We have a lot of time invested in the Product configurator and Inspection plan configurator. We are just fighting through converting our existing product configurators into 2023.2 Kinetic and this could be a complete re-write situation.
At least that is better than what we are looking at for the inspection plans. We are even considering just building custom applications for each of our 20+ inspection forms. On a call a couple weeks ago @timshuwy said “they were considering this for 2025.2” but no news as of yet.
Are there so few Epicor customers using Enhanced Quality that there is no one else concerned about this?
I don’t have the module now, but I have been saying it for a while. Losing the functionality would be a huge loss for anyone using it. Not knowing your particular situation, but would Dynamic Documents meet your needs?
It may actually work. I’ve played with a bit, but it’s limited to the Start and End of an activity in MES right now. It’s not part of the Inventory process.
@klincecum was going to see if he could extract the ‘trigger’ so we could implement it elsewhere in the system, but his life’s been complicated for a while now
@Graemer - I’ve already reached out to some folks for confirmation - awaiting their response.
@MikeGross i thought dynamic documents was an attempt but the functionality is minimal and only does outbound formatting of a word document for eventual printing. Might be able to begin to get some more abilities by adding BPM data forms but nothing approaching what is in classic.
The dynamic documents can only be applied to job operations instead of all the places that an inspection plan can be attached to. That was exactly my use case but others may be disappointed.
Dynamic documents are missing the logic for checking for a valid test or specific data fields through the attributes. That is still there through the crippled inspection plans in Kinetic but now there are two things that we need to assign to the operations when engineering the job.
Considering it took me 3 years to pin down our engineering folks to build templates for the inspections rather than manually assigning amoung our 20+ inspection plans, I might be a another year or two to nail down the Dynamic document templates. Oh, joy!
@Graemer , I could be wrong, but I thought you were able to put the logic in to pass or fail something. But you are correct in that you can only attach to operations at this point.
Dyn Docs has the ability to call a function - the idea is a two page document where the first page is data collection, and the action of changing pages calls the function in order to check the pass/fail attribute values.
It’ll take some work, but it’s doable. If we can get the call to work elsewhere in the systems.
@jkane , just looking through the documentation again and there are some interesting things you can do like link to an IOT device or call a function from the template. I think if I wanted to completely reimplement my compliance system this might be an option but the pass fail logic is still part of the inspection plans and completely separate from Dynamic documents.
I think I beat you by a few seconds on the last post
We were going to digitize our Pass/Fail criteria as part of our ‘corporate digital assets’ plan. Right now it’s all on paper and cannot be used for anything really. We never went forward with Inspection plans because of their rigidity (which I know is great for other folks). But without all the criteria in digital format, we were stuck.
Dyn Docs at least gave us a glimmer of hope to combine a table of criteria with the new Function capability.
I think they are on the right track with the Dynamic documents but it is an unfinished solution and may go the way so many other Epicor pieces that they stopped developing and eventually abandoned. I could see this fitting into the maintenance module to allow meter readings using IOT but then a function would be needed to update the tables where those readings are. As it stands this is only for one use case and has not been extended to other places (like the inspections) so I kind of think this was a quick acquisition duct taped on to maybe dispel complaints about the lack of the inspection plan configurator.
If they really thought Dynamic documents was going to be the next generation of inspection documents I would have thought a tighter integration would be done. Maybe the lack of promotion by Epicor is an indication they don’t want to dissuade people from buying the super-deluxe 3rd party QA module.
I think Epicor got a lot of feedback that the setup of specifications and attributes was a major pain and quite involved - I can agree with that - but they went the complete opposite way and just pop up a list of fields without any ability to change the order or design the screen. In another topic @Mark_Wonsil suggested being able to use Application Studio to update the generated screen but I have little to no experience with this so can’t say if that will solve things.
@MikeGross Do you have access to dynamic documents? I tried to get this going after installing 2023.2 and had no luck. We had trouble using the browser interface and it ended up to be problems with our wildcard certificate. That got fixed but I never went back to Dynamic documents to see if it worked. Lo and behold, after some kicking and yelling, I got this running.
The documentation is better than a couple years ago because I put in a ticket and there was a mysterious manfest.xml file that needed to be updated. That has now made it to the documentation although the install files are still not on Epicweb.
I don’t recall page actions when I looked at this initially and the list of available fields is still not complete although some hints are given.
I am more hopeful on this option than before but I think I need to transition one of our forms and have the crap kicked out of it to see if this works in the wild. Our MES stations would transition from running the classic ERP screen to running in the web client and then calling a desktop copy of word. We recently upgraded our MES machines to Windows pro and newer hardware so hopefully this dovetails into this. Lots can break with this additional major application. I guess this also means all my MES workstations now need an Office license. (My boss loves spending more on licensing! )
Yep - I’ve got it installed - but I think my last Prod-to-Test copy broke it. I’ll have to check.
The XML file is there - but only under one version if I recall correctly. I complained at Support for a while to get it there. But I have it if you need it - it’s very generic until you set it up for yourself.
We waited until after Insights last year b/c the very last session was a bunch of from here all asking questions about it. Seemed viable and so I got it far enough to evaluate what I’d have to do to use it.
If I can’t get the hooks to work elsewhere, and I have to license up Word on the MES stations, and this and that - I may just go take a harder look at Epicor CPC> I had a lot of discussion with him about using it ONLY as a QA tool and while it’s not great, it will work easy enough. Plus it has capability that Dynamic Docs lacks. It’s a bit costly for just QA. The other product that was there seems a better QA option since it’s purpose built, but I can’t recall the name now… It had like 50 modules you could put together as you wished.
Got it working. The online help is much better than before. There is only one template you can put against an operation so if we wanted to do multiple inspections then we would have to build build multiple templates with different combinations of the forms or else add multiple operations on the jobs. We had lots of resistance to adding operations on our service jobs because they usually want to enter all their labour on one operation and then fill out the forms at the end.
I can do a call if you want to see a bare bones example.
Sat in on a Kinetic seminar showing the conversation of the product configurator and dashboards and some very promising developments. The “Wavy Rider” configurator converted without a problem with the lookups and images working.
I have been fighting with a UBAQ dashboard on my 2023.2 system and pieces are missing. On a follow up after the seminar the developers were saying 2024.1 had some extensive improvements to the conversion logic so looks like I need to update my development system before panicking.
These are all good things but the exclusion of the Inspection Plan configurator in any current release is still a big problem and all I am hearing is “we will get right back…” from Epicor.
I wasn’t sure why they did not show how to add trackers to the dashboard. It is easy in Classic, much less so in Kinetic.
We are on 2024.2 and have been having issues converting some dashboards. Since these particular ones were created by consultants when we first set up Epicor they will be that much harder to replicate.
I am very concerned by the lack of a Kinetic interface for the Configurator.
We are all in on Inspection plans, they are core to a lot of our particular business.
That Epicor hasn’t put out a Kinetic screen for that and other modules (like Container shipping) is very bad for us. That this is just one in a series of bugs and poor functionality with the “new” Kinetic interface is par for the course.
Just on the 2025.1 What’s New session and an announcement for being able to use Application Studio with the generated Inspection Plans will be made “Real Soon Now” (i.e. in a month - I assume the conference)
I think this was an enhancement @Mark_Wonsil suggested so thanks!
@timshuwy was saying that 80% of customers using inspections were fine with the simple, non-modifiable, inspections. I assume he meant no one that licensed Enhanced Quality!
I am still scratching my head that no one using Enhanced Quality was asked if the non-modifiable inspections were fine.
Still need to learn Application Studio to determine how much we need to redesign our inspections. We developed most using a standard set of modules so hopefully these can run server side as functions but lots to learn…
They should have emailed every company who uses Enhanced Quality.
Not everyone can hit the conferences or attend all the webinars.
I have been using Epicor for a decade now and have attended many webinars, training sessions and setup consultations. I have not been asked once at any meeting if I was happy with a module.
If it helps, I had an opportunity to speak about this change to some folks who can make change happen and it sounds like they were/are aware of the problem and have a plan to address it. Timeline is unknown.
