized system and error messages within Nintex Automation Cloud.

Support for displaying localized system and error messages within Nintex Automation Cloud.

The following changes have been made since version 3.2.3 of Nintex Gateway:

Improvements:

• Made changes to improve experience when troubleshooting connections issues.

Resolved issues

• Fixed an issue that would cause redundant logging after updating to 3.2.3. (00561069)

System requirements

There are no changes to the system requirements.

For the list of server specifications, software, and supported versions see Nintex Gateway Prerequisites.

Required upgrade configuration

The upgrade process to Nintex Gateway v3.3.1 may uninstall and re-install Nintex Gateway on the machine you upgrade. This means the connection to Nintex Automation Cloud will be lost. Once the upgrade is completed and the new version is started, you may be prompted to register against Nintex Automation Cloud again.

Known issues

No known issues at this time.

Resolved issues

• Made a change to the tenant name check to cater for servers that do not respond to HEAD requests. Previously it would have returned an error to say the tenant did not exist, even though it did.

• Identified and fixed a minor security issue.

• Made a change to include additional details for logging exceptions.

New features

The following changes have been made since version 3.0.2 of Nintex Gateway:

• Enhancements have been made to allow better handling and troubleshooting of connection issues.

Resolved issues

• An issue was identified and addressed where Nintex Gateway didn’t log to the event viewer properly. Existing installations are unchanged. The log file locations are also unaffected.

• Added additional check to prevent the on-premises windows service from going down when a response is not received from the azure relay.

Known issues

There were no known issues at this time.

New features

The following changes have been made since version 2.3.2 of Nintex Gateway:

• Support for Nintex Automation Cloud Xtension Custom Connectors using Nintex Gateway / SAP via Theobald.

  • The on-premises windows service has been updated to allow custom connectors/Xtensions to be routed using Nintex Gateway. This allows customers to build custom connectors that can connect securely to on-premises systems. Documentation on how to configure your OpenAPI file is being prepared and will be published soon.

  • This functionality was primarily added to facilitate the integration with Theobald yunIO product which allows Nintex Automation Cloud to integrate with SAP (on premises)

• API Key Management

  • Added APIKey authentication for Nintex Gateway in preparation for the Nintex Kryon RPA connector. This allows connectors to use an API key to authenticate the connection to Nintex Gateway, instead of the Active Directory domain username/password.

  • The ability to manage API keys in the configuration application has been added. Keys are stored security on disk (please consider this for your restore scenario).

• Move to .NET core 6

  • .NET core 3.1 support ends in December 2022

  • The windows service has been upgraded from .NET core 3.1 to .NET core 6.

  • The configuration application has been moved from .NET framework 4.8 to .NET core 6.

  • The tray-icon functionality has been removed due to this change.

Resolved issues

• Logging:

  • The configuration application and windows service now use the same logging framework.

  • The windows service provides a correlation ID in its logfiles, making it easier to track individual requests within the log itself.

• Improved startup stability: Nintex Gateway was not able to handle a situation where there was no internet connection during startup. Nintex Gateway now retries over the course of one minute before shutting down because of no internet connection.

• Improved error handling that caused the Nintex Gateway (windows service) to crash.

• Improvement to the UI of the configuration application with the introduction of a generic error handling screen for unexpected errors.

Known issues

There were no known issues at this time.

The following changes have been made since version 2.2.85 of Nintex Gateway:

• When reconnecting with the same Nintex Gateway hostname, the connection in Nintex Automation Cloud should automatically be updated.

  • When reconnecting from the same computer and/or using the same hostname that was used in a previous disconnected Nintex Gateway connection, The Nintex Automation Cloud connection will be automatically updated to use the newly connected/reconnected Nintex Gateway connection.

• Nintex Automation Cloud Nintex Gateway management page functionality.

  • We have added support for the new Nintex Automation Cloud Nintex Gateway management page. This page can be found on your Nintex Automation Cloud tenant under Settings.

    • Display version number on management page – current installed version of Nintex Gateway (only works with version 2.2.85 and newer).

    • Display status (Online/Offline) – current Nintex Gateway connection status.

    • Created Date – When Nintex Gateway connection was established.

    • Added ability to disconnect Nintex Gateway connection from Nintex Automation Cloud Nintex Gateway management page.

    Note: Only Administrators can access this page.

Resolved issues

• Changed the copy icon in the manual authentication dialog to an icon with text.

• Changed Okay to OK on button text in various locations.

• Updated the payment required message – this will be used in a future release of Nintex Gateway.

• Updated the authentication troubleshooting page link.

• Fixed complex password not working issue.

Known issues

There were no known issues at this time.

The following changes have been made since version 2.2.2 of Nintex Gateway:

• Changed the default authentication to Webview 2
• With the release of 2.2.2 we included the ability to use Microsoft WebView for authentication. With this release, we’re enabling this by default and are also installing the WebView 2 runtime during the installation/upgrade. We have now changed this to be the default
• SharePoint Subscription Edition
• We’ve validated that the SharePoint On-Premises functionality also works with SharePoint Server Subscription Edition and have officially added support for this version. No changes have been made for this support.

• Other improvements

  • Various improvements to the error messages and error detection of the on-premises configuration application.

  • Various dependencies updated.

  • Improved error messages in the connection setup within Nintex Automation Cloud.

Resolved issues

• Signed the OnPremises.Gateway.WindowsService.exe. The Gateway Windows Service was previously published as an “Unknown Publisher”.
• Call a Web Service: Amended the Connector to use multiline textbox for header value.
• Call a Web Service: Added regex to header values to only allow ASCII characters less than ASCII character code 127.
• Call a Web Service: Adjusted header value regex to allow numeric values.

Known issues

• All previously mentioned issues that are not explicitly stated to be fixed, are still present.

• Error message in event logs:

  • During runtime Gateway will throw the following errors in the Event log:

    • Error occurred during execution of method SetTokenStatusAsync

    • Error occurred during execution of method SetConnectionStatusAsync

  • This is a part of a new feature that will be fully implemented in the future.

  • The error messages are expected at this time and it will not stop the normal operation of Nintex Gateway. The error messages will be resolved in the future.

The following changes have been made since version 2.1.2 of Nintex Gateway:

• Add support for Web Services.

  • Adds the ability to call a web service on-premises. You will be able to integrate your on-premises web services into NWC.

  • HTTP Methods available: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, OPTIONS, HEAD.

  • The request body can be specified.

  • HTTP Headers can be added and/or overwritten (Host, Content-Length, x-ntx-correlation-id headers cannot be overwritten).

  • The response of the new workflow action is a structured object that gives access to execution details of the Nintex gateway, HTTP Response codes, Headers and body.

• Other improvements

  • Authentication during the registration has been improved with the option to either use manual configuration or to use the Microsoft Edge’s WebView2 implementation. This was needed for a number of issues we’ve encountered. The option for webview2 or manual mode needs to be configured in the configuration file. For the WebView2 option, The runtime will need to be downloaded and installed and then this can be enabled via a configuration option. For more information see Nintex Gateway Troubleshooting.

  • We’ve added a troubleshooting utility to our installation.

Resolved issues

• The configuration application was previously published as an “Unknown Publisher”, this has now been fixed. The Windows Service is still unsigned, which is a known issue.

• The windows service fails to start if network port 5000 is used. We’ve fixed this by finding an open network port automatically. This port is not used for external communication.

• The logic used to validate credentials failed in some AD setups. The logic has been reworked.

• Issues with regards to the filtering options of date/datetime and Microsoft SQL on-premises.

• The SharePoint on-premises connector in Nintex Workflow Cloud did not accept URL’s with a hostname that was not a fully qualified domain name (http://mysharepointsite vs http://mysharepointsite.company.tld).

Known issues

• All previously mentioned issues that are not explicitly stated to be fixed, are still present.

• There are no known issues with regards to the new Web Services on-premises Connector.

The following changes have been made since version 2.0.210 of Nintex Gateway:

• Added support for Microsoft SQL Server on-premises

  • Ability to Add, Remove or Update a table row

  • Ability to query a table or view

  • Ability to execute a stored procedure

  • Ability to use a table, view, or stored procedure as a data source in forms

  • The following table shows which data types are supported:

    SQL Data type	Nintex variable type	Notes
    bit	Boolean
    decimal	Decimal
    money	Decimal
    numeric	Decimal
    smallmoney	Decimal
    float	Decimal
    real	Decimal
    binary	File	Not supported.
    image	File	Not supported.
    varbinary	File	Not supported.
    bigint	Integer	Limited support, see known issues #265809.
    int	Integer
    smallint	Integer
    tinyint	Integer
    rowversion	Integer
    cursor	N/A	Not supported.
    hierarchyid	N/A	Not supported.
    sql_variant	N/A	Not supported.
    Spatial Geometry Types	N/A	Not supported.
    table	N/A	Not supported.
    uniqueidentifier	String
    xml	String
    char	Text
    text	Text
    varchar	Text
    nchar	Text
    ntext	Text
    nvarchar	Text
    datetimeoffset	Text
    time	Text
    rowversion	Text
    timestamp	Text
    date	DateTime
    datetime	DateTime
    datetime2	DateTime
    smalldatetime	DateTime

• Other improvements

  • Performance: During the connection from Nintex Workflow Cloud to Nintex Gateway, a validation step is performed. This validation step is now cached for 30 seconds, which results in an improved experience during the design, as well as an improvement in workflows with multiple actions after each other.

  • The version number is now shown in the installation wizard.

Resolved issues

• SAM Account validation failure: An issue was identified where the domain\username was not successfully parsed. Please note that this might result in issues if you used the user@domain.tld (principal) notation.

• Unknown user on domain with guest account seems to be accepted: An issue was identified where any username was validated as correct when the Active Directory domain allowed guest accounts.

Known issues

• Schema, Tables, Views and stored procedures that have Unicode characters in their name are currently not supported.

• The Nintex Workflow Cloud designer converts the bigint max value from 9223372036854775807 to 9223372036854776000.

  • The Nintex Workflow Cloud designer does not currently support values larger than 9007199254740992. This is less that the maximum range of the SQL BigInt datatype. Trying to input anything larger in the designer can result in a validation failure just before runtime starts. Error parsing fragments: Object must implement IConvertible.

• The Nintex Workflow Cloud designer rounds values after the decimal point so does not allow for specific equals filter scenarios.

• The Create SQL record action will produce and error when using 2079-06-06 23:59:30 on a smalldatetime data type column.

• You are unable to filter on Date, as the Nintex Workflow Cloud designer expects a DateTime.

• You are unable to filter "is on" on DateTime and DateTime2 data type columns.

• In unique disconnect situations, it is possible for Nintex Gateway to leave a workflow in a waiting state that cannot be recovered.

• Columns in SharePoint starting with a special or Unicode character cause an error when used in the condition filter.

• Empty Managed Metadata columns used in a workflow cause the workflow to end in a failed state.

The following changes have been made since version 1.1.1 of Nintex Gateway:

• Added support for SharePoint On Premises Connector

  • Added functionality to Create, Update, Delete, Insert, Query List Items, and Update item permissions

• .NET Updates

  • Updated to .NET Framework to 4.8 (Configuration application)

  • Updated to .NET Core 3.1 LTS (Windows service) to align with supported .NET Core versions

• Improved logging facilities to allow for more configurable logging

• Updated UI and UX enhancements

  • Added a new field to be able to specify gateway hostname (hostname will default to the local computers name, as it did before this change)

  • Added an indication of version number on the user interface

  • Corrected naming of workflow-cloud.com suffix when connecting to another environment type

  • Aligned to latest Nintex styling

  • Enhanced validation messages

  Known issues

  • Columns in SharePoint starting with a special or Unicode character cause an error when used in the condition filter.

  • Empty Managed Metadata columns used in a workflow cause the workflow to end in a failed state.

  • In unique disconnect situations, Nintex Gateway may leave a workflow in a waiting state that cannot be recovered.