When you migrate your on-premises Nintex Workflows to Microsoft 365, the app needs to convert the on-premises Nintex actions to Microsoft 365 Nintex actions.
While ShareGate supports many actions, there are still some that the app cannot convert. When the app encounters an action that it cannot convert, the action is replaced by a placeholder action.
For a complete list of supported and unsupported actions for on-premises to Microsoft 365 migrations, see Some on-premises Nintex Workflow actions cannot be migrated to Microsoft 365.
Index
What is a placeholder action?
Rather than not migrating the Nintex Workflow, the app will replace all unsupported actions with an empty placeholder action. This allows you to migrate the structure of your workflow, even though some actions were not copied.
To determine what the action was at the source, the name of the placeholder action will be the name of the original action.
Example diagrams
Below are some example diagrams to illustrate the process.
Source workflow example
This is a simple Nintex Workflow from SharePoint 2013. This workflow contains supported and unsupported actions.
Source workflow migrated to Microsoft 365
This is the Nintex Workflow from SharePoint 2013 once it is migrated to Microsoft 365.
Some Nintex actions were converted to their Microsoft 365 counterpart and some were not.
The 2 actions with warning signs represent the placeholder actions.
The placeholder actions take the same name as the original action. For example, Request approval is named Request approval. This is to help you choose the correct Microsoft 365 counterpart.
When you double-click on a placeholder action, you will get a message telling you that the action is unavailable.
You will not be able to publish a workflow until all the placeholder actions are gone or have been updated to their Microsoft 365 counterparts.
Unsupported actions with child actions
If you have an unsupported action that has a child action:
The unsupported Nintex action will be converted to a placeholder action.
The unsupported action will lose its children.
This is because the original action is deleted, and by deleting it the child actions will be lost.
What do I do after the migration?
When there is an unsupported action that the app migrates as a placeholder action, the workflow will only be saved at the destination and will not be published.
To publish the workflow, you will first need to replace all the placeholder actions in Nintex Workflow Designer.
Verify the name of the placeholder action to see what the original action was, then choose the correct Microsoft 365 counterpart.
Once you find the right action, delete the placeholder and replace it with the Microsoft 365 action you need.
Repeat this process for all placeholder actions.
Once you have replaced all the placeholder actions, you can publish your workflow.