I’m sure I could make them work, but it seems like at this point I will have a better experience if I use Epicor Functions, UD tables and a standard application studio customization, or maybe make my own web service. I hate being so constrained
Cool to see I’m not the only epicor person with an engineering background
@dcamlin comes to mind.
We’ve considered this a few times. Make an application in your favorite flavor, referencing all the data inside Kinetic you need (via API) and insert the finished CFG data set via API. This is basically how CPQ is doing it. I believe they created a new service just for CPQ to do this.
this is going to be how we do it - using the Kinetic Configurator. Our processing and data are so math intense, that UD tables and functions will be the only way we can do it without going insane. And all the ‘rules’… Basically, the screen will be either data collection or data display, and all other work will be done behind the scenes. At least that’s the current direction. 
I think the bigger questions are the things like longevity, sustainability, and inheritance. If we go outside of Kinetic - what does that really cost us over the years? Who inherits - do they have the skills - is our dev platform still viable?
If we stay inside Kinetic - will Epicor commit to longevity? I mean, it’s a market differentiator and a number of customers use it, albeit lightly. We’ll just have to see what the future brings.
Thanks for the information.
Having been with Epicor Product configurator since Epicor 8 my main rant is that Epicor has always struggled to get the Product Configurator fully up and running at the start of new Versions. Going from 8-9 and then 9-10 and now 10 - Kinetic the product configurator has always lagged behind. I love new features (ie. Functions are my new best friend) but as mentioned the documentation doesn’t appear to be there to help us understand how to leverage the new features. And it is reasonable without that documentation that what we consider as standard features should work.
And CPQ is amazing but it is overkill for a lot of clients at the current price and complexity. I’m pragmatic in that CPQ is likely to replace the Product Configurator at some point and it probably should. My concern is the internal Product Configurator has been demoted prematurely and not getting the attention it needs based on the number of issues outstanding and how slow I am seeing them resolved.
In the meantime we need the Kinetic Configurator to work as expected.
One of the very few times I find myself on the other side of Jim’s opinion! 
Product Configurator is a real differentiator in the ERP market. CPQ is meant to work with many ERP systems. For light configuration needs, Epicor’s PC is a capability I haven’t seen. Most other systems rely on add-ins or bolt-on solutions. Moving everyone to CPQ may chop the lower rungs of the ladder off for many SMBs to get on the Epicor train. Just my humble opinion.
Having worked with both the Product Configurator and CPQ I can say that IMHO trying to convert all of our PCs over to CPQ would be an absolute nightmare and would offer 0 value, we don’t need 3D renders, etc for 90%+ of our product and what we use CPQ for is a very specific & specialized product/market.
CPQ can do question/answer screens, the 3D, graphics and drag, drop, stretch, twist, rotate get all the attention. I agree that the current product configurator is an amazing tool, and it has been very good to me.
I just don’t see Epicor having two configurators for the long term. Right now CPQ is still a bit of a bolt-on. They will get CPQ to be seamless in Epicor.
No doubt. Do you think they will offer a “lighter” less-expensive version for SMBs at the smaller/entry-level?
Could just have tiers. Have a version of CPQ that is limited to more closely match current configurator feature set and price…
EDIT: I see mark just said about the same thing above.
Not that I want people to have to go through another conversion, but too little dev time is being spread of too much code base as it is. Seriously need to trim and consolidate anywhere possible. Should have done it as part of the transition to kinetic since that was going to be a pain point anyway
I think they need to do something even for the full soup to nuts version and thus also to provide a lower price/less complex entry point. I definitely could see a tiered offering. CPQ can do amazing things way beyond just being a configurator, you could just about build your own ERP system with its tool set. Paring that back to just what you need to work with Epicor I would think make the tool more accessible to the masses.
@khildebrandt Unfortunately for me, I’m a complete beginner learning product configurators in Kinetic. I’ve been experiencing a lot of the same pain you all have mentioned in this thread. Before reading it, I kept second-guessing myself—wondering if I had done something wrong, or if the configurators were just buggy! Most of the time, I’ve backed myself and assumed it was a bug, but it’s often tricky to recreate the issues because I don’t always know exactly what caused them. This thread has really helped confirm that many of these are known bugs others are seeing too—so thank you all for sharing 
I’m glad I could help. One thing I’ve been doing, and I encourage you to do the same, is don’t hesitate to put in a ticket with EpicCare when this stuff happens.
Don’t tell yourself it’s something you don’t understand yet. The odds of it being a “you” thing and not an actual bug are slimmer than you think.
I spent years grumbling to myself about the text area default size, assuming it was an intentional decision that was made at some point… and one day, I just couldn’t take it anymore. A customer to generate comments about selected options, he wanted them to be visible and update while the configurator was in use, and for what he was trying to configure, this easily amounted to 20+ lines of text right out of the gate. 100% of the time, the people at this business were going to have to resize the field!
I finally put in an EpicCare ticket early last year because making every single user resize that text area as soon as they open the configurator is absolutely the opposite to what I tell my customers they should be doing with their UI - building it with the end user in mind - and guess what? Everyone else thought it was just supposed to be that way, too, apparently! Epicor did not know this property wasn’t accessible to configurators.
Now, have they fixed it? Well, there is a PRB record for it… that’s gotta count for something, right? 
One thing that some of you might find quite useful—which I forgot to mention earlier—is this:
Getting the screen layout how you want it in Kinetic can be quite “challenging” at times. I’ve started dropping in the ‘2 Column’ toolbox item, even if I’m only planning to use a single column. The name ‘2 Column’ is a bit misleading because you can actually set it to any number of columns—including just 1.
This gives you much greater flexibility when you’re trying to get things looking right on screen.
Might be really obvious in hindsight, but I went quite a while dropping in multiple ‘2 Column’ controls if I wanted 4 columns, for example 
Hopefully this saves at least one other person from going down that rabbit hole!
Log a ticket, so it can be looked at, wait a few days, prompt them for some information, then wait and prompt again…rinse cycle and repeat ?
Then have a PRB created so it can truly just disappear from getting a reply?
I mean, that’s an exaggeration for humorous effect… While it’s not untrue of EpicCare across the board, the agent I’ve dealt with most commonly for configurator-related issues is one whose name I’m always glad to see assigned to my case. (Corey, if you read this, I’m sorry I forget a vowel as often as I do!) He’s someone I feel always reads my description of the problem, the steps I’ve already taken to troubleshoot, whether the environment I’m in is SaaS or on premises, etc. He’s helped me out a ton; he doesn’t just claim something’s intended behavior and try to close a case. When he’s handling something and bumps it to a problem, I trust him about it.
100% agree, Corey has been a good help on our issues.
Autocorrect really wants to remove the ‘e’ from Corey. Many of my messages have it misspelled too. 
Wait, you think i’m exaggerating? This has been my experience nearly every time i log a case regarding Kinetic Configurator that can’t be resolved by someone just copy and pasting a reply.
Ultimately if you get certain individuals you have a vastly different experience than you do compared to some others. I just figured it was pretty well known that Epicor Support is pretty lack luster most of the time.
An important update for those PC developers using Dynamic Combo Lists, you wont find this anywhere in the documentation and it took about 6 weeks to get the answer from support, but Epicor have finally fixed the refresh issue. you now need to call await Refresh.DynamicListAsync(“MycomboName”); in order to refresh the list in line as opposed to waiting until after your event has completed. Ive been waiting over two years for this one… 
