It is NOT like riding a bike

Off Topic
21

I know, I know. The horse is dead.

I mean, there are visitors of this site that do want to know about a dropdown…

That’s come up before, is that an average user is less and less likely to find any help here - or to be practical, it’s harder to find answers here if you have to sift through search results that are 95% coding-related.

Ditto. And I’ve used your code snippets specifically a few times. It’s appreciated.

My point is just philosophically, what is the role of a… well, whatever it is we all do for a living. Sysadmin?

Man, I sure do a lot of BAQs, APIs and C# for a non-coder.

22

We’re troubleshooters, fixers, and problem-solvers. Picture Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction, except for Epicor instead of murder.

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I’ve often been SAD

(System Administrator by Default)

24

Understood. Though, the official support channel still exists for basic stock functionality questions. Most users are going to be steered in that direction. I imagine this place for what’s left over: the poorly documented (often technical) stuff and the areas that Epicor refers you to paid consultants for, which is also gets highly technical (and is also poorly documented).

I’m not going to opine on whether or not this place should have a broader appeal. I’m just suggesting its current state is a product of a broader ecosystem. It fills an niche Epicor left open and its character reflects that.

Like I said above, we’re not all that different. Personally, I feel I’m more of an in-house consultant that does coding stuff on the side.

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25

image

You’ll be back.

Jonathan Groff Hamilton GIF by Vulture.com

26

I’m not sure if this is sad or not but once I got stuck doing something and searched for it on EpiUsers I saw an almost identical post that was solved and was so thrilled.

Turns out I solved it for someone else a few years beforehand. I think the sad part is that I only have a handful of solved posts so you’d think I remembered it.

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I did the same thing two weeks ago. Found the answer in a post that I made last year.

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29

See you didn’t even realize you were helping the future you.

30

I choose to believe it’s because average users don’t know how to ask the question in a way that can be easily answered. There are LOTS of us that will point out “This already exists, why are you re-inventing the wheel” When the question is “It no worky.” with no more context than that, of course they aren’t going to get an answer.

But that’s just me being cynical.

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31

Not true for me, I try to steer users to use the system as designed and break their poor habit of trying to circumvent the inherent controls within Epicor.

Sure, I can code or widget it, but I would rather teach them how to use the system correctly and the way it was designed before EVER considering creating a shortcut or something else the system does already without a valid reason. There had better be a nice ROI for the time I put into something or else I don’t really believe it was a ‘fix’ for some issue.

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:thinking:

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Happens so often now I write with that expectation :joy:

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34

I can understand your thought process and how a lot of us may come across this way, but every situation is different. For example, I have worked at 3 different places where Epicor has been the main focus of my daily tasks, even though only 1 of those jobs has been dedicated to Epicor.

At my current job, we have subject matter experts on the front-end of Epicor, and my daily interactions with the system are with BPMs, Customizations, Dashboards, etc. I also handle the backend with the Application Server maintenance, Database Administration, etc.

For me, having to know the ins-and-outs of the front end is not a requirement for what I do, however it is obviously quite beneficial to know. But, when my day is dedicated to things like new EDI Trading Partner implementations, BPMs, data mining, etc., the need to use the UI for things like Job Costing or Part Maintenance doesn’t really exist. So when I am given the random question of “How can I go about removing some labor transactions that have already been posted”, yeah, it is something that I may need to reach out for to be pointed in the right direction. I have done that task before, but it has been so long that I needed a nudge.

But, if I am asked to create a BPM that eliminates the End Users ability to create a job/part/customer/so/etc. with a leading or trailing space, I will be able to get that done in the blink of an eye. And yes, I that was a very simple example.

There are people within our company that have the experience in the UI, which makes up for my lack of ‘time spent’ using it. I lean on them for assistance just as much as they lean on me. The team effort allows us to focus on the areas where we can be the most efficient.

In my previous roles, I was the user guide, first and foremost. Customizations/modifications were a lot more scarce than they are in my current role. I will say that I miss being able to simply dive right into the UI and do what needs to be done.

35

Christmas Santa GIF

I have a few SMEs, but not enough.

No, I definitely understand the idea that a healthy company is going to get involved in all manner of integrations and that becomes ever more of my job these days. I mean, it would be all of my day if I was actually able to hand the UI over to the users.

I just have dealt with entirely too many consultants with a resume touting decades of “Epicor” experience when what they really mean is they know SQL and begrudgingly open Epicor in the oldest interface possible when they need to do something. But they don’t actually have a clue about what Epicor does. And that’s not what anyone actually wants in a person giving advice about an ERP system.

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36

Those of us who come over to the Dark Side are called… consultants.

The Force is strong in this one…

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I am a user guide ONLY. Someday, when you’re at Insights and are handing Jose G or Bryan D a beer, ask THEM about my coding skills. They’ll spill the beer.

My personal record for widgets in a BPM is like 8, and only THAT high because there were two conditions that both had true/false branches.

38

Personally I would be absolutely LOST without this group - I can almost always find something to point me in the right direction for whatever the current issue happens to be. I don’t know what one would call what I do …but I am the resident go to for all things Epicor including system admin – it’s referred to as “Wendy’s” system around here. I don’t know the first thing about code and I’m okay with that…though part of me wants to learn.(Is it possible for old dogs to learn new tricks?) I hope to one day know enough about something to contribute some actual knowledge to something- it’s good to have goals.

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39

It most certainly is! Start small and work your way up from there. Think of something basic that you might want to do (such as checking to see if a PartNum contains a space or something like that) and poke around to see how to accomplish that with a BPM. If you need help, ask away, those of us here that can help, love to do so.

And that gives me an idea…I know we have a ‘code sharing’ section here on the site, but maybe we could do a ‘primer course’ type thing that walks newbies through the basics of the various Business Objects, and some entry-level C# stuff. Just a thought.

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40

I’d be happy to contribute.

I think it would be best to come up with a list of needed examples and we could farm them out.

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41

Thanks Jason and Kevin! What would really be nice to have would be a BPM to send an email to certain people whenever a DMR is created; that’s probably not that simple…especially since I’m struggling to set up email from Epicor. I’ve always struggled with walking before running…

I feel like this ‘primer course’ could be a whole “extended education” thing at Insights… I know for sure I would sign up for that!

1 Like