Even if it can be turned off…what if the disable function isn’t working as designed? 
Thank you for the additional information. I posted on here because I wasn’t sure I was understanding everything correctly and if I wanted to be mad about it then I wanted to make sure it was for a good reason. I talked with Guy a little bit about it and I agree with him that he is going to make his decision about this new upgrade schedule after about 6 months in. Hopefully nothing catastrophic happens during that time. 
I do plan on continuing to test between each update to Pilot and LIVE. Having my Update Script fine tuned has been a life saver for me and given me a good feeling about the upgrade when all my tests come back without any failures.
Hope to run into you at Insights this year.
Personally the big issue here is that customers actually have a business to run and not all of them have the luxury of a extensive mature ERP team (if that were the case they would probably stay on prem). SaaS was supposed to be the silver bullet to fix the panacea of issues that SMEs have around systems and software. Have it managed by the experts and we can concentrate on running their business… and of course feel that they are getting value for money for the service they pay for.
I feel the piece of the puzzle that is missing, or should I say not focussed on enough, is test automation.
If.. and only if time was spent on covering this more comprehensively for customers, it would be a win win. Good test metrics and telemetry, and easier and simpler for customers to be able to manage the upgrade process, be it a major or minor release. Allowing them to focus on what needs fixing, either by the customer or Epicor.
I know the Test Recoder exists, along with Test Executor (I used to think it was more appropriately named Test Executioner, I was sadly confused.) The part that is really missing is a comprehensive set of base test scripts (based on the standard screens of course) to help the customers get over the hump of the testing period as painlessly as possible. Maybe as part of the implementation there should be time put aside in the project for such a task. Yes @Mark_Wonsil feel free to chime in all things test automation. You are a font of knowledge around that stuff.
Now that would be Eutopia.
Flex is useful for the absolute exception, but it is not a get out of jail free card. It’s more of a pay the bail money and you might get out of jail, no guarantees. 
I don’t want to start a dumpster fire on this, just voicing my opinion. FYI I have not watched the webinar yet but defiantly will @timshuwy
Patches aren’t what break everything. It’s the new features. So presuming we won’t need to do any monthly testing and all will be smooth and glorious is something Epicor has zero track record on thus far when creating new features or enhancing existing one. They always break something. We’re a very seasonal business from August to December… and although I am happy that the major upgrade will take place during our slowest time of year, stuff breaking in the middle of our peak season frightens me to no end.
On the flip side, if you can deliver on a zero downtime model for applying those monthly updates, that would be fantastic. Again, being taken offline during our peak months is something I’ve truly been struggling with as I’m helping my current company through a SaaS implementation… trying to plan out what’s the best way to handle the updates. I am VERY happy to hear there will be no 2026.2 release later this year… that the next major release will be 2027.100 (after the upcoming release).
Like everything, the plan has its pros and cons. But telling us nothing will break with the continuous flow of new/enhanced features… only newbies with zero Epicor experience will ever believe that. Epicor can’t even enhance a report without breaking it, much less applications. (goes ten-fold if said reports or applications are anything but stock out-of-the-box versions, which is extremely rare in the real world).
With all that said, don’t get me wrong. I like the direction it is going. All for it if Epicor can actually deliver. Epicor constantly oversells and then underperforms ~ and that’s the problem which we are all too well aware of.
Any word on expected downtime to apply these monthly updates? We’re a (nearly) 24/7, 3 shift facility, so any bit of extended downtime in the off hours is disruptive/ expensive for us.
CI/CD Pipeline Workflow:
- Commit: Code changes are pushed to a shared repository.
- Build: The code is compiled and packaged, often into containers.
- Test: Automated tests run to identify issues early.
- Release/Deploy: Validated code is released to environments (staging, production). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Looks like step 3 is not occuring properly possibly?
agreed 
. These base test scrips could be tweaked by customers to fit their needs instead of requiring every customer to create from scratch and perhaps miss certain steps their would be a baseline script.
The screenshot from @Randy explained this, but I didn’t see it in words here, so I just want to clarify…
..for SaaS bleeding edge, this is not true. Monthly releases DO contain new features.
For On Prem, however, the first statement is true: feature upgrades only yearly.
For cloud flex (Enterprise), this is also the case: only yearly upgrades.
yes - this is the way I understood it too. On-Prem folks getting screwed out of feature updates, and SaaS folks will be doing testing as a full time job.
Mike… The on-prem folks will be happy being left out from all the bugs they will introduce and Cloud folks will spend 50% of their time with support than focusing on their business.
PS: This has nothing to do with Patrick or Jeff or the other awesome developers… This is how it works… Marketing and Executives push things out even when a Developer tells them it’s broken… Its what happens when Venture Capitalism enters the chat.
Exactly.
I assume it breaks down like so
Very small business and/or new to using anything other than Excel:
- You go with SaaS (Public Cloud, CI/CD)
- Cheapest option
- Things break with Kinetic updates, but
- You are not using the system to its max, so you don’t notice as much
- Downtime isn’t such a horror (when Rhonda takes a day off, invoicing stops anyway - you’re used to these interruptions)
- You are not even sure when something was your fault or not, so you just kind of roll with it
Medium business and/or you are an old hand with Epicor:
- You go with Enterprise cloud (flex upgrades)
- More money
- Though you may get to where you do half the stuff with custom apps and online ordering, so office licenses are not as big a deal
- Downtime is just not an option
- The whole business is tied to the ERP - even wrench-turners; not just the accountants
- You have customers and employees all over the globe - so people are calling the system all day even if you only have one shift
- Minor bugs with workarounds are not minor to you, and manual workarounds do not scale!
Large business
You need a different ERP…
oh - I’m not upset at that at all, I was speaking generally. As far as blaming it on the existence of VC, I’m not 100%. Is it the case here? Maybe so. My last gig was owned by an investment group for 10 years and they were great. Sadly, management tanked that outfit, not the Investors.
Yep, 100%. In our case, the decision path isn’t based on breaking customizations (we have a bunch but nothing overly complicated), it is based on the one tool that we can’t live without - the configurator. Now that Epicor is forcing us to rewrite it AGAIN (v9 to v10 to AppStudio) we’re looking at other directions for everything. Add to that the “extortion” aspect - killing on-prem and keeping all the AI features hostage, I think a lot of folks are finding that sour taste increasing with every Epicor announcement.
Thats refreshing to hear!
I think Epicor still has to prove it capable of doing CI/CD monthly releases without interrupting SaaS business.
But overall when I did Sprints in the past, we switched from bi-weekly releases to monthly releases and from a Developer POV it was a very good thing. It gave us a Sprint to work on things and then a Sprint to QA and document things without trying to sequeeze everything into a 14 day window. We had less bugs.
I appreciate the clarification. I clearly misunderstood the details.
This happens so much, and it begs the question- where’s the value in all these features? Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t build an ERP system not based on best practices or ignore cutting edge features/tech, but I feel Epicor thinks every company is buttoned up perfectly, following every best practice, no issues with any of the base functionality, and that we have this overwhelming need for “new” features and that we all have the bandwidth to absorb these disruptions for the sake of “innovation” because we’ve all been told we need to “adapt or die” when it comes to AI, new tech, etc… I don’t think any of our businesses disagree when it comes to continuing to innovate, but I continue to question whether everyone on these ERP systems is in a position to do that at this time, but when your ERP vendor adopts this approach and you don’t… how much longer can you have conflicting strategies? Probably not long. In short- is your ERP system innovating faster than you can manage?
For me, they’re focusing their innovation on the wrong areas—the ones that matter less to us. Quick Ship was a great example of something genuinely useful.
I’d love to see them innovate in other key areas instead, such as MRP What-If Analysis, a complete overhaul of Multi-Company functionality (perhaps through robust Intercompany EDI), SOX Compliance, improved Menu Security, and similar features. Rather than just keeping up with the Joneses.
We can keep pace with the trends, but most of these new capabilities feel more “cool” than valuable—they don’t actually help drive sales or improve our margins.
1000% this and we’ll soon find out if they can. I hope they’ve prepared as our company is dependent on a functioning ERP.
Also 1000% this. We’ve not seen a worthy ROI for most of the new features announced.
Everyone is building an IPV, PPV, Sales Gross Margin Dashboard etc… and paying 10,000$ for Consultant work… something the system should have out of the box. No an IPV or PPV are not “custom to a business” they are industry standard dashboards. That alone would be welcomed 
Look at MES how complicated it is. We replaced the entire MES with a simple Dashboard, so simple a child can use it.
@utaylor That’s my point, I think they split the two paths logically:
- Pay more to be less cutting-edge, but with stabler software
- Pay less and you’re the volun-told lab rats that test new versions.
It’s TSA Pre-check or Disney FastPass [it’s Lightning Lane now?] - you pay more for a smoother experience. (Can you tell I have never been to Disney?)
To the group as a whole:
I am sorry for those that are involuntary beta testers on Public Cloud.
You either feel like you pay enough already, or you think “We went with this over Competitor X because the price was better,” or you thought “Why would I pay for Enterprise when I get all the same features with Public Cloud? I am making a good decision!”
Then you realize that what made it cheaper is that you don’t get the same thing: you are being used.
Maybe if you knew that going in, you might not feel so betrayed.
To that end, it’s like realizing social media, AI, etc. are free because they are mining your personal data. Some are OK with the tradeoff; some would rather pay to opt out.
Or like me looking at healthcare options on Market Place. “Obviously I would pick this one: it’s half the cost AND co-pays are lower, too!” Then I realize NONE of our doctors are on the cheaper plan. But they sure do not make it easy to compare all that. So you end up in a far worse place by paying less… [FYI I did not commit yet; AI actually helped me navigate that.]