Crystal Reports and Form customisations in Kinetic

Kinetic ERP
1

Hi,

We have started planning for upgrade to Kinetic. We currently use 10.2.400.6. I have two quick questions.

  1. Do Crystal reports work with Kinetic
  2. How well does the C# code in Form customization convert on the upgrade. I read that there is not much client side customization anymore and everything has to be done through apps studio. We do have some forms with C# code in 10.2.

thanks in advance for your help in this matter.

Vinay Kamboj

2

Crystal is still supported but hopefully you’re in the process of moving them over to SSRS.

AFAIK, the c# in form customs doesn’t “upgrade” unless it’s like the wizard added stuff. We’re in the same boat and will need to rebuild some of our forms. Setup a Test server with .7 and check it out. App studio is a paradigm change but I think in the long run it’ll be better.

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3

Thanks Randy, for the quick reply.

We are converting to SSRS gradually. Earlier we thought we will do it faster, however, SSRS has some limitations for which we could not find a solution (like print at the bottom of page option in Crystal).

Regarding C# code, some could be easily converted to BPMs, but one of our forms (Customer Shipment entry) has a lot of C# code to generate UPC codes for each pallet with total count on each. This will have to be dealt with.

Once again thanks.

Vinay Kamboj

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4

Look into Epicor Functions, they are kind of taking the place of the form code. They allow C# code blocks too. At least that’s what we’re thinking for some of our forms that are in a similar boat.

5

Thanks Randy for the suggestion. Learning functions is next on the list as soon as I have my test box setup.

6

If you know BPMs then you’re well on the way to getting Functions.

7

@Vinaykamboj We are going to go to the latest 2021.1.x but run in “classic” mode while moving customizations to functions. This way we are on the latest release, but still using the classic UI that will run existing code. I think classic has a 2 year window before being totally removed from the product.

8

That is a good way to go about it. thanks @gpayne .

9

AppStudio is client side customization to be clear, there just isn’t custom code that you can type but rather widgets only.

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10

Thanks @josecgomez for the clarification. I will have my test box sometime next week which is when I would perform a GAP analysis and know first hand all the changes.

11

Actually, I believe that you can still run with your C# code both in UI Customizations as well as in BPMs for the time being. If you want to run the Kinetic forms, that’s when you have to have it converted over using App Studio or Functions. Kinetic is still optional at this point, it’s not until 2024 when the Kinetic forms will be mandatory to use in Epicor.

I’m working on a client conversion now from E10 over to the public cloud, and customizations and BPMs, both with custom code, seems to have been converted over fairly decently. As with any upgrade there are issues that pop up that need addressed, but it’s not like I’m having to do a mass conversion on every custom object.

Kevin Simon
SimsTrak Consulting, LLC