We recently went live from E10 to Kinetic 2 months ago. I had asked the team helping us with the upgrade if we should start with the latest version of Kinetic instead of using an older version before we go live and they said a major update in June should be coming out and to just wait until then.
I just emailed them as I saw 2023 had been released in May and asked about the upgrade. They said it would be a whole upgrade process as we are moving to another year so it’s not just a simple patch and would have to get us a quote. Felt like they told us to wait until June to update our Kinetic to give them another project to work on.
I want to eventually move to the Kinetic UI but at our current version, it is extremely buggy and unusable. I also find it very odd that half the applications have the new kinetic UI and the other half are still the same from E10. It just seems very unfinished and rushed. Almost feels like we are beta-testing their product and paying them to do so!
Anyways I am just wanting to know if it is currently worth spending additional capital on the upgrade or if we should wait a little longer for Kinetic to become more stable. I was not sure if most of the major bugs were fixed in the 2022-2023 version. Also wasn’t sure if there were any major QoL things added from our version to the current version. We do not have a complex system. Pretty much no custom code, BPMs, customizations, etc.
If you’re on prem, get used to the idea that you will need to upgrade at least every year. Not sure who you mean by “they” (i.e., Epicor professional services or a partner), but upgrading will always be an upgrade process that you will either need in house skills to complete or outside resources or both. Yes its worth doing the upgrade because 2021.2 is going to sustaning support in October.
This is a link to the lifecycle page on epicweb: Sign In
Looking at it solely from a new UX standpoint, 2021 is garbage.
2023 is significantly better, but not without its own issues.
It’s going to continue to get better, so it’s always going to be a moving goalpost as to when that “perfect” release would be. That’s for you to decide.
Also this. Don’t fall behind; you’ll regret it when you need to upgrade through a significant number of releases. Much easier to stay current.
We are indeed on-prem. We have not had an in-house IT/ERP manager for years and it all has been outsourced to just keep things going as is rather than keeping everything up to date and that is what I have been trying to do so far. I am fairly new to Epicor and have learned a lot in the past year. Maybe it will be a good idea to learn the steps involved to do the upgrade ourselves then and what requirements are needed from one year to the next.
I know that was a huge list of things that were required going from E10 to Kinetic.
2023.1.x has many QoL upgrades from previous versions. You guys not having much custom code, BPMs, etc should make upgrading very easy. It shouldn’t be too hard to spin up a 2023 test server and give it a go.
Nota Bene… I’m a consultant so color my comments accordingly.
Kinetic 2023.1, in my not-always-so-humble opinion, is ready for prime time in the Kinetic UX – for non-technical users only! Most of the under-the-covers stuff (BPMs, BAQs, dashboard creation, functions) still needs to be done in the Classic UX.
I have two customers going live in the next few months, one going full Kinetic UX (they are on-prem but mostly sticking with upgrading along with the SaaS cadence), and one remaining on the Classic UX (they are SaaS). With the 2023 release there was quite a push to get most of the niggling issues addressed, and it was generally successful. Are there still some issues? Sure. Will those issues inhibit the work users need to do? I haven’t generally found that to be the case.
Spend the time needed with your superusers, get them comfortable so THEY can be the ones to sell it to the rest of the users. This is a web-based interface, so a younger crowd will probably be more excited than us old geezers anyway. Use that to your advantage… let the team helping you put on a slick demonstration that shows off how cool it all looks.
We’re all annoyed with how the “marketing” version (Kinetic 2023.1) differs from the “technical” version (11.2.300). I don’t get into the deep dive, but that technical version nomenclature tells ME it’s only a Service Pack-level upgrade from Kinetic 2022.2 (technical version 11.2.200). In either case, though, if you’re coming from 2021.2 (which I THINK is technical version 11.1.200, but you can check that to be sure), it’s a full-on undertaking.
Waiting until whatever the next version likely WILL have more functionality than present. If you have the bandwidth and resources, install it and play with the Demo environment. Go through some of the education courses and see how the screens react. If you’re happy with that, upgrade your database into it and play with some of your own data. This is NOT a trivial process, but honestly, if that’s how you can become convinced (one way or the other!), it will be time well spent.
Testing in 2021 we found that a lot of bugs were present and would cause a lot of problems in our day-to-day work. We went with the decision to disable the Kinetic UIs completely so that way we were not getting a call often about something not working. We were also starting to implement other modules so we figured that we would slowly go into Kinetic. (People DO NOT like change) ahaha.
I am assuming it is easier to go from the latest update to the next upgrade versus having to jump multiple versions? Unless it is like updating from E11 to E12 that would be something that would require more resources to upgrade to?
It is ALWAYS easier to make small jumps. That said, there are a lot more of them to make, and you probably have a lot of OTHER things that need doing. Only you know your company, your users, your IT resources, and your particular level of patience… so only you can make the call on how often you want to upgrade. I think @hmwillett said you don’t want to get behind to the point that you’re on sustaining support (i.e. over two years since an upgrade), I’d agree that’s as long as you want to go. If you have a relatively uncomplicated environment BPM/Customization-wise, upgrades SHOULDN’T (yes, famous last words) break the psychological bank. But you never know until you try.
If you’re not very customized, upgrading to 2023.1.x should be straightforward. Learn to do it yourself, it’s not too bad if you’ve got the bandwidth to handle it, and server resources for a test VM. The install guides will get you 90% there.
Once you’ve upgraded, stay on the classic UI, and migrate departments to Kinetic as your timeline for supporting them allows. Everyone doesn’t have to go all at once, if you’re the single support resource internally. Also, train up some department super users to be your first line of support.
We upgrade annually in February, and there’s always bugs on new versions, but Epicor is pretty responsive to fixing them if you’re on the latest version.