Automate taking a photo and adding it as attachment to Job Entry

Has anyone worked on automating taking a photo and auto-attaching it to a transaction such as Job Entry?

Our business process requires (on some repair/manufacturing) job we take photos of before and after the item (job) is repaired. Currently we do this process manually, we take a photo on a tablet, which has the Epicor client, then drag/drop the file as attachment.

Is there an supported third party Epicor software/hardware product that can be used to enable this automation?

We are looking for a way to automate this process so that shop technicians time is focused on repairing jobs.

Thanks,
M. Asmar

1 Like

@Aaron_Moreng described what they are doing to match human cartilage and tendons. Pictures are submitted and stored in the cloud (AWS S3 but it could be Azure blob storage as well). The photos are accessible via https so you could use a LINK attachment type.

Innovation - ERP 10 - Epicor User Help Forum (epiusers.help)

3 Likes

@asmar We’re very interested if you find anything to solve the problem.

We need to take pictures of various aspects of our product for QA purposes - both internal and customer requested - and we would love to link the two together. It’s a project I just haven’t gotten to yet. But I’m thinking there has got to be a simple way.

I guess it depends on a few things - the hardware you want to use (DLSR camera for raw image detail, tablet/phone device, or dedicated video camera for super close/fine detail. Then you’ll need something to right-size the image so you are not storing 6+ MB pictures all the time. Then you’ll need a way to get the Job#/Index value associated with the pictures and get them attached.

We have Docstar, which has some workflow capabilities and I think their mobile app may do the trick for us. If you don’t have Docstar but you’ve got a developer (or some cash) - I’m sure these parts can be combined into a nice program for your mobile device…

4 Likes

Yes, the other side of this is the image (size/resolution) quality which is very important as the external customer will be provided with a repair report that contains the technician detailed text with the before/after photos.

A prototype repair report has been created and approved by the internal customer.

We are considering to purchase DocStar. Thanks for the tip.

1 Like

There are many ways to submit a photo or add the link of the photo to the job entry. (It could involved programming, BPM, job setup, service connect, docstar. tablets/Camera) as mentioned by MickGross and others.

You could set up eg. operation seq 10 to prepare the job which require the employee to upload a photo before the repair when he ticked opr complete checkbox Time and Expense entry (labour entry).
if no photo for operation seq 10, the opr complete checkbox will be uncheck.

And later submit/complete the operation seq 110 to complete the job, require the employee to upload a photo after repair is completed.

With this set up, the process of taking the photo is part of the employees submit their times. If they forget to submit the photos the system would not allow the user to complete the operation/times.

3 Likes

Thank you for the suggestions and tips. The MOM (operation) is a good idea. Currently, the Technician already account for their total time within each operations.

The main issue we are trying to automate, is the number of steps required by the technician to take the photos, naming files, sequencing file names, size, quality, and attaching the files to the correct Job.

1 Like

Something like a button or an image area on a form, the user could click to be promoted like:

Then they’d get the devices camera, like:

It would be nice to have:

  1. The shop technician, would scan the bar-code tag on the part, which currently has the Job Number barcoded.

  2. The scanning program, would engage the local device Camera. When the photo(s) are taken, the files are named with the Job Number. The program would prompt if this is a before or after photo and then names and sequence the files accordingly.

Next:

a. If files are auto-saved on a network server, possibly a batch type program/process that monitors the folder can reads the list of files and update the Epicor database with the meta data.

b. Or the camera device (tablet) program makes an API REST connection to the Epicor database to add the attachments.

c. Or if the device is a tablet, have the tech drag and drop the files using Epicor Mobile interface. (More steps with this one).

1 Like

…scaning program… names and sequence the file …a batch type program/process that monitors …API rest …epicor mobile interface

No. Keep it simple. If you are already using Epicor MES or Epicor Mobile Dashboard you might able to add take a photo for there ( or with a minor customisation).

Alternatively, you can also create a simple web page to upload the photo, easily. (if you know some database/html). Then add the photo/link of the photo to the job entry ERP by service connect/DMT/API
The web page would look like below.

  EmployeeNo      [Enter/scan barcode on the employee tag - optional]
  Job Number*     [Enter/scan barcode on the job sheet] 
  Job Operation:  10-Job Prep/Before Photo [x]   120-Job Completion/After photo [_]

   [Take a photo button/upload button]  [Next Job button]

The technicians would scan the job number barcode on the job sheet and then click take a photo button using their tablet/phone. When they click on the upload button, "they’d get the devices camera " as Mr Calvin said. When they finished upload photo, they can click the next job button.

1 Like

You can do that with Power Apps, there is a camera component, and a QR/Barcode one too I think.

Check out the excellent Shane Young Power apps channel on You tube. If you are really interested the Power Platform on MS Learn, finally Pragmatic Works

3 Likes

Did you ever find a solution?

No, we ended up using a tablet running Epicor. We take the photos and then attach them into the Job Entry transaction. We used a custom SSRS report to print a repair report (a version of the Job Traveler) with the photos.

Make a webpage with an image input, that builds a REST expression?

Another good idea.

Hello! I am working on the same issue. Did anyone find any solution? I am looking for process. I want Epicor to use camera and automatically upload pictures. @asmar

The way to do this is to populate the required tables/columns and copy the image file to the target repository /folder/file.

We decide to go in a different direction.

Mazin

1 Like