Anyone familiar with BPMs? Due to tariffs, we need to automatically add a special charge(Tariff +10% of extended price) based on the part number as it is keyed into Order Entry. Currently it’s all manual. Appreciate any insight. Thanks.
Ken
Couple of ways I can think of Ken. BPM widgets allow “lookups” so you could do it as A) a checkbox on the part master, B) a list of parts in the UDCodes utility, or C) a checkbox on the order, so you could have control at time of order. All three of these could be looked at either directly or via the query condition on a condition widget. The condition widget can also check for other criteria as well, then you could add the tariff amount accordingly.
You could use DMT to mass update either Part Master or user Paste-Insert into UDCodes if there are a lot of part #s.
Mike, thanks for the reply. We have many parts, so option A or B could work. We needed to add a Misc Charge line to the line item and populate the % based on the extended price. Could all this be done with the widget and no coding?
Also, is there any instruction manual on the EpicWeb site for BPMs? appreciate it.
Ken
So technically I believe this could be done easily enough within the BPM. I have not done a Misc Charge via a BPM, so I cannot guarantee it - but the ability to call the Business Objects is there, so it should be possible. (I have done one where a Quote event will created a Case, fill in the blanks and even assign a Task)
However, gathering all the pieces, data, and knowledge to make it work is akin to being a programmer - so the question really is does your team have the skills? Your question about ‘no coding’ led me to a small assumption regarding skill set. I apologize if I got that wrong.
As for documentation - there are a lot of things on this topic out on the web - not only at Epicor. Searching here for things like ‘Call a business object in a BPM’ will get you results, as will the same search on the EUG site, and even YouTube and Google. Also check EpicWeb for the Epicor docs/Technical references for BPMs. I recall a number of folks wanting to do the same sort of Misc Charge BPM and I recall a conversation about tariffs as well - probably should search on here for that too.You may just find a BPM out there someone is willing to share. I would if I had one that did Misc Charges - we just added the tariff to our prices and called it done.
Lastly, the big hint for doing this sort of BPM is that you need to understand how to ‘client trace’ - and to read the trace file to determine which business objects to call and what data they need. Then you should use the Business Logic Tester (BLTester.exe) that comes with the Epicor installation code/dvd to ‘mock up’ the steps your BPM will use. There are many posts that talk about this tool out there.Then, after you have all of that business logic/dataset mess mapped out - then you can start on your BPM.
I’m certainly not trying to talk you out of it - it can be done and isn’t that bad once you have your head wrapped around all of this. And once you’re there, you’ll realize how much power you have over the system from inside a BPM. 