Epicor’s Automation Studio was a big hit at Insights 2022. Many of you stopped by the Experience zone and expressed your excitement. Thank you all for being such an encouragement.
As the Product manager of this new product, I was not allowed to talk about it because we were making a “big splash” announcement about its release at Insights. Sooo… now that the cat is out of the bag, I can release more info to any of you who might want more info.
But first, you all should go to Epicor Automation Studio | Epicor U.S. Epicor Automation Studio | Epicor U.S. and scroll down the page about half way down and watch the well produced video made by our Marketing Department.
See you all at Insights 2023 in Las Vegas!
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That sounds pretty cool! Will it integrate Microsoft Office products? I didn’t see a list of the “1000+ External Apps”. I am really excited to see some AI generated recipes! As long as they are better than this!
Is it a module to purchase, or does it comes with Kinetic? (Wishfully thinking)
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It is a per connection purchase.
I agree that it was a hit, @timshuwy. I sent a Teams message back to some of my colleagues in the office right after @Edge’s demo telling them that the conference had already paid for itself (and this was day 1 before the sessions even really started). Looks like great work has been done to bring this product to market!
We currently use Tibco to integrate Epicor with CRM, a data warehouse, and some other external systems. I can’t wait to get my hands on Automation Studio! Now just to upgrade my on prem system from 10.2.700 to K2022 so I can use it…
And now that you and Sales made all your promises about what it can do, the hard part begins to make sure it actually can do what sales and marketing says it can!!!
(mostly kidding as it seems like this should work fairly easily… but still)
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I definitely liked what I saw.
I’ll be curious to see if this ends up replacing Service Connect and maybe Jitterbit too. At first glance it looked like it could do anything those two can.
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Yes there is an intigration to the microsoft suite including Excel, Sharepoint, Teams, etc… It can also use “microsoft Graph” (not a graphing tool, but a poorly named integration tool from Microsoft). It also can access the entire Google Suite of products.
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Tom, we are replacing Service Connect for all future sales. Service connect will still be supported for those already using it. Jitterbit still has some very valid use cases, as they have several full integration packets that they maintain. Also, Jitterbit can be run fully on-prem which is still a desire for some companies. Automation Studio runs in the cloud, but supports both on-prem and cloud customers.
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The good news is that Automation Studio utilizes a very strong product (Workato) that is already proven and used by many companies including Salesforce, Autodesk, Adobe, Slack, Atlassian, Kaiser Permanente, etc. We have simply embedded an already proven product into our own, and given our customers access at a very equitable price.
You will need to purchase it, because it also comes at a cost to Epicor. It is a subscription service. You subscribe to it based on the number of things that are connected. You can write as many “recipes” (integrations) as you want, but we count the number of “things” or endpoints that are connected. Kinetic + Salesforce + Mailchimp = 3 connections. Contact your CAM to get pricing.
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late to the party @timshuwy but this looks pretty awesome. Does this mean SC will stop being updated and stop being usable with Kinetic eventually?
Ok, that’s a dumb question as all software has a lifecycle. If I try to go to an X question instead of a Y question, will no longer requiring a SC licence be a savings similar to the cost of automation studio?
Yes, we will stop updating Service Connect. it has been a great product, but it is almost 20 year old technology, and will eventually be retired once all customers have migrated away from it. People who know Service Connect and its limitations have fallen in love with Automation Studio. I have done comparisons in pricing… it is kinda difficult to compare pricing because Service connect is a per-user license, and Automation Studio is a Per Connection… For larger companies, Automation Studio is very competitive… for small companies who are doing teh Run-Time Service Connect, well… run-time is NOT available for Automation Studio… run-time is impossible to compete with.
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(deleted, answered already)
UPDATE: Automation Studio is now enabled for many customers who have adopted it. We have sold copies not only in USA, but several in Asia and Europe as well. I just got of a call to turn on Automation Studio for a company in Australia who is planning on replacing Service Connect with this. They are excited.
Where can one see technical documentation for this, not marketing or white paper info. None seems to be available on EpicWeb. Unless I blew by it.
Thanks
Greg
This is an integration with Workato. You should be able to find general technical documentation there.
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While this document doesn’t mention Epicor, it does describe in technical detail how to do automations and integrations in Workato, the engine that does the integration. We have built a private connector that enables Kinetic to easily use Workato. https://docs.workato.com/
ALSO, if you want to you can create a free Workato training account, and join https://academy.workato.com/ to try out some ideas… the only challenge here is that you will not be able to see the Kinetic connector since it is private and not available until you purchase Automation Studio.
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Tim - Any chance Epicor will enable AutomationStudio for K2021.2? We’ve got a great use case for a current project (HubSpot CRM), but our upgrade cadence is annually in Feb, and we need to pick a solution now and go with it for development…
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