So… I’ve been looking at ECM as a solution for storing our prat drawing files and wanted to keep them… on the part master table. This was all going well until I realized that in order to get the ‘Integrations’ for AP automation to work with other file types they need to be not limited to any table.
This seems like a huge security flaw and I was wondering if others have written the SQL required in a DataLink in ECM to do something like that?
In order to get the “Integrations” for AP Automation to work with other file types… what do you mean?
@Schae235 - We’re keeping a number of other documents inside ECM - and linked from, and back to Epicor - including PDFs from Autodesk Vault, HR documents, Receiving docs, etc.
You wouldn’t use the AP Integrations for other file types but you can surely use the datalinks provided as part of that integration. And setting up Content Types and Security Classes can be very straight-forward depending on how you plan to use ECM and how you plan to allow access to it.
We’ve written our own datalinks to fully index documents using data from a few different databases other then Kinetic, and we use the integration datalinks to link the documents back to Epicor.
I’m in the middle of importing 100k+ documents from two old systems called FileBound and Doclink plus another 30k form Sharepoint and another 35k from file shares - and all of these will run through a series of workflows to link them back to Epicor where possible.
Give us some more details - I’m sure we can help solve your dilemma.
Mike, that’s what I was going to say, you can create different document types and then give those different securities in ECM, thus controlling security. I didn’t fully understand OP’s phrasing of, “n order to get the ‘Integrations’ for AP automation to work with other file types.”
@MikeGross and @utaylor I didn’t realize how weird that sounded until you pointed it out. I don’t want to use the workflow from AP automation or any of the Integrations that are specific to it but with the purchase we got some data links/integrations that allow us to tie back to other tables in Epicor and that is what I was taking about.
I guess specifically @MikeGross e I’d be very interested to learn more about how you wrote/tied the documents back to Epicor because that is essentially what I am trying to do. I really don’t want to have to manually attach 50K+ drawings to the Epicor Part records but I also want the document type to be controlled to a specific table (Part).
@Schae235 Will you be at Insights perhaps? There are a couple of ECM sessions, a customer panel I’m on, and I’ll be doing a short blip on ECM during the Epiuser’s sessions.
Otherwise, we could arrange a short video chat and I could show you the gist of it.
When you guys say “tied documents back to Epicor”, do you mean you upload a doc from X system into ECM and then create a new link attachment in Epicor which redirects to ECM?
That is what I mean, I want the documents attached to a table record in Epicor.
Yep - totally easy. You just need the key index fields - like company, customer, order# - or company, vendor, AP invoice#.
Basically, the 'lookup" datalink has to be able to return a SysRowID for the transaction/record you want to attach to. I found that to be the easiest thing. Then the “attach” Datalink just makes the connection.
I’ve been able to get the SysRowID, my issue seems to be the Attach File to ERP datalink. The datalink needs to have the Reserved for Specific Tables unchecked (So the document can be added to any table in Erp) which I don’t want the data to get out of control so I want it contained.
We don’t use this checkbox, but it sounds like you need to ALSO associate the DocType with a Table using Document Type Control
See Epicor KB0117212 article. Please let us know if this works.
“Reserved for Specific Table” hasn’t worked since I started using docStar in 2018.
It would be great it that did work, so that when users are attaching documents within Epicor it doesn’t show them the full list, only the relevant ones!
That will be hardcoded in the workflow, so no users will be able to change it. In Epicor the document type will only show on the related tables.
Also, if you have not seen it yet, attachments on Part get copied to a lot of places automatically like Eng WB.
I have an updatable dashboard that uploads a document from a folder without ECM and attaches using the attachment service and in something like that you could specify the document type, but Epicor would still spread it around if it was on Part…
Good to know Mark.
It’s really annoying when you find interesting things that can be beneficial and then find really basic issues with them.
Never ends.
You sir have inspired me. I have 200K+ DocLink documents that the DMS export chokes on that I need to get imported so I can down the server. I was going to try and make that work, but now I am just going to export a few fields from DocLink and roll my own import. I will probably go with a BAQ rather than workflow since I am faster at that.
Could you share that dashboard? I bet that would solve several problems…
Thanks!
@Ernie It is part of our tariff processing, so I can’t share the dashboard it is in, but I will try to strip out just the attachment parts and post them when I get a chance.
I based it on a couple of posts from @josecgomez and @jgiese.wci so the code is here.