Kinetic Bartender Issue - Edge Agent

[bparsons (Billy Parsons)]

We need some assistance on how to handle an issue we are seeing with our custom label program. I have created a ticket with EpicCare, directed to Professional Services, reached out to our CAM. Nothing yet.

We have been migrating users to Kinetic, and we rebuilt our custom label program in Kinetic in order to print labels from the browser.

The underlying functionality works the same as in Classic, however in Kinetic we are getting error messages that reference the Edge Agent:

Everything works, all labels print, but we will occasionally (not always, which is weird) receive pop ups saying, ‘report has been sent to Edge Agent’ and ‘Error received from Edge Agent’. The number of errors seems to coincide with the amount of different Report Styles that get exported. If you print Transit Tags, SOPs, and Material Tags, there will be three pop ups and three errors that have to be individually exited out of. If you print all of our labels (we have 5 different kinds), you will get 5 sets of pop ups and 5 individual errors.

We are confused when we see these errors, because it is our assumption that this does not utilize the Edge Agent. Our custom label program is built off of Data Directives that will export a file to an Azure File Share.

Our local on-premise Print Server with Bartender installed will poll specific folders inside of the Azure File Share to process and print labels to our network printers.

Epicor should not be directing this to ‘print’ anything, only dropping files for our Bartender server to process. It is utilizing a Bartender Labels Report Type as a Report Style:

We reached out to EpicCare, they directed us to Professional Services since this is a completely custom program, which is understandable. However, we aren’t really getting much from Professional Services either. They asked us to look into the Data Directives and verify that they are all set to print via the Bartender print style, and they all are. I have not received a response from them on where to go from here.

We want to roll out Kinetic to more people out on the floor, but most users print labels all throughout the day. I would hate to release this with constant errors and pop ups.

The only thing I can think of, is inside of the Data Directives. The Action does point to a Network Printer:

The way I thought it works is that when you choose a printer here, the logic behind the scenes will pull the Network Path from the associated Printer ID:

It will then use that Network Path to populate the drop file in the Azure File Share, directing Bartender what to print and to where:

However, it is still setup in there to ‘Auto Print to Network Printer’, so I think that might be why the Edge Agent pop ups are coming from.

Well, tried changing every output icon to Auto Preview, didn’t help. Not sure what’s going on.

Any suggestions? Is it a configuration setting that we have setup, or is it something that could possibly be considered a bug, since it is setup to drop files (and does in Classic) without ever ‘printing to a network printer’?

[Devin.Draeger]

There is another ticket that is having this same issue right now all we need is a Log from the edge agent to get this over the hump to support. Im going to get the log for support to review.

Error received from Edge Agent: Unable to validate report - Kinetic ERP - Epicor User Help Forum

[aidacra (Nathan your friendly neighborhood Support Engineer)]

For Bartender autoprint BPM directives to function as expected, the Printer Maintenance record for each printer must have SSRS Printer set to false.

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

Good to hear from you @aidacra

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

So every printer in the entire system?

[bparsons (Billy Parsons)]

I updated the SSRS Printer checkbox on the printers in my office to false and reprinted, still receive the messages.

I have had issues in the past when I update a printer in Printer Maintenance (maybe I change the network path or something, as an example), I have to ‘refresh’ the data directive that has rules for that Printer to receive the updates. To update, I have to go into the data directive record that has the Auto Print bubble that references the printer, change the printer to something else, save, then change it back to the appropriate printer and save again.

Thinking this might also have to do this, I went in and updated every data directive that references the printers in my office.

After doing so, I still receive the messages:

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

@bparsons, do you think @aidacra meant like all your printers?

[bparsons (Billy Parsons)]

Lol I hope not. Might try it out in Pilot to see what happens though, will report back if I do.

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

I was about to say, maybe try in pilot. I really appreciate that you are doing this for us all.

[bparsons (Billy Parsons)]

All printers in Printer Maintenance have been updated with false SSRS Printer values (even though some desktop printers need it on, I turned them all off for this test)

I didn’t go, yet, and update every data directive we have, but I did update our smallest one. Went in and changed every printer in the auto-print bubble from the printer it had to something else, applied and saved, then updated it back to the correct printer, applied and saved.

Still get a message (only one since I only called for one label type):

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

Man.

[aidacra (Nathan your friendly neighborhood Support Engineer)]

To confirm:

Each of the autoprint BPM widgets are configured to have a:

• Print Action of Auto Print
• Run Schedule of Queued
• Printer Settings of Network, where each Printer Maintenance record for the Network printers has SSRS Printer set to false*
• the Report Styles are configured to be of the Bartender Labels report type in Report Style Maintenance.

If all of the above is accurate, I recommend creating a new data directive BPM in your Pilot environment with the condition(s) required to trigger one autoprint action.

If that simplified directive behaves the same as your current Production directive, Support can investigate that workflow. If not, you’ll likely need to add each remaining condition(s) and autoprint actions incrementally and test to identify when the issue appears.

[bparsons (Billy Parsons)]

Thank you for the explanation. I confirmed the following in our current setup in Production for the rules that print to my office label printers:

Print Action of Auto Print, Run Schedule of Queued, Printer Selection for Network Printer with SSRS Printer set to False:
1x4 External:

1x4 Internal:

4x6 External:

4x6 Internal:

4x6 Blemish:

1x4 Printer Maintenance:

4x6 Printer Maintenance:

Report Styles set to Bartender Labels:

Printing all 5 labels gets this:

Then 5 individual errors to select OK to:

Per your recommendation, I created a new data directive BPM in our Third environment (Pilot is down at the moment…). I copied everything to a T when it comes to the bubbles pertaining to me:

Then I disabled the current one, enabled this one and printed a single 4x6 Blemish label to my printer. We don’t have the integration setup on our print server (yet). but I’ll be damned if it didn’t output the drop file without any pop ups or errors. I was happy and sad at the same time. Thinking that maybe all it would take is creating new data directives. Time consuming but possible.

Just to make sure, I turned the old data directive on and disabled my new limited one. I printed all label types to my printer, and even more confusing, there were no pop ups or errors at all. Thinking they were delayed, I printed a bunch of labels. All exported to the Azure Share without pop up or error:

I’m even more confused now. Will try to create the new Data Directive in Pilot, where I was working and was receiving pop ups, when it comes back up.

AHH

[Banderson (Brandon Anderson)]

Sometimes widgets don’t upgrade well, and the only way to fix them is to redo them.

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

So from what I am gathering you have to re-make every one from scratch?

Is there JSON somewhere for the data directives? Old vs New so you can do a compare and then maybe just hack at the JSON to put anything “new” in the old data directive(s) so you don’t have to re-do them all by hand?

@klincecum ?

[bparsons (Billy Parsons)]

While that was what I was initially thinking, taking a look at it again today makes me think twice.

Yesterday, I created a limited Data Directive in our Third environment and it did not receive pop ups or errors. I disabled the limited one and printed all label types that have the issue in Production and received no pop ups, no errors. I was expecting errors for the current label data directives in our Third environment, but didn’t get them at all. Pop ups and errors in Production, previously in Pilot (it was down at the time), but nothing in Third. Third is a copied DB from Production. I was so confused.

Today, I turned back on the limited Data Directive in Third, and today it has the pop up and the error. How I did not receive pop ups or errors yesterday in the Third environment is confusing. I am now back at square one. I will submit my limited data directive to EpicCare support in hopes that they can recreate the issue on their side.

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

I’m sorry Billy.

[bparsons (Billy Parsons)]

Eh it’s fine, we’ll get it figured out eventually. Just another one of those Kinetic things lol. We’ve had it on the back burner to upgrade our label program to API calls instead of Data Directives and Bartender Drop Files, we may end up having to do that to roll it out in Kinetic.

Thanks for the responses!

[utaylor (Utah Taylor)]

I was going to mention that, but didn’t think now was the time to bring it up. We use it both ways.

[Devin.Draeger]

So we have recreated the BPM auto print widget i did have some that still had sssrs checked so i deleted the widget in the BPM and recreated the BPM.

My company will be updating our support tickets with how we have things configured to get this resloved.

Yes i can move to the push method by using the API call but did not have time to work that out yet.

I did have to use the smart client to work with the bpm data directive as i have seen when i do the output for bartender it shows no printer in in the printer name field on the output. I have reported this but support could not replicate this issue and closed the ticket. But that is a different situation and i will re open ticket or submit a new to rectify that issue.