If is carrying a lot of weight there. In truth, I’m not sold on this idea but if it comes to pass we’ll all deal with it.
I’m not aggravated, I’m just not seeing the value of this idea vs many other Ideas that have been proposed that’d add more bang-for-the-development-buck. It’s fine for people to have differing opinions. I have no problems with enhancing Kinetic, I’ve been advocating for various enhancements since it was still named “Vantage”.
A couple of points after reading everything above. (Getting onto my soapbox for a moment)
This is NOT a feature in scope. It is just an idea. An idea. Nothing more. There is no shadow backlog, no team secretly rewriting your shipping screens in a bunker somewhere. If there were, trust me… I’d know.
Some of you are so passionate about this that you’ve already jumped past the idea, past the design, past any discussion, and gone straight into the “Epicor is absolutely going to ruin this” phase. That is a terrible starting point for a conversation. A little lecture here: keep things civil. Once a thread turns into a doom spiral, people stop talking, and when people stop talking, nobody wins.
This is NOT designed. No wireframes. No engineering work. Nothing has been architected, specced, diagrammed, or otherwise poked at. The only thing that has happened is that product management was shown an idea. No developers were harmed or even mildly inconvenienced by this.
My view: we would NOT be ripping out file structures or rebuilding the guts of Shipping from the Jurassic period onward. Calm down. Think UI and workflow improvements, not an ERP tectonic plate shift. As @JasonMcD already mentioned, we’ve done similar things before. PO Suggestions and Change Suggestions were consolidated… and guess what? Everyone survived. Many even liked it. Yes, this would be a bigger change, but let’s be real: some companies have one shipping clerk who has to bounce between half a dozen programs just to get a box out the door. That’s not “flexibility.” That’s a cardio workout disguised as ERP.
Nobody is saying we are removing the individual tasks. People saw the word “unified” and immediately translated that to “abolished.” A unified experience doesn’t eliminate the underlying processes; it just reduces the number of screens you have to navigate.
Performance concerns came up. Totally fair to think about, but again… there’s nothing built yet. You can’t benchmark vapor. If and when something reaches engineering, performance is always part of the acceptance criteria.
Someone mentioned losing control over which task does what. The goal here wouldn’t be to collapse all logic into one magical button. The goal would be simplifying navigation while still respecting the differences between Customer Shipment Entry, Job Material Shipment, Service Calls, and all the other delightful ways things leave your building.
And yes, before someone else says it: some features are sacred. Nobody is walking in with a baseball bat threatening to refactor necessary features out of the shipping process. Breathe.
The big picture: we’re exploring a future where users don’t need a treasure map to find the right shipping screen. That doesn’t mean rewriting the Shipping module from orbit. It means looking at workflow friction and asking “Can this be better?”
(OK, I am off my soapbox. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.)
They could probably still do it with a single grid but with View Options, right? Honestly I don’t actually know; I don’t think we mortal users have any way to make a landing page grid that actually navigates to the detail record.
This. This all day. This is the point. Actual human beings have to deal with so much jargon already. Are your shipping/receiving departments not revolving doors (for personnel) also?
And please, everyone, we need @timshuwy. Don’t scare him away!
It is literally an idea, put forth by a customer or partner. @timshuwy liked it and shared it which is exactly what ideas are for.
Nowhere does it say this is being implemented or fast tracked that’s the point of ideas. Someone has one, others like it (or not) and so on.
I happen to like this idea if implemented correctly it would save our staff quite a bit of time. We have large business that is run by 3PL and the Epicor side of the equation is all entered / processed by our Inventory Coordinators all of which today have to do all shipping and receiving operations for all 3PLs across the board including Drop Ships. If they had a single screen where they could do most of their work that would be a welcomed feature.
I hope if implemented that it is done in a way where maybe you can unify the apps. Since everything is a web app now, perhaps a feature that allows you to “merge” or embed multiple apps in a Single Screen would be the easiests way to do this while keeping the same functinality across the board. Though perhaps that might be too cnofusing.
In truth, I’m not sold on this idea but if it comes to pass we’ll all deal with it.
This. This all day. This is the point. Actual human beings have to deal with so much jargon already. Are your shipping/receiving departments not revolving doors (for personnel) also?