The best deal we could get on additional epicor data collection (MES) seats was about $330/user/year. We want to add 30ish more PCs to the machines around the shop floor, but this would add like $10k per year. Can we do it cheaper?
What other options do we have if we want machine users to be able to submit job information at their own PC?
Logout timer to free up licenses after 5 minutes?
I could write up something in Excel to just use the API, sidestepping all the licenses. But then I have to basically recreate the MES.
Licenses should only be consumed while someone is interacting with Epicor (opening screens, submitting transactions/information) and for an amount of time specified in the license timeout on the user account. Our accounts are all set to time out after 15 minutes.
If MES/Epicor is open on a computer and their session expires, opening any screens will attempt to refresh the license. If you’re out of licenses when that happens, that person will be stopped from acting until a license is freed up. Also, when Data Collection (MES) sessions request a license, Epicor will default them to a Default User (full Epicor) license if you run out of Data Collection licenses.
We have about 50 MES stations across 5 facilities and I think we have 30-35 Data Collection licenses since not all of them are used at the same time.
Same here. We did have one workstation freak out and attempt to infinitely open new instances of MES, though. Having all of our licenses suddenly consumed and seeing all the sessions for one machine in the admin console was fun.
One thing to note is that a session won’t give up their license type until the session ends. So if you run out of DataCollection licenses and start consuming DefaultUser licenses, they will continue to tie up that DefaultUser license, even when resuming from idle.
There have been a couple times with power or network issues that I’ve had to go in a kill a few MES connections that were still consuming DefaultUser licenses days later.