On Friday, it’s EpiUsers Frideas Day! Have you been to the Epicor Ideas Portal recently? If so, are there some ideas you want to encourage other users to vote for? Maybe want to add comments to an existing idea?
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I was a little worried it wasn’t actually Friday because I hadn’t seen this yet.
This isn’t my idea, but I found it today and am plugging it here for more votes
Auto Save Rich Text Editor When Record is Saved
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Also not my idea, but a good one I looked up after reading this thread the other day:
Supporting arbitrary move times at an operation would be extremely useful, and a better alignment with reality especially in most cases where move time is required. Big things need to cool off longer than small things, different paints have different curing times before they can be handled, and [waves broadly at the vast world of plastics and epoxies].
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Here’s one 2 I added this week:
Don’t wipe out grid filters when unchecking Kinetic Download All
https://epicor.ideas.aha.io/ideas/KIN-I-6226
We use filters grid filters often. In Kinetic, standard practice is now to click the DownloadAll button to get all the records. Unfortunately, this locks your filter settings. If you want to change your filter settings, you have to uncheck DownloadAll, which then deletes all your filters.
Development said that filters getting deleted when the DownloadAll button is unchecked is working as designed.
If you’re splitting up your work into multiple data sets with one filter changing, this behavior creates extra work. This is a step backward from the Classic UI, where filters are independent of downloading all the records. Filters should not be locked if you check download all - we should still be able to change them, and then the download all button should revert back to the original state of unchecked. This would let the user check ‘DownloadAll’ again to get the current filtered records.
Copy Employees
https://epicor.ideas.aha.io/ideas/KIN-I-6220
Add the ability to copy employees in Employee Maintenance. This will make on-boarding new employees much faster and mistake proof, since they often are setup similar to their peers.
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This one is new this week. The idea is to have similar functionality to Adaptive Cards. Have the ability to create pop-over cards that provide information about the element selected or hovered (may need to add that event too… 
). The pop-over panel should be just as customizable as a slide-out panel. This will reduce the amount screen real estate used and also reduce clicks.
Enhance Slide Out Panel Functionality to Float/Pop-Up anywhere on page like a tool tip | Kin-I-6230
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I would have expected more votes for this:
Formalize Credit Card Purchasing | Kin-I-5642
The recommended way to handle credit card purchases is by creating a bank for the credit card company and use AP Invoice Entry to record charges and pay. This provides a way for users to reconcile the credit card account. Paying the credit card company then is recorded as a bank transfer. Why not formalize the process by extending the Bank Entry to say, “Bank/Credit Card Account”. Extend the Expense entry to indicate something was charged with a company card vs. an employee card so payment is handled properly.
My preferred way to handle this, and the way I did this way back when I was a customer was to add a “Cure” operation to the routing. We created one resource group that was called “Cure table” (that is where we put the parts while curing). The Cure table had a 24/7 calendar assigned to it, and was not a finite resource. It was also a FREE resource (zero cost per hour), although you could apply a burden rate to it if you wanted (hey… the table takes space and deserves a little cost).
Then in the scheduling, the system would schedule the cure table for however many hours were assigned on the operation. in our world, some parts were cured for 24 hours, while others were cured for 7*24 hrs (168 hrs). but also… there was SETUP time assigned to the cure operation, because it took a real person some time (15 minutes) to “setup” the cure… by doing this, the setup person could clock their time against the cure operation.
When the cure is complete, someone still needs to go into that operation and mark it complete so that you can close out the job.
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As a workaround that’s a good one, but in practice creates a conflicting redundancy, and the externally implied rather than explicit relationship creates auditing and maintenance issues.
- Auditing requires assuming that certain operations aren’t really operations but rather are extending a preceding or following operation based on assumptions that exist outside the software.
- How would this be displayed on a dashboard? We’d have to assume this or that operation isn’t an operation, so filter it out, but aggregate it to its preceding or following operation, assume zero if it doesn’t exist, then decide whether to aggregate or separate actual resource group move / queue time.
- Maintenance requires cognitive make-sure attention when updating or deleting operations so that the assumed relationship between two operations isn’t disrupted or orphaned.
- If it’s applied at a scale that requires automation to make modifications, DMT updates can get sketchy.
I’d argue that the existing move or queue times already depend on an operation to exist, and that should be extended to reflect manufacturing conditions.
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Well, in our world, we had to certify that the curing happened correctly with the correct amount of time, and even with the correct temperature. so in our world, the only way to do that was to have an operation to sign-off.
Queue times in Epicor, and in most systems I have seen are more flexible, and are not mandatory. in fact, in one system I worked with we had an option to “compress” queue times out for scheduling purposes.
To play devil’s advocate - For the record, I’m all for additional time+expense abilities in Epicor to indicate these at a more granular level.
- I would think an auditor would not want to assume anything about a process and see things explicitly defined
- This can be done through a BAQ using some clever subquery rollups. We have quite a few “imaginary” operations that we roll into other operations in dashboards to show where WIP is at on the floor.
- True, but that’s what you’re paying these people for isn’t it? They should be cognizant of their tools and sequencing of their methods. They should be just as aware of a CURE operation as they are of an assembly operation that follows. At what threshold does a process become an operation? If there is a specific machine or fixture? Is there is a specific process to follow? Is there is a change in resource requirements? Do you want to use a table resource, assign a maintenance plan for upkeep, etc? It all is a case-by-case basis.
- What would be different about this new operation than any other operation?