I also would love to see some book deals. Epicor could sponsor some of the Epicor Experts and start writing some official Epicor Books… You can find a book on Sage, Netsuite, SAP… but not Epicor…
If Epicor does offer Editing Services to Authors and assistance in proof-reading, and a financial stipend. Id write a book on a specific Customization Topic. Some would write on Implementation and Project Management topics. Some would write on Specific Module Topics…
We have folks with 20+ yrs of Epicor Experience, whos knowledge is slowly fading as they Retire and none of it is captured. Thankfully to this forum some is. Thinking of my buddy Mark Wonsil and the king of EDA @MikeGross and @gpayne
Why hasnt @timshuwy written a book yet is beyond me. He clearly has so much knowledge.
I respect that you’ve opened yourself up to the slings and arrows we’re throwing (just ask Tim Shoemaker); we’re a tough crowd and don’t mind expressing ourselves.
The entire concept of “education” in this industry has changed dramatically in just the last dozen or so years. “Knowledge Camp” used to be a 3-day sit-down course… now I’m lucky if I can get the core team together for half a day. MOST new implementations understand the concept of an “integrated ERP” and that what they enter in the Sales Order is what Production will make, Shipping will ship, and Finance will invoice. All kinds of stuff still flows downhill.
For a user who has never seen Kinetic before and will only do limited things within it, the ELC Hands-On videos are mostly adequate. For anyone here on the forum, they’re laughable.
Ongoing updates of the Technical Reference manuals (@aosemwengie1) are even more critical as more new functionality is added (ex. Inventory by Revision - how does that affect MRP?)
Additional training aids (like what @jgiese.wci mentioned) makes all of our jobs easier. I get that the out-of-the-box can only cover the default functionality, but we’ve all added tons of buttons and fields and detours that need to be documented in a “trainable” format.
We don’t know you yet, and you don’t know us yet, but I’m really glad you’ve joined our party. I just hope you’re sufficiently armored!
Appreciate the welcome! I started as an Epicor User and frequented this site regularly for day to day help and love the collaboration that occurs on this forum. I have heard from several (not just in this setting) that the content can be elementary for the more experienced user. Do you have any ideas on where we should focus content to address the needs of the intermediate or advance learners/users?
Another thing on the LMS would be nice if someone could transfer their content. With Service-Now we register with our personal emails. On this forum you can also register with a Personal Email.
Most people do change Epicor Jobs and how can we preserve our history of watched content, favorited content, if its tied to our Corporate Account.
I went from Company A to Company B and I lost my history, certs (old ones at that time) etc…
I think the LMS is great. I assign assignments to my co-workers frequently as an LMS Admin. Can we transfer it to another Corporation during Job Change, or make it available to the public. Because the more people learn Epicor, the more people may use Epicor and the more Market share you get
I got one last one, I know this is all probably out-of-scope of your question. But in Service-Now you can signup as a Developer regardless of who you are.
Anyone can get a Personal Developer Instance with the click of a button. Its spinned up and destroyed within 10 days of inactivity.
Any way to make the E10_Demo available for Learners… without having to go to their on-prem or cloud team and request access.
I know this is out of scope… but this is the way we learn other technologies and get started instantly. You can also get different versions temporarily… free of charge.
As a starting point, look back to the Classic Education Courses. They at least exercised more of the typical functionality.
For instance, the Order Management Hands-On Course contains:
Create a Sales Order
Enter a Sales Order Line
Create Releases
Close a Release
Print the Sales Order Acknowledgement
Copy the Sales Order
In the latest Classic Education Course document (Kinetic 2021.2), the Order Management course contained:
Customer Maintenance
Customer Terms and Tax Liability
Bill To information
Credit Detail
ShipTo Information
Contact Information
Pricing and Discounting
Create a Basic Sales Order
Add new lines
Preview the sales order
Sales Orders with multiple releases
Releases with multiple shiptos
Create orders from quotes
Customer shipments
Customer part cross-reference
Available to promise
Mark for address
Sales kits
Counter sales
Order job wizard
Master production schedule
Admittedly, this was a full-day course… and getting users today to sit still for that long is impossible. But you could have multiple courses that build on each other, or add to… not everyone uses Order Job Wizard or even Available to Promise… so users (or Training Admins) could pick and choose.
The fact that they aren’t even available is the issue. We have to make them up ourselves as we go along.
I think Epicor planned doing this it was called Epicor One but died with the recent acquisition. Leadership changes and maybe to focus more on Kinetic for now.
Service-Now offers it to everyone. The game they are playing is, if we get people to certify and learn. The Gatekeepers the Architects even non-Customers its a matter of time before… they sell our product to their Company themselves.
Epicor can come and try to sell my company all day long… if the Gatekeepers (Influencers) say no, it doesnt matter how good of a product it is.
Epicor tried to sell us the cloud several times. Everytime I said no, it died. Not once did they say here is a demo, play around in the cloud, compare it to your on-prem, heck even upload your database, would have been a Cloud Customer by now perhaps.
Remember the Windows Phone. GREAT Product, not enough Devs and Power Users bought in it is still a beautiful phone today.
Something to consider would be an education path with skill trees. An example might be Nutanix Training. It’s user training, but you go through various levels regarding hardware, the architecture, the software, running maintenance. The whole spectrum is available. Basically like what is available for partners but at the user level. It’s something more quantifiable and digestible than say the MRP Technical Ref guide. Long term education like that for users could save a lot of support calls.
We still do have field help, but in the move to Kinetic Browser based UI, it was discovered that some of the detailed field help was buried in the Smart Client and not in the database. We have an effort to move all that detailed field help back to the database so that the browser field help can still show that same amount of detail.
That is not what support has told me. When I have opened tickets reporting missing field help, they tell me its not being maintained anymore and to click on the zendesk help instead. If you know of a way I can report missing field help (and have somebody actually fix it) please let me know, because just from using a few kinetic screens, most of it is gone.
Yea… just a reminder to everyone… please “be nice” as we have these discussions, especially to the new employee @karihagedorn… i know she is not new to the forum, but we don’t want to scare her away on her first posts to the forum as an employee.
Kari, This group is very good at collaborating as you already mentioned in another comment. They will all become your best friends over time…
hahah… Even though I know a lot about the software, I have forgotten even more. Sometimes I am reading old posts, and see some comment that I don’t recognize, but then realize that I wrote it. Maybe I just need to come to this forum and scrape out all my comments and write a book.
User Guides are available and can be downloaded via Help. This is an ongoing process to uplift from Classic to Kinetic and will continue to be maintained as new features are released.
Any tools functionality that has been converted to Kinetic can also be accessed from this downloads page. The installation Guides, release notes and “What’s new” will remain on EpicWeb.
Accessing Online Help from EpicWeb:
Product Tab > Documentation > Select “Cloud” or “On-Premise” . Open Online Help
There are a few ways to access the guides from Help & Support:
Search Kinetic Downloads Guide from the Help & Support. This takes you directly to the page landing page.
Clicking on any link in the Help & support results. A link to the Kinetic Guides Download can be found under the Module “Getting Started” or “Understanding” areas.
They can also be found under General > Guides Download > Kinetic Guides Download.
What I have always found maddening is that when a company purchases a new module, they receive no documentation providing guidance as to how to properly configure the new module. The learning center is good for how to utilize specific forms by the end users, but offers almost no assistance for the administrators to go through and get everything properly set-up.
That has always been a major shortcoming of Epicor - first we have to spend 10’s of thousands of dollars for the modules, but then we have to shell out thousands of dollars more to consultants or professional services if we don’t have prior experience with the modules being implemented.
I have searched all over epicweb and there are no user guides for for any version past 10.2 and have been told there will not be as well. I am trying to follow your instructions but still not coming up with anything. If there are in fact user guides for kinetic can you please provide a direct link?
Yeah 10.2.700 has CSF Guides and more… the Kinetic one does not.
What I am getting at. Epicor needs to STOP assuming that everyone is learning the same way. NOT Everyone wants videos. Some people do want a Printed Book and sit at Starbucks licking their finger as they flip pages. Some want videos. Some want Tutorials. Some want Instructor Led.
I actually recently read a study that Video Learning is too passive for many. Their brains only engage in actually having to work their butts off through text books. Everyone learns differently
I would recommend bringing all these books back and keep them updated.
Zendesk is quite terrible at relaying information, for the sheer size of Epicor.
EDIT:
I actually have Epicor Books in HARD-COPY and I loved it that way when I was getting started. It made it simple to learn. Now that I know Epicor, I dont care how I consume help.
How many of us have chosen a framework not because it was the best but because it had alot of documentation, easy docs, non-confusing docs. I usually select my framework when learning based on community and docs. Point being. Management may think that some things are a waste of time and duplication… But honestly, that is how you destroy SAP, NetSuite, Sage, Plex and get them to file for Bankruptcy… Your LMS + Docs are a reflection of how easy it is to adopt Epicor. Let’s get SAP to file for Bankruptcy, by making Epicor have LMS, Books, Videos, Guides, HowTos, Tutorials, References… Lots of Pictures…
Maybe we even need a cute Mascot like Clippy! Everyone is less terrified when they see a cute Mascot who will sing the Epicor ABCs with them
and the king of EDA @MikeGross and @gpayne
