Previous Workflow Versions in Nintex Workflow

September 4, 2013

It occurred to me that even though I knew several older versions of workflows existed as part of creating workflows, I had never actually thought of how to get at these older versions (as I never really needed to revert to older versions before). I was prompted to look into this, and this is what I came up with.

The Possibilities

Essentially, there are 4 possible scenarios when reverting; major to major, major to minor, minor to major and minor to minor. Each of these will be described below.

Scenario 1 [major to major]:

You’re on version 6.0 of a workflow, and would like to revert back to version 4.0 of the workflow. You wish to republish that version (4.0) and proceed as if versions 5.x and 6.x were no longer of relevance.

Scenario 2 [minor to major]:

You’re on version 6.1 of a workflow, but made some stupid mistake in the minor version that you’d like to throw away (maybe you made the change months ago, and just want to revert back to the ‘last good working version’).

Scenario 3 [minor to minor]:

You’re on version 4.5, and would like to revert back to 4.2. Here you’d like to move from a minor version back to a previous minor version on the same major version thread.

Scenario 4 [major to minor]:

You’re on version 4.0, and would like to revert back to 3.2. Here you’re moving from a major version back to a previous minor version.

How to Find the Versions

As I had never done this before, and didn’t know if there was a way to do it in Nintex, I contacted support, and they were very helpful.

Essentially, the “Open” button in the workflow designer is exactly where you’d go to retrieve and revert to older (or newer) versions of a workflow.

This will bring up a dialog like below, with all workflows listed for this site.

From there you can look at the individual versions (by clicking on the “plus symbol”) within a given workflow.

Consider the above screen capture.

Each saved version is listed. The currently published version is denoted by the “(current)” appended to the version.

If I open version 0.1 and publish it, it will become version 4.0.
If I open version 2.0 and save it, it will become version 3.1.

How to Handle Each Possibility (Above)

As for the 4 scenario’s above, here’s how they’ll be handled.

For scenario 1, simply open version 4.0, publish it. It will become version 7.0. There is nothing else to do.

For scenario 2, the last published version is the previous major version. All unpublished (saved) version are minor versions. All published versions are major versions. Simply revert back to the major version.

For scenario 3, yes you can move back to a previous minor version. It will become the next major version when published (or the next minor version when saved).

For scenario 4, yes you can revert back to 3.2. When you save this, it becomes the next minor version (for example 4.1 if 4.0 is the latest version). When you publish, it becomes version 5.0 (assuming 4.0 was the last major version).

All scenarios are possible.

Summary

I recommend you create a test workflow and try out your scenarios so you become familiar with the functionality, but it’s all there for you to find and play with.