[ 10.2.300 ] FeatureFlag.exe & In-App Notifications

Experts' Corner
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It looks like the Cloud Customers have In-App Notifications enabled. While On-Prem as of 10.2.300.7 it’s not enabled by default.

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FeatureFlag.exe

If anyone is interested 10.2.300.x

Add to your .sysconfig

  <featureFlag>
    <!-- Path to the system configuration (.sysconfig) file. -->
    <SysConfigPath>Config\E10_Migrated102300.sysconfig</SysConfigPath>
    <!-- AppServer user ID. -->
    <UserID>manager</UserID>
    <!-- AppServer password. -->
    <Password>manager</Password>
  </featureFlag>

FeatureFlag.exe is located within your Client Directory.

# Enables In-App Notification aka Push Notifications, once you logout, login you will be prompted to register
FeatureFlag.exe /Enable /ConfigFile=Config\E10_Migrated102300.sysconfig /FeatureID=79479C59-021B-40C4-A8D3-2F859FD8CD6B /Level=System

# Enables Fill By Query, and another widget in In-Trans BPM Builder
FeatureFlag.exe /Enable /ConfigFile=Config\E10_Migrated102300.sysconfig /FeatureID=86A27AF6-DFDF-4C48-88E2-9D13933DAEDE /Level=System

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It will write a record to SQL.

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Once you logout and log back in, you will be prompted with a Register/Subscribe Dialog.

The In-App Notifications is a Kinetic App that runs as a hidden window and you can make it visible via the System Task Agent Actions Menu (once FeatureFlag is enabled).

NOTE: I think it still doesn’t work in 10.2.300.7 or atleast It keeps registering me as EPIC06 Demo, but anyhow - just some info on it!

The In-App Notification is using EO Objects (Web Browser) component and it just pings an Azure API. I believe once it has a Notification, it tells the Browser Host (do some C# and show the User a Ultra Notification).

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Perhaps one day, we will be able to use it, to push our own Push Notifications

Back to FeatureFlag.exe

It looks like Epicor will have a way to Enable/Disable additional functionality. For now in 10.2.300 I have noticed 3 that can be enabled.

  1. In-App Notifications from Epicor
  2. Additional Widgets in In-Trans BPM Editor
  3. Retry Failed Agent Tasks

I am sure @Bart_Elia or @Edge can elaborate more, on the intent 2yrs from now with FeatureFlag.exe It’s all new to me :slight_smile: Is it to manage expirimental features? Is it to sell you more features (sub-modules) within modules? Is it a way to opt-out of some features, you don’t want? Time will tell.

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When you are servicing a larger user base and you deploy a dashboard / customization. You always start hunting for Email Addresses who should be notified.

What if we could just Notify a Security Group, User, Specific Company or even a Specific Plant. Send like a monthly ChangeLog :slight_smile: dreaming with @josecgomez

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Hi @hkeric.wci so Feature Flags are something we added to allow us to roll out changes incrementally. You can read about the principals here Feature Toggles (aka Feature Flags)

For ERP specifically we utilise them in the Cloud as you have seen to support our In App Notifications and they also control some other optimizations like task agent retry. It allows us to verify behaviour in the cloud and supports aspects of Canary and A/B testing as we need.

It will not be used to support the selling of sub-modules or opt-out features.

Also at the moment there are no plans to surface the In App Notification features for use on premise it is specifically designed so our cloud operations team can better communicate with users instead of email or utilising Tip Of the Day. When we do an upgrade or have an upgrade window we can now target a specific group, region, role etc.

The goal is maintain the signal to noise - keep everyone in the loop - hope that helps.

As a homework exercise - you can also utilise FeatureFlags in your own development look on the session object and conditionally branch your logic based on it being set - we built it to be open and inclusive.

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Nice! Sounds like a plan for the weekend :slight_smile:

Thank you for the additional info! Appreciated.

The In-App stuff someday would be handy On-Prem too (someday!!), to notify users, groups, companies when X Dashboard has made it into Production.

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I was thinking about using a Powershell script that would search the UseFile for active users with matching security groups (or companies or whatever) and then fill the BCC with the email addresses in an email created with MSGraph - since we’re O365 users.

That should work for email. You could create a Skype/Team message in the same way. Those are my thoughts anyway.

Mark W.

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