Does anyone have experience using task sets within ECO groups?
I’m currently testing a task in an ECO group on the Engineering Workbench and ran into a workflow issue:
I cannot check in a part once the task is completed.
The task can only be completed after the part is checked back in.
For context, our goal is to have multiple departments review parts and assemblies through the ECO Workbench prior to release. Tasks would notify each department when a new part is ready for review.
I’ve also noticed that, similar to tasks in Quotes, once a task or task set in an ECO group is completed, that ECO group cannot be reused. Since we plan to reuse ECOs across multiple parts, this becomes problematic—completed tasks cannot be removed or replaced, effectively making the ECO unusable and forcing us to create new ECO groups each time.
Has anyone worked through this or found a better way to manage tasks within ECO groups?
If you MUST reuse ECOs, you cannot use ECO Tasks precisely because once complete, they’re done and cannot be reopened. Therefore, if ALL you need to add is multi-department reviews, you can add UD checkboxes for each department in the Engineering Workbench (these are in the ECOGroup table), and then BPM(s) to determine if a part can be checked in based on the status of those checkboxes. THEN you’d need to UNSELECT those checkboxes afterwards, and would therefore have no auditable record beyond the date the part was checked back in.
I would ask, why can’t you just create new ECO groups each time?
We could create ECO groups for each part; however, this would require closing each group and then filtering them out in the ECO Group table. There are also concerns about reusing ECOs when multiple ECO groups are involved.
What we actually need is a way to automatically alert multiple departments in Epicor Kinetic when a new part is created, prompting them to review and update any department-specific information. The ECO Group task function does not seem well-suited to support this process.
Additionally, there are functional limitations:
ECO groups cannot be accessed through the “My Tasks” table in the Engineering Workbench.
Once inside the Engineering Workbench, users cannot access the Part screen to update fields related to Finance, Sales, Marketing, or Inventory.
You could create a postprocessing BPM when a new part is added and create a rev and then check out that rev to the engineering workbench which you can then link to a task set group, which can consists of many tasks that a person “must do”…
I use predefined Workflow Groups/Task Sets successfully.
I create the ECOGroup based on a group of Parts I need created, engineered, and reviewed by multiple departments. Reviewers monitor their task lists for assignments. Once everyone has completed their updates and reviews, it’s documented who completed each task step and when in the Task Set for accountability. Each ECOGroup is a one-time use. We often have multiple ECOGroups actively going through different stages of the task sets.
My most used task set looks similar to below.
Create Part Records
Engineer
Production Review
Purchasing Review
Warehouse Review
Finance Review
QA Approve & Release
I have it automated with a Task Set, Workflow Group, Tasks, and Current Stage. It runs through the Task Set sequentially, and each assigned task will show up on the users Task List, at the time needed. You can also set up the Task Set to loop back to the previous task if problems or questions come up (instead of completing it) and it will come back again once the previous task is corrected and completed. I think you can also set it up so you can skip tasks if the next review task is not needed.
Once a user checks off their task as “complete”, the task set moves it to the next task and assigned user. Once all previous department reviews are complete, I have the last task back to me. I Approve and Check In the parts to make them available for use. I check my last task and the workflow as complete, then close the ECOGroup. I have the ECOGroup landing page filtered to open Groups only.
It took a lot of trial and error to get it functional since I couldn’t find any resources beyond the bare minimum.
All of our reviewers can easily “jump” to a new tab for Part Entry by right-clicking the Part ID in the ECOGroup to update the Part record.
Once approved and checked in, the ECOGroup shows in the Part Revision’s Audit log.
Thanks for sharing, that’s awesome, I’m going to share your post with our engineer. My question for you is though, what are you doing for new part creation/ideation?
Do you guys have sales coming up with the part numbers/new products? How do they get a bill of material going? Do they use a quote and then your engineer creates the part numbers and sets up the engineering workbench?
In short, regarding the new part workflow, at what point do you enter the part numbers and create revs? What work happens between sales and production beforehand?
Your task setup is very similar to ours. We also receive email notifications, and they are triggered in the same sequence you described. However, once a task is completed, we do not have the ability to “circle back” or reopen it.
In addition, our process goes beyond simply reviewing Bills of Materials in the ECO Group or Engineering Workbench. Each department is responsible for accessing a specific part and updating its associated fields. To complete these updates, users must navigate out to the part landing page and make changes directly to the part record as you have indicated.
One question we have is how to view and access the ECO Group from the My Tasks page. Currently, we do not see any indication of the associated part or ECO Group, nor do we see a way to access the ECO setup directly from the task.