Here’s a less than constructive topic for the day.
Just curious, if the developers have an issue using it, how the hell are users supposed to use it? It feels like you gave me vim and told me to write a linux kernel - oh and the L and I key are switched.
Epicor is really pushing forward with forcing users off the current platform when then the one they want us on it this?! Something has got to give. - I’d say start with free advanced training for everyone, but I get the impression even that wouldn’t work well.
For the record, I dont have too much exposure to it - yet, I couldnt even make it through the provided lab in the Insights book - it simply doesnt work. We’ve been forced to get external help from some other poor individual who’s put their life and soul into it - and even still, the product seems very incomplete, buggy and undocumented. The blind push to migrate it seems like a serious disconnect from the generals and the boots on the ground.
Lack of accessible documentation and examples is what’s killing me. This tool isn’t ubiquitous enough to rely on user driven documentation like you can for a programming language on stack overflow. Every day I am running into things I know how to do in code but not app studio and I can’t find an example anywhere.
If support was a bit snappier maybe it wouldn’t be such an issue but…
I am sure there are plenty of people that do know, but by the time you’re connected with one you may as well have just figured it out yourself. That’s been my experience. Slows development to a crawl.
While I am griping. Why (in development) can I only pick a function in production? At least give me a refresh list for after I have to go publish the damn thing.
Until the customers and consultants with solid dev teams get experience with customizing Kinetic, the new UI will only be used by the simple, out of the box customers. We jumped to Epicor seven years ago due to the ability to customize it for our processes, and Kinetic App Studio has put a road block on progress. We’re sticking with Classic customizations for another six months at least…
Migrating all of our customizations in AppStudio is a struggle with lots of undocumented requirements. Until there’s ready and fast support for us (print, video, EpiCare), we’re sitting on the sidelines for anything more complex than adding UD fields or re-organized screens. 3 years ago I was gung-ho to push our departments to Kinetic, but now I’m much less so. We can’t spare burning hundreds or thousands of hours learning something through trial and error.
If a Kinetic/AppStudio EpiCare support department could support us with resolving customization stucks, we’d be much more willing to start. But EpiCare’s SOP is 'Would you like us to transfer this to the Professional Support Group at $XXX/hr"? And that will not fly, unless we get a bucket of hours every month included as part of our annual six figure maintenance bill. I don’t even want to try getting some PSG spend from senior management just to migrate from Classic to Kinetic. Good luck defending the ROI on that!
Epicor, please make it easier to learn and do. Give us lots of step by step training examples and support. Don’t make it so hard we don’t even want to try.
Until then, we’re waiting for it to mature and get documented. Another year…
PS - Kudos to everyone on the bleeding edge learning and sharing AppStudio for the rest of us to follow! Thank you.
The only thing I enjoy about App Studio is figuring out how to make it do stuff that it wouldn’t normally do.
And half the fun of that is lost, knowing that they’ll change it and break it at some point.
