Does Kinetic offers the same level of customization as Epicor 9?

I’m currently using Epicor 9 with extensive customizations. Our company is considering upgrading to Epicor Kinetic.

I’d like to know if Epicor Kinetic offers the same level of customization as Epicor 9

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I would say that it offers more level of customization since it is built on a modern infrastructure. They also have added a lot more tools to use to meet your requirements, like Functions. Also, a lot of things that companies built customizations for in the past are now native functionality. If there are people who are hesitant to change, I would ask them if they would like to go back to Excel 2010.

I shudder every time I think about having to do something in 4GL.

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Do SubQueries exist in E9?

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Use build project analysis? I would upgrade just to get rid of that time hog…

Seriously, yes a change, but the tools set is much richer. I’m sure that some of the customisations you have built would be replaced with inbuilt functionality.

Bpm emails, functions, baq export, dynamic reports, scheduled functions, Apr, Data Discovery. A fast browser based UI, with the capability of running your classic forms and cut over as you progress your Kinetic UI conversions…a lot more, but that’s just off the top of my head… Did I mention no more progress explorer…

Downside SSRS reports, but you can keep your crystal reports…

If you do have a lot of customs then there will be a lot of work to get them upgraded. Positive is you have an awesome resource in Epiusers to draw upon :slight_smile:

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We were E9 for years before we updated to Epicor Kinetic. We had a good number of customizations in E9, and had Epicor uplift all those customizations. One thing we did before that was going through every customization and see what exactly is used and most importantly, needed for tasks. I want to say we cut our customizations down by half, but I am not entirely sure.

In regard to updating to Kinetic, the difference is night and day. Kinetic is just so much cleaner and easier to use than E9. In my opinion, creating customizations in kinetic is a lot easier than in E9, but I only used E9 for a year before we switched.

Overall, just filter out what customizations you need and get epicor to uplift them. Make sure you test every customization just to iron out the bugs, go “quote to cash” as my boss would say and make sure it all works.

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Yes please. :rofl:

the Kinetic / Browser Based UI is hugely faster than the old smart client… added advantage: you don’t have to download an enormous zip file to be installed locally… Kinetic is a web app now.
I can honestly say that every time I have done a side by side speed test of Smart Client/classic to the Browser Based using Google Chrome/Microsoft Edge, the browser wins.
One significant change for SOME people: SOME people would put programming logic directly into the client, reading tables, updating tables, etc… this should not have been done, and this should have always been done with BPMs on the server… that said, since we allowed it, people did it. SO… if you were one that did that sort of customization in the UI, then you will need to adjust how you did your work. you will need to move that logic into an Epicor Function (server side) and then call the function from the UI. We have really nice tools to be able to call all the APIs and custom functions that you want to call.
Like someone else mentioned, we have enhanced many tools along the way as well since E9:

  • BPMs and Data BPMs - much stronger abilities
  • BAQs: you can have sub queries, recursive queries, and now, one BAQ can call another BAQ to get data… this can significantly reduce the amount of duplicate “code” in BAQs.
  • Functions: This is a type of BPM that is callable like an API. you program it like a BPM, but you can call it from other BPMs, Applications, and even from outside of epicor if you like (after all, it becomes another custom API). You can even schedule a function to run on a regular schedule.
  • Application Studio: This is the heart of Kinetic… it is where you customize the screens. it is also where you create new dashboards. there are wizards in it to help you create new screens, and maintain things. It is a very very deep product. App Studio is the tool that we (epicor) uses to create all new screens. if you see something in kinetic, it was most likely built with App studio, and therefore you could do the same.
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