It’s been a while since we’ve highlighted the creative possibilities that can be achieved with Epicor ECM/IDC, so I wanted to revisit the topic.
Does anyone have interesting use cases they’d be willing to share? This can also serve as a space to discuss potential ways your organization is considering using the software. I’d really value the insights and conversations that come from learning how others are leveraging OCR, workflow automation, forms, and related capabilities.
I just recently discovered that ECM can handle multiple approval requests in parallel. For the longest time, all my approval processes were built sequentially (Approver1 first, then Approver2, etc.) because that’s what people asked for. Then I got a request for handling multiple approvers simultaneously and I didn’t think it was possible. But it’s fairly easy to setup.
Using UETs, I do a lookup against my approver table and output all the expected approvers into a new field group. Then I send a single Mobile Approval Request to $FieldGroup.Approvers.ApproverEmail and all of them get it at the same time. After that, I use a Wait For task to check for $Is Approved. Once all approvers have approved the document, then it moves forward in workflow
It’s nice doing it this way because now Approver2 doesn’t have to wait for Approver1 for example.
Not something we have done but something I was wondering if could be done in ECM. Our supply chain team runs a baq for all the PO Sug each monday and saves the excel they export.
Could this be a BAQ report paired with an APR and schedule it to run and save in ECM every monday? What would that gain for them besides running it manually. Would I then need to have all the supply chain in ECM to view those docs?
As ECM is entirely documented based, you would need to have the BAQ results generate a document to then be stored in ECM. In order for the team to view the document from Epicor then the APR or workflow would need to determine where to attach that document. Once the link exists in Epicor then anyone with access to that menu option can view or download the attachment from within Epicor. Depending on how they may use the BAQ export as a spreadsheet, ECM may not be the right tool as you don’t really edit the documents in that application.
This is quite interesting. I think the next level to this would be to identify which approvers have approved the document as part of the field group. With that you could likely design the trigger task to send reminders for outstanding approval requests to only those who have not yet responded.
The thought was a BAQ report with a APR and scheduled run. so the BAQ report would make an export of an excel file.
Can that file go to ECM with out a corresponding link to an epicor item?
Forgive me as I am not aware of the specific options with BAQ reports, but if it can created as a document then it can be sent to ECM. It doesn’t have to be created as a link to an Epicor table, but without that attachment link in Epicor then anyone wishing to view the document would need to sign-in to ECM directly to access it. That would require using a Concurrent license, which has a cost.
If there are for example 4 approvers in your group. Does the approvals required field reflect the 4 required when you request the approval from this fieldgroup?
If an email was generated by the ECM system (to the users) once the document was created in ECM, this could be a way to link the users to the document without an attachment in Kinetic.
Yes it is pretty cool because it will count that for me and when I view the document in the workflow tab for example, it will show 0/4 or 1/4 approvers in the column and as approvers take action, their names are removed from the list so it shows only the people who haven’t approved yet.
I’ll have to verify because I was also keeping my own running counter variable, but I believe when I have the box checked in the Request Mobile Approval task for “Approval Required”, it will add for each person in the fieldgroup automatically and store it in the $Approvals Required.
On top of this, I just enhanced this process today where I made 2 different fieldgroups, one for all approvers required on the document, and one for current approvers. The concept was in a multi-level approval process, there could be one or more approvers at each step. So Step 1 could have 2 people approving simultaneously, and Step 2 might have 4 people required. I was able to build it into a single looping WF step where it sends all the approval requests to everyone in Step 1 first by populating the Current Approvers fieldgroup, then once they all approve, it loops back, clears the fieldgroup, re-populates it with all the current approvers needed for Step 2, and sends all of them their requests simultaneously.
These are the types of things that I would really like to see included in an evolved version of the Request Mobile Approval task. Considering that approvals are a fairly significant portion of AP Automation, but also with custom workflows for various reasons, I really wish this task was focused on for more functionality.
In my previous role we made great use of ECM in a numer of areas outside of AP / IDC processing.
We used ECM Forms extensively, in particular we used them for:
Inspections - We favoured ECM Forms and workflows over the out of the box kinetic process, it was easier for the quality team to build / modify the forms and we were able to use the workflows to trigger / update other tasks and data.
Service requests - Externally published ECM forms were used to report faults, the submitted form would create a case in Kinetic, and the form allowed attachment sot be uploaded which were also attached to Kinetic case.
Publishing CAD Drawings - The design team dropped drawings in a folder which were then picked up by the ECM Server and attached to the relevant jobs.
Goods in - When a new receipt line was created a BPM generated a QR Coded Label (via bar tender) this was then attached to pack slip and acted as a received stamp and then the paperwork was scanned and ECM workflow read the bar code and attached the scanned document to the receipt record in Kinetic.
Requisition management - I didn’t get this one over the line, but the idea was to raise requisitions using ECM forms and then process the approval workflow in ECM before eventually creating a req in Kinetic.
Just what I can remember, I am sure there were others, but for us, despite the aged and limited aesthetics of the forms the functionality was brilliant.
I like the enthusiasm about ECM. The forms I have found to be useful and there are ideas I have used like:
No one enjoys the form designer and the UI, but we try our best with the tools that we have.
Did you create the forms and process yourself or did you have a third party do it?
We created the forms ourselves using the ECM Forms designer, then published them externally. I can’t recall how the web server / firewalls etc. were configured, but is was all hosted on our ECM Server.
Has anyone made use of custom JavaScript for the ECM Forms? My first forms project ended up with a huge amount of JS code to do things like dynamically toggle fields to be readonly when certain radio buttons were checked. It ended up working out decently well, but I never had another use case for custom code after that. I’d be curious to know what other cool things can be done with forms since I don’t get to make them very often.
I actually just completed something very similar to this for a form I am working on to update styling depending on certain selections. I can’t think of other applications of JavaScript with forms off the top of my head, but I’ve used it elsewhere to create searches within Epicor from the BuzzSpace.
The BuzzSpace searching in Epicor sounds really cool. I don’t think I have ever used the BuzzSpace for anything more than intranet links and weather widgets 
We managed to use it to pass values onto the form from a URL, really unlocked a lot of solutions for us being able to do this,