Is anyone using ECM for part drawings? Is it better than just attaching documents to the part the regular way? Does it consume an ECM license when people view the drawings? Any drawbacks?
There are a number of conversations here about licensing and ECM - but the short answer is that it does NOT consume an ECM license when a document is viewed from within ERP. But it does rely on the Windows file-type associations, so the user must have the appropriate program/viewer installed.
As for “better” - IF you are using ECM as the default document storage type, attaching the document inside Epicor will store it in ECM and create the link in ERP. IF you are talking about “FIle System” storage, then there isn’t much difference technically BUT the big difference is that ECM will give you
- Workflows, including Approvals
- Versioning by default
- Granular security without involving NTFS/AD/Azure
- Works in the cloud (and is a cloud backup compared to storing it on-site on a server)
For me - if you have ECM - use it for everything.