Our company is going to be purchasing a new laser marking system and we plan on integrating it with Epicor.
The current concept is that we want to develop an interface outside of Epicor that pulls the job information into a custom User Interface.
We are currently using 9.04.507 with a Progress backend. We are currently working on an implementation of E10, not an upgrade but a fresh install. The laser marking system cannot wait for E10 to be rolled out.
The idea is that the UI brings back the Job details and serial numbers based on the job number entered. We were thinking of utilizing the client dlls for the integration to E9.
Please provide your thoughts and any feedback you may have. If you have attempted something along these lines I would love to hear from you.
You could make ODBC connections to the DB (Progress driver for E9 and SQL for E10), and have the program that runs outside of Epicor pull via the ODBC connection.
The program would use the ODBC to E9 now. When you switch to E10, it would only require a minor update to use the ODBC for E10
Hi Clive,
Do you know and have Bartender already?
Sounds like its template and DB connectivity features could do this easily. Combining a BT template and their tool called print station would create a low friction solution I think. Seagull Scientific (Bartender publisher) has great docs and helps on thveir site and Bartender is easy to learn. their support is also well above average if you run into trouble or get stuck.
I do know of Bartender and have used it in the past. While we could use a tool like Bartender to trigger the action from within Epicor we are currently wanting to trigger the action from outside of Epicor. Our backup plan is to utilize a form level action to drop the data from Epicor, if we cannot get Plan A to work.