I have a BAQ that is joining the PREmpMas table to the PREmpRt table to view historical payroll rates. When I first created the BAQ several of the employees had no value in the EmpLink field. I corrected that by running Create Links to Employees.
That populated the field and the BAQ worked fine. In the few weeks since I created it several EmpLink fields have gone blank. Does anyone know what triggers the EmpLink field to go blank and is there any way to keep it from resetting?
Maybe a Data Directive when EmpLink changes from Any to Empty and do some logging? Otherwise, no help from me.
I’m interested in a permanent solution. I just have to remember to break and create links anytime I do any employee reports.
Which is probably why the menu options exist unfortunately.
My guess is that ANY change to payroll employee record or person/contact (Phone number, address, pay rate) breaks the link.
Everyone thinks im full of hot air when i tell them it must be toggled before any employee info is reported.
I once tried a post-proc BPM on PREmployee.CheckLeavePREmpMas that called the re-link method (AddEmployeeResultsLinkCompany) if it detects a missing EmpLink. I recall it worked for me during testing, but sometimes not for the PR clerk.
Since epicor made it Manual Process, im assuming thats safest route.
Maybe you could schedule hourly make and break links.
It’s just taking the PREmpMas record and using it to seed a hash, which it then writes to EmpLink field. Even if you wipe all EmpLinks and regenerate them, it comes up with the same hash, likely because the seed (the Emp record) is the same. Aside from a few wasted CPU cycles, I can’t think of a downside to automating it, especially since CheckLeavePREmpMas only runs once when you close PR Employee Entry. EDIT: Apparently it only runs if you close the window with a record on the screen. It doesn’t if the screen is cleared already.
As to why Epicor made it manual process…they don’t actually expect you to have permanent EmpLinks. They expect you to generate links only for occasional ad-hoc reports. It’s a privacy feature.
Their features are my burden 
I hear that. Their method does make it highly inconvenient to monitor payroll records. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to bypass, even if I haven’t personally settled on where to put the BPM that calls AddEmployeeResultsLinkCompany.
Hey, I made this change, the idea is that employee links should not remain on the database permanently for security reasons, back in E9 that is how it worked but somewhere in E10 the links that were calculated to retrieve rates and other info remained after save, which was not correct.
Base reports will generate the link on the fly, but it is indeed needed before something like a baq query or report.
A more permanent solution could be a UD field in PREmpMas and just store the value there and use that.
Another would be to store the value in a preproc bpm on PREmployee.Update and restore it in the postproc bpm.
