Is anyone using Epicor Data Planner? It looks like a tool to make data conversions easier, without having to necessarily massage data in MS Access or Excel. It seems to work well with DMT.
Screenshots:
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Wow! looks like they built a real tool to replace those crazy excel macro things I asked @josecgomez to write for me!!!
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I think we found the genius behind it @JWard 
I am unsure what the tool fully does. It hasn’t been marketed by CAMs yet.
But would be nice if it could:
- Get Realtime Data from Old Erp Database (AS400, Oracle, NetSuite, Sage…) [ Database Connectors ]
- Build Old Db to Epicor Mapping
- Run Scripts to Cleanse the Data (Macros, like convert customer address to uppercase etc…)
- Prepare CSV Files
- Run DMT
In a nutshell manage a Interm Database.
Right now many people are using MS Access among other things to build a “Cleansing Ground”, or do it all manually via Excel Formulas.
If Epicor made a tool that easily converted their competitors databases to Epicor. You could literally market “AS400 to Epicor in 45 minutes!” Then run a Linter “Epicor Style Best Practice Checker” to show you all the data you oughta consider changing (customizable rules).
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This looks like a product that DOTNET.IT was working on at the time of the purchase by Epicor. If I recall, it looked like a nice tool for repeatable migrations.
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Color me skeptical.
It’s a GREAT idea. Please don’t get me wrong. But we’ve all dealt with data for wayyy too long.
Yes, it can remove bad data (for example, if the COUNTRY field has a social security number in it). It can flag some data that doesn’t fit a pattern (like an international phone number that doesn’t begin with the proper prefix). And there are too many of those.
If it can tell me which ones are MOST LIKELY GOOD, that will at least reduce the number of things I need to look at right away, but I’ll need convincing.
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The proverbial cat is out of the bag… (and I need to turn email notifications on so you’re not left hanging)
Epicor Data Planner is very much from the DotNetIT days formerly called Data Planning Tool (DPT), I also came to Epicor in that 2016 acquisition
Data Planner is sold in a way similar to our Extended Solutions (Document Sender, Job Traveller Attachments etc) via the CSG team based in the UK. My role in the team covers many things, primarily QA and Support (and the fun stuff like DevOps). Data Planner is my baby in the sense I was given it as a project to reignite from the old DotNetIT Codebase and into a usable and sellable solution. This was 2020 in a nutshell for me. Note, I am not the developer, but I did write the document you’ve shown the excerpts from and all the QA, bug replication and new ideas are managed by me.
Data Planner is intended as a planning tool, originally designed for Enterprise to ERP 10 migrations. You have all your xlsx/csv/sql scripts in one workspace, then you select the ones you want and build a DMT Set with the Playbooks and Playlists. That “built play” is simply ready to import via DMT. We’ve added some funkier features like the CSV import for known entities and the ability to import from DMT into Data Planner format, features added based on user base feedback, this user base is both end-user customers and internally from our Professional Services teams across the globe.
So, in summary, feedback is welcomed, feel free to contact me for more info, or even a trial license. We’re happy to review new ideas, fix bugs etc.
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