Has anyone installed the new Advanced Project Management (APM) module? If so, what has your experience been like?
Thanks!
Dave
We are evaluating it right now. I’ll follow up with updates! Looking forward to feedback from current users too.
I know APM was written by the people who do Advance Requisition Management (Precise Business in Austraila). I am a little disappointed that one would need to buy yet another Project module to get project number in G/L transactions. Many other ERP packages include this in the base module. I’ve always wanted to use Project Jobs for building assets for the Asset module too.
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@Mark_Wonsil Dynamic Segment can be used to store Project Id and do GL reporting (as part of pre-sales I have don’t this couple of years before). Need to modify few posting rules like PO, Inventory, AR Invoice, etc.
Jobs can be used to build assets and transfer to the asset module using transfer options. Both do not require Advance Project Management module.
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Never got a project job to work for this. Maybe a production job under the Project job might work but it would never pull the value over or the option was grayed out. 
It looks like Job field is information field. From the job, receipt to inventory and then it can be added in Asset Addition. Addition cost is picked from the stock value.
In this particular case, these were testing fixtures or modifications to the building and non-production materials. Instead of WIP, it was CIP (Construction In Process). We were adding labor and materials to other assets so receiving to inventory didn’t make sense.
We have a separate Product Groups for Asset In Construction/Construction In Process, R&D, etc. It would be nice to directly receive into Asset from Job in addition from inventory.
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The Install
The Epicor Instructions are somewhat lame, their .cab is bundled with items that should be deployed per-company and into your Main Company once… It definitely isnt Multi-Company friendly. If you have multiple AppServers they also miss that. Their instructions state to Target Current Company, which deploys Menus and Dashboards not with All Companies; hence again not Multi-Company friendly.
If you use their instructions you will get errors. Since for example the Menu Elements can’t be installed again and they exist in the .cab
If you throw out their Instructions, the install itself was not bad. I Deployed it all to our GLOBAL company and then created a seperate Extension Set .cab which I deployed to all child companies.
I also took the Server Files and added them to all my App Servers manually.
The Client files I did manually as well because the .cab does not create the structure they mention in their docs.
Also we grabbed the 10.2.600 cab which has 10.2.500 layers in it, causing overlap issues on certain screens.
Post Install
They do have their own version of Project Entry, AR Invoice Tracker, AP Invoice Tracker, PO Entry, Supplier so if you have customizations you will need to move them underneath their Base Layer.
Also don’t forget to configure Menu Securities by default it will inherit Main Menu Security.
You might need to add some Context Menu Maintenance for Project to work with Open With…
First Impressions
The forms do not follow Epicor consistency, some forms have special font-sizes overriding theme.
If you use the Search in their Project Entry screen, it runs for about 2 minutes and queries all your Order’s and then doesn’t use any of the info. (Compared to Epicors Project Search 3 seconds).
It literally ran 100K TOP 1 Queries…
When I tried to Customize their Project Entry the Script Editor crashed (TBD Why).
If you open the AR Invoice Tracker it opens half on your monitor since they saved the x, y coords in the Base Layer.
I guess if you look past their flaws and focus on functionality it may be a good module. Time will tell.
What Worries Me:
When they do Update Packages… they re-bundle it all… possibly overwriting your stuff… They need to figure that out and have a seperate New Install .cab and an actual UpgradeToXXXX .cab
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@hkeric.wci We were also disappointed with the installs. I ended up working directly with the Precise team to get it running. There is still quite a few shortfalls in the module. Anytime you make a change to financials you have to manually recalculate all projects to see the update in dashboards. We had a function set up run it but it “broke” when we updated to APM 2.7.3.132. Also attachment do not follow the tree view like in other forms like SO entry.
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@Gberg Hey George! Are you still having to recalculate projects manually, like individually? This topic was brought up in the lab at Insights too. I wondered if you found a solution that’ll update all projects and could put that on a schedule (similar to the Build Project Analysis process). We’re evaluating APM right now.
@jnbadger Precise has stated that it is fixed in upcoming AMP 2021.2.3 (11.1.200.3). All projects can be recalculated in APM under Setup/Configuration/Administrator.
Thank you!