Best approach for business cards process

Hi

I am fairly new to Sharepoint and, particularly, Nintex.  We have versions 2010 of both.  Sharepoint is Enterprise level.

I have been tasked with updating our business card request process (and some other similar processes).  Faced with the huge range of Sharepoint/Nintex capabilities I am a bit stumped on the best way to handle the process.  I hope someone can point me in the right direction so I can focus my research.

Here's what I need to do ...

¿A user comes to the Business Card page and sees a list of the cards they have had before (some users have more than one card, e.g. a general one and a specialist one, Lifts say).  They may well have nothing in the list.
¿They either choose to edit a previous card they requested or they add a new one.
¿If they add a new request the form they see needs to be pre-populated with information about them (Job Title, Phone Nos, etc.) taken from AD.  They are allowed to alter some of the content, e.g. their first name and job title.
¿If they are editing an existing entry then the form shows the data they had before and they can tweak it if necessary.
¿On completing the form, a request for approval is sent to their boss (hence the use of Nintex) and if approved the details are passed by email to marketing who then organise the cards.  The user can be informed of the decision by email, etc.  This bit I think I get, plenty of Nintex examples follow this pattern.

The bit I am struggling with is how to get the AD data in the first place.

I am assuming I can have a list on my Bus Cards page that the user sees (filtered to just their requests) and that if they edit and save an entry it will trigger the approval process.  I've seen how to do that in Nintex roughly.

The question is how do I handle a new request, can I use a Nintex form and pull the AD data before it shows for edit and then populate the list with the results?

I, ideally, want a workflow to run as the user clicks the Sharepoint 'add' link before the form shows.  From what I have found so far I can't do that, Nintex waits for the form to be saved before running anything.  Is that right?

Or can I trigger a workflow from an 'Add new request' button that I sit under my list (and hide the standard Sharepoint 'add').  However, if the user isn't allowed to 'add' to the list via Sharepoint then will the workflow be able to?

I am a developer btw, but we are trying to create these processes using purely SP/Nintex rather than adding a Visual Studio crafted webpart or such.

I realise this is a bit vague but as I say, am new to Sharepoint and Nintex. Formal training is coming but not for a good few weeks.

Thanks

Simon