Custom BPM Widget

Well if we’re wishing…

Ability to write our own BPM widgets :smiley:

Isn’t that the custom code block?

Nah - if one can create widgets, one can sell widgets and non-code people can easily use them. Not to mention, it’s much easier to keep your proprietary code from being easily distributed.

I know this is several months old, but I’m voting on things that have some good merit. What would be the differentiation between a widget and a CAB you could provide for a directive that calls a DLL installed to the client’s server customization externals?

I think the widget would be configurable. right @Chris_Conn? So a developer could make the widget, and techno functional user (non-coder) could use the widget in various places.

1 Like

I think this feature is in a sense available now with the SDK. You can make your own UI using the Infragistics toolset and EpiControls and either bind it to the menu or distribute it as a standalone .exe. The back end is tied to any service or contract you want to create which is then distributed just as a stack of DLLs to the client. As a partner, you could probably even tie this into Epicor’s licensing to prevent people without your licensed module from accessing the widget. I’ve seen the methods out there for the licensing but haven’t tried this.

It’s possible, my extent of SDK use has been limited to crawling BO code to understand what is happening under the hood.

I was fortunate enough to get a ton of hands on building right after I received SDK training. It’s nothing impossible but upgrades require special attention because the SDK template stubs update all the stuff that changes with the ICE and ERP versioning, and I haven’t had success with the tools meant to upgrade custom SDK-developed code. For the next upgrade I go through on SDK-developed code, I’m going to regen the services and objects one by one and re-import the custom code sections. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

In any case, in regards to the widget, I’d say this is still a valid request because it would be nice to have a UI for instance where we can essentially run a codeblock through a DLL extension without worrying as much about the version.

Sounds like I need some SDK training!

Or the one talented person in the company can create useful custom widget, and other less talented people in the company can use it

BoilingDemandingCony-size_restricted

Not sure if you meant that as a burn, but it’s worth a laugh however you take it.

1 Like

Where is this magical place you speak of where you have more than one talented person in the same company? :wink:

“less talented” was my way of politely saying “talent-less” :wink:

1 Like

The architect who trained me moved on to bigger and (hopefully) better things just a couple of months ago. He was a good guy, but as long as Epicor still has an architect from the CSG group doing the training, it would also do fine… the course has a good structure to it I think.