Continuing the discussion from 2024.2 Browser First Login [Feedback]:
Now that the release dates for 2024.2 have been announced, what is the verdict on this? I don’t think I ever saw an empathy session about it on epicor ideas, although I often don’t get notifications about things happening on the ideas site so maybe I missed it. @timshuwy
You are correct, we never had the Empathy session, but we did delay the browser-only login option until 2025.1 as we still had some technical issues to resolve. That initiative is now in play, and once we have 2024.2 released, and those issues are addressed, we should be able to better test the browser-only login with a great level of success. We will probably be reaching out for specialty testers on this subject.
This is why I lose faith in Epicor. It sounded like the concerns might be listened to but instead we decided to just go ahead with what we were going to do but since we are having technical issues, we’re pushing it back.
Intentional or not, this sounds like placating us to get us to quit complaining, then continuing down the same path without any concern for the issues raised by the community.
For what it’s worth, I only disagreed with the timing, not the direction. I am relieved the decision was made to delay until at least 2025.1.
To be clear, we DID listen to the concerns, and we saw that there were challenges with what we had in place. We also realized that our timing did not align with our promise to have a one year “warning” of this type of feature change.
We put changes in place to respond to several of the original comments about the Browser Only login, and once those are released, we will have an environment that is in the field that can test and validate if this works for all users.
To be clear, I’m not saying that you did not listen to our concerns (I can’t possibly know that without seeing the released product), I was pointing out that it SOUNDS like we are being placated when we are told that we are likely to have an empathy session and then Epicor does not have the session and goes along the same path that they were when concerns were raised.
Also, to be clear, I am extremely grateful to those of you who work for Epicor and take the time to respond to us here. My personal experience with support has been terrible but when I see people like Tim, Olga, and Brian jumping in on here and listening as well as communicating (and correcting, where necessary) it does show me that there are some great people at Epicor who truly care about the customer and their experience.
I think they should have had the session.
This will degrade the classic experience, not uplift the Kinetic one.
Forcing, not encouraging customers to do uplifts with not enough time to do it right, just because it is more annoying to deal with the edge agent launching forms.
We chose Epicor because it is able to be customized to accommodate our business practices.
We are getting closer, by conforming our business practices to better fit into standard Epicor norms, but still need quite a bit of customization. The infrastructure and tooling are still not there for that. I love where it’s going, but it’s not there, and that’s just the truth.
I do not think that is a good path to take.
Also, what about classic MES? That’s a whole 'nother ball of wax.
What does the browser-only option in 2025.1 mean? Does that mean we have the option to go fully browser based at that time and if we don’t want to be fully browser based we have the option to remain as is for Cloud customers? Just wanting to fully understand. We have a ton of things to uplift to the full Kinetic browser version which if not given enough time would shut down our production on day one after the upgrade.
Also curious as to where these announcements are happening regarding these changes? Is there someplace I should be monitoring for such announcements? Please let me know.
I didn’t mean to reopen this can of worms with this thread. I think everything has been beaten to death many times over on the previous thread I linked. I look forward to whenever the empathy session does get scheduled, to provide some additional (constructive) feedback on whatever has been developed so far.
IIRC, the browser-only logon means you will always start in the browser. The client won’t have a login page. When Kinetic needs to open a classic screen, the Edge Client will start the client for you and take the user to that page. This already exists, but it is VERY slow as it starts the client every time (8-12 seconds here) to get a single page up. I think this is the feedback that Epicor heard about for those who have used it. It’s not eliminating the client, just getting people in the habit of starting in the browser first.
I would be okay with this if there is an option to have the client starts right away, headless in the background. So basically as soon as the edge agent starts, it starts Epicor.exe (with no windows shown) and when you click something that needs classic, it will appear as fast as it did before.
I am a big fan of an Electron Client to separate ERP from Browser. Then you can control how hyperlinks open and have access to the OS layer, with ability to build a plugins ecosystem and tap into Chrome Extensions.
Everyone who has a web-version still came out with an Electron or PWA App.
For those who complain, please remove all PWA and Electron Apps from your PC, use Chrome exclusively.
In short Kinetic Community Client is in the works 
Where is Kevin to help.
(Classic style toolbar relays click events to new toolbar which is hidden), not that I would build it this way, but the idea is that we can make even a tabbable UI with color coding for Menu type what not if we want.
Thanks Mark for the clarification. I didn’t know what to think when I saw this post as I had never heard of an announcement and they promised us a year to adapt.
Here is a Dad Joke for you:
At the end of the day, It’s night.
Have a wonderful day!
Asked and answered we aren’t doing this again. Refer to the original thread if we have questions. This is like the 5th new thread this week about Browser Issues.
I get it, it is frustrating to us all, but I can tell you 100% Certainty that Epicor is well aware of the issues and they are listening.
Let’s try and not re-hash old stuff. Feel free to start a new thread once we know what 2025.1 solution looks like.
