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?
If I could only pound on an old and popular idea…
Epicor Ideas Aha | Epicor Ideas Portal
Best idea. Much wow.
Of course, you could ACTUALLY vote for that idea if you wanted to:
The Boring Edition
For me, I am going to keep on harping on this one:
Kinetic grids should always have the filters on by default unless personalized to be off
I loved the kinetic grid filters SO MUCH that I want them to always be on (or have a personalization option to always be on). I am not the only person who loves the filters. Many, many users have been cajoled into using kinetic BECAUSE the filters are so fantastic.
Now in 2025.1, not only are they NOT giving me the option to have them always be on, which is what my idea was about. Instead they have completely REMOVED THEM from the application. Gone. No way to restore them. Replaced with a complicated filtering widget that takes 10x as many clicks to do the simplest filter.
To add insult to injury, after not delivering the feature I asked for, after doing the EXACT OPPOSITE by REMOVING IT COMPLETELY, Epicor has now marked the idea as being delivered in 2025.1. Is it Opposite world? Is this 1984? I can’t make any sense of it at all.
I know most people have not gotten a look at 2025.1 yet, but if you and your users care about the grid filters and how wonderful they are, this is the time to chime in and make our voices heard. They took away our part landing page without notice before too and look at where we are, years later, and its still not restored.
And because this is so outrageous that it deserves more than one rant, the justification of getting rid of the filter row due to taking up too much space - for people who felt that way, they never had to turn them on. Why is that a reason to take them away from everyone?
My complaint about the data density in kinetic is the massive padding throughout the application, and the lack of any ability to control that. I can’t control the padding. I can’t control the alignment. I can’t control the font. Basically no style controls whatsoever and the default styles just waste so much space compared to classic. And necessitate so much scrolling. But none of that (in my mind) has ANYTHING to do with the filter row, per se. The problem is not the space wasted by the filter row itself, its the space wasted by the entire design.
I just cannot wrap my head around the rationale for taking away THE best feature in all of kinetic. At the same time you are trying to get people to switch? Why?
This will be discussed at the next controlled release feedback call, but since you are raising it here we can address it now - The advanced filters by-default behavior will be in feature preview at 25.1 GA and you’ll be able to turn it on and off at a site level and individual user basis using the preview feature panel while we gather more feedback on it’s usage. Since, like the landing pages, we have varying customer viewpoints on what the preferred filter experience is we’ll be giving it some more time to see how users engage with it before finalizing how it’s going to work, but likely will have some level of personal setting to it based on the last discussion.
Does that mean its going to be an either/or choice between the advanced and basic filters? I can only have one or the other, not both? In my opinion it needs to be like classic, where the basic filters are just there without having to do any extra work. And then its an extra click to get into an area to do advanced filtering. Having to make an all or nothing choice between the two is no good.
While it’s in preview, yes. Afterward we’ll determine the final behavior. We’ll cover it more at the next cr call for any additional questions.
Sorry, but I’m still fired up about this.
Alisa has the best idea:
My belief is that advanced users are going to find the power tools no matter what. You can bury a feature so deep that you have to do a 6-finger salute on the keyboard to use it, and we will still hunt it down.
So go ahead and put the advanced filters and sorting in its own slider panel, like Excel does with a popup. Or, you know, like every single e-commerce site does.
But the simple filters (the ones we see today) are not for advanced users. They are so dead-obvious to use that even my most tech-averse users can know exactly what to do with no training.
It’s like THE best (user) feature you all introduced in the 8.5 years I have been doing this. Don’t ruin it.
Making it more complicated is not the solution.
I am also still fired up about this. Epicor has now relented and put the regular grid filters back and put the advanced filters as a preview option (which we can’t preview quite yet - it won’t be there until GA) but still no commitment NOT to ultimately replace the basic filters once the advanced filters come out of preview. Their plan is to collect feedback from some feedback mechanism (like a thumbs up) that will appear “near” the new feature AFTER the customer enables the preview. I don’t feel this is a legitimate way to collect feedback on this issue because many people may not even turn the preview feature on, and if they do turn it on they may not notice or bother to give feedback on it.
I believe that if enough people speak up about this it will be possible to convince Epicor that the feature MUST be rethought so that the advanced filtering capability can be added without detracting from the basic filters functionality. But my concern is that people won’t be paying attention, won’t turn on the preview feature, and won’t speak up about how unacceptable a solution this is, and then we will be right back where we were a couple of weeks ago losing critical functionality.
Epicor needs to hear loud and clear from a lot more people than just me that the basic filters MUST stay. They are fundamental to navigating around the application. It is too easy for Epicor to dismiss the voice of one person (me) who they view as just a complainer. But if other people feel the same and speak up too it will be a lot harder for them to ignore the feedback.
Again, this idea is NOT IN DEVELOPMENT no matter what status they have assigned it in the ideas portal. If you care about this issue I strongly suggest voting for OR commenting on the idea (even if you don’t agree with the original idea but have an opinion about it).
https://epicor.ideas.aha.io/ideas/KIN-I-4934
The basic grid filtering in Kinetic is legit one of best things about it, I can’t fathom thinking getting rid of it is a good idea. You’ve almost completely eliminated the need for trackers with filters on them. Some options for advanced filtering right on the grid would be great. The most common use for it that comes to mind is being able to filter a date field by a range, which isn’t available with the basic filtering but is a thing a lot of people ask for.
Right; this is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the developers. They will get only a tiny sample of the users, and they are intentionally the exact users that already approve of the feature. So your feedback rating will be very high, because you gamed the poll.
I mean, if you follow American political polling, this has been a concern (no matter the party) for at least 8 years now. They poll people in populated areas and think they have an accurate cross-section of the country.
This isn’t something to be poll-tested. This is, first and foremost, a feature for casual users. It needs to be completely out in the open. Zero clicks to find it. Not even one click. Just there.
Can I filter against data in another column in the gride like in the before times with Classic?
