I am curious how often a new menu is created for a company rather than just using the default. If you did create one what was the reasoning behind it.
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I’ve created a few custom menus for a few different reasons.
- I have all Custom Dashboards off the main menu so they are all in 1 place/1 instance and not nested inside the many suites and/or modules. This makes is so much easier for the admin to deploy a new custom dashboard. I would recommend coming up with a consistent Menu ID nomenclature. I also create new Security ID’s for each. It’s just easier to grant access to the different security groups. If a dashboard is only applicable for 1 company (multi company environment), then you do have to login to that company and create it. That is the only thing that does make it a little complex.
- I have changed the out of the box “Executive Analysis” to “Business Analytic Tools” and moved a few items from System Management into the updated menu item and also moved other items out to different menu items. This allows the ability to keep system management module more secure to admins.
- I moved Trackers to a submenu off the main menu. Again, this made it easier for security purposes and now “Business Analytic Tools” was open to security for more of the power users.
There are issues with the out of the box security id’s. IE: Accounts Receivable General Operations is a submenu. But it’s security id is shared with an actual menu/function. I opened a case and an ideas for this and both of them were closed by Epicor siting that it’s easy to manually change it. Disagree but that’s another convo for another day.
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I was replacing Part Tracker in all locations which is way this came about. I definitely like the idea of moving trackers to a different menu. Do you do any hiding of cost?
If you are thinking of moving the Trackers to it’s own menu, all you have to do is change the Parent Menu ID to MAINMENU…and possibly change the Order Sequence so that its more towards the bottom. Hiding of cost? Cost fields in Part Tracker or throughout the application?
I definitely go overkill, I like to keep the original but disable it.
Our financial software is separate from everything else and upper management is very particular on who can see that information. Honestly I will take any feedback whether its specifically for Part Tracker or throughout.
I should mention that in the Kinetic UI (with a few exceptions) Entry & Trackers are the same screen except “Tracker” menu items are set to Read Only. Additionally, hiding Cost fields is not as difficult as it was with the Classic UI. However, since cost is pretty much on all screens (directly or indirectly [hyperlinked], I think this might need more discussion internally. I’ve talked many out of hiding cost value because its a lot of work that in the end it was more cost to do that then to just leave it.
We will be using Kinetic and I agree I would rather leave the cost as it is.
My current company created a Customizations menu for all of their custom dashboards and applications. I’m not a huge fan of that, as it’s a lot for users to scroll through unless they know the name of the custom item they’re searching for.
At previous companies, I always created custom folders within each subfolder (thus in addition to the Setup, General Operations, and reports folder - there would also be a custom folder). The reason I started doing this was because Epicor will reorganize the menus from time to time during version upgrades, with new applications, and if your custom item has the same sequence as a stock Epicor menu item, (in versions past, anyway) the custom menu item would disappear from menu maintenance, not even allowing you to fix it by assigning a new sequence that’s unused. So, then you’re stuck either having to get Epicor Support involved, or by going into SSMS (if you’re on prem and know how to properly do it without breaking things) correct it via a SQL statement.
Normally Epicor sequences menu items 10,20,30, etcetera… but not always. Thus your customized sequence value is always at risk during upgrade if located in a stock menu folder.
I like the idea of creating a separate folder for the customizations. I did not know about the potential issues when upgrading and I have customizations that have the same sequence as the base.
I think Epicor finally fixed the issue regarding the menu item disappearing completely after having to assist so many customers every time it did. However, you will still run into an error when trying to update a menu item with a duplicated sequence number.
More importantly, however, it helps to identify stock Epicor applications from Custom applications ~ which is helpful for those of us developing and troubleshooting applications. It also helps a successor know what is what should you move onto another job, since so many companies are horrible at documenting their customized applications.