Restart all the Bartender Services. Sometimes Bartender randomly stops working. Restarting the services fixes it for us.
1 Like
@Vinaykamboj – I have tried restarting all of the services but that didn’t do the trick.
@utaylor – they did check out the service, etc… With nothing in the event logs and such I think they resorted to “send everything and we’ll try to figure it out” … of course now I sort of feel like I’m on a mission to figure it out first… 
Do you have the integration running on your PC yet?
It’d be a local instance.
then you can try to run it and see what happens.
You are seeing EPicor drop the BT files for the integration right?
The sad reality is, sometimes Bartender just poops it’s pants. I’d just reinstall Bartender and redeploy my integrations, or restore a system backup from before this problem occurred.
2 Likes
@utaylor - I’m going to have to come back to this in a bit. other fires have popped up in other areas and I’m having to redirect myself…
I am seeing Epicor drop the BT files though.
1 Like
I am with Kevin, that’s why I am saying you should try it on your own computer to isolate the server being the issue.
And Haso is definitely right in insisting on looking at the user running the services and if the services are running.
But every time I have arrived at the point of sending bartender the files it’s over… nothing is ever figured out and they start looking at the server or computer itself. They’re not ones to figure out the on premise issue when it becomes one… which in this case, if you can try deploying the integration somewhere else and test it using your test environment, you’ll have isolated it as a server issue or not because if it works when running the integration on your own computer then it’s gotta be something weird with the server setup whether that’s windows, the bartender install, the integration, etc…
Is the file extension name getting changed. If so, then the integration is working. You have already restarted the services, so that is ruled out.
We had the same issue when we upgraded. The issue was that the printer specified in the Epicor generated files was not installed on the server.
So also confirm if the printer is installed.
Another thing to check would be the folder that Epicor drops the files in is the same as the one that is specified in the Bartender integration. We have this issue also.
@utaylor – I was able to deploy an integration on my local computer. So… I suppose that means there is something funky on the server. I think I will follow Kevin’s advice and try to either reinstall completely or restore from a backup.
Just once when I am able to make one thing work, I would like for it to NOT screw up something else!
Thanks for the help! If anyone is going to Insights I’d be happy to buy you a beverage of your choice!
3 Likes
Another thing we ran into.
The services were running but no files were getting processed, when we stopped and restarted the services integration worked.
The other last year we had to give admin rights to the service (link a service to an admin account).
That was at Bartenders recommendation.
But then last month had to take it away. And then it magically started working again.
There is only one account on our licensing server. Its never changed…
I could go on and on. Labels are now my least favorite thing to deal with after being in IT since 1993.
I will save the total reinstall as a card in my back pocket. I was able to rig work around scripts to get the files going and don’t want to risk that not happening again.
1 Like
I couldn’t agree more! and I’m only on the fringes of being full-blown IT …I’m just the Epicor admin/fixer of all things that no one else understands/doer of things no one else wants to do.
I am so happy to hear someone say this. Well happy that I’m not alone… I don’t like that you have issues with bartender.
I can’t tell you how many times bartender just poops out. It’s so unstable IMO.
And yeah, I admit, maybe it’s the way we are using it and the architecture/implementation design we chose to go with. For that reason I am going to seek some guidance from them to make it more resilient if indeed it is something we are doing poorly.
But it’s a running joke between me and the IT admin that every week we’ll have our weekly label woes and it’s a shock if we don’t.
The last time I had an issue I was fairly certain it was .net related, but i tried to uninstall reinstall new verions old, etc and nothign worked till I updated my client to windows 11…
But as you said, I am not I.T. centric in terms of understanding the windows operating system inside and out so I couldn’t be sure it was .NET related 100%.
And this was when I had an issue with my computer where I do my testing… the integration just stopped working one day… and the floor still was working fine…
No idea why mine just stopped. But I had to do a windows update to version 11 to get it all to work.
Love all the responses and support.
Honestly if so many people are having problems then its the software not the users.
Things that have happened to our company:
-
Stops pulling files from the remote Epicor cloud folder. I think this may be an Epicor permissions issue. They deny it but it worked for years and then one day nothing.
-
Bartender services stop
-
Bartender services are running but have to be restarted.
-
Services had to have admin privileges’ added (Bartender support walked me through this) - It had been working for years on the same machine, same account.
-
Services had to have admin privileges’ removed a few months after that.
-
Admin console can’t find license. Had to relicense Bartender which is ON the server.
This has happened a few times. -
Allowed printers on the default list disappeared. Had to find the printer in the printer usage add it to the blocked group then to the default group.
(This is the easy way to do it, so you do not have to type the group settings you can just select - suggested to me from Bartender support).
Each one of these things means the company cannot ship or receive.
When I mention these items Bartender support got condescending and stated they have many customers not with the issue so it must be on our end.
Then they get back to us very quickly and say that oh wait other customers have had the issue and here is the fix. (Which sometimes works and sometimes does not.
Quite honestly Bartender needs to do a health check periodically and let the team know.
#1 never got fixed. I wrote a script to pull the files from the ftp folder to a local folder and had the Bartender integration look at that folder.
In addition the label functionality in Epicor is so not user friendly (cant always pick number of labels, can’t reprint a particular label).
I’ve written my own screens so that a user can select a received item and reprint a label. Same with PCID labels and with our own master case labels.
They can now print them on demand reliably. I’d roughly estimate many weeks of IT time wrestling with Bartender and at least the same amount of time getting Epicor label printing to where we wanted it.
We also RDP to the server periodically to make sure the integration is running but typically the users inform us quicker if something isn’t running.
It absolutely is not a user friendly system. Even with Epicor consultants and third party consultants we had to write our own software to make it work.
1 Like
So here’s how the solution went down… I went to control panel and did a “repair” of Bartender. I was petrified to uninstall and reinstall. Repair worked perfectly! Integration service is running again and I redeployed the integration and it seems to be working just fine! I also confirmed that apparently .NET 5.0.11 is required for Bartender because those are the programs that Epicor support had me remove and after the repair - they are now back in the list of Programs and Features.
I’m now off to let Bartender support know that I don’t need them anymore…and then I’ll let Epicare know that they shouldn’t tell folks to delete those particular versions of .NET .
I feel like this is enough of a win that I should be able to goof off the rest of the day… I could get an early start on Cinco de Mayo…
3 Likes
totally forgot about the repair. I figured bartender support would have told you to try that. That’s the last thing they told me to try before upgrading to windows 11. It didn’t work for me but I am so glad it worked for you!
Yes, it’s amazing how heavy those scenarios are and how much energy they can take out of you… go ahead and leave work @WendyB !
1 Like
Me too. I started to suggest it but couldn’t remember if it had that option.
1 Like
I may have celebrated too soon. Since I was able to get the integration working again yesterday - about every 5th label fails. I can go back in sometimes and change the file back to .bt and it will succeed. Sometimes that doesn’t work and I have to redeploy the integration again in Bartender. The “interesting” thing is that when it fails I don’t get any messages in the Bartender Admin Console – I just see the file go from .bt to .failed.
I’m sorry Wendy. We don’t use the file integration so I can’t help after that.
I am surprised nothing is being shown anywhere.
Have you spoken to bartender support yet? They might be better off helping you with this failure vs the .NET failure.