We are interested in deploying big-screen displays in each of our primary work centers throughout the company to display up-to-date priority dispatch data and, possibly, other data related to action items for that day.
I’d be interested to hear any thoughts or recommendations on the best approach for this, particularly in regard to:
Minimizing system load
Avoiding, if possible, the consumption of a user license for each display
Considerations between using Epicor Dashboards vs Excel, Power BI, ASP Webpages, or other
Consider using an application that uses Rest services to gather the data peridotically so that a license is not continually consumed as it would be if you are displaying an Epicor dashboard. Search this forum for a rather large discussion on Rest
We also have been looking into something like this. We’ve already installed a few devices from TruDigital (for digital signage and information not derived from Epicor) and are now looking at a DakBoard (raspberry PI based) or similar type of setup to deploy at workcenters for Epicor based information. As Tim mentioned, the REST query might be the best way but we’ve not found an ‘app’ to allow for that yet. We just started playing wih the PI based solution this week.
We’ve been searching for other devices for a few weeks but have foudn nothing that will jsut log on and show a dashboard in Epicor directly. We can find plenty that will show images and even other HTML pages, but getting the information from Epicor to that format that the digital signage apps like is the problem.
be interested to know what you find and be happy to share our findings
If you are on 10.2 I would really look at the EDD tool. It allows you to build BAQ’s and to display the data as Javascript charts and graphs. It has it’s own web server that you could display on tv’s with Raspberry Pi’s or LattePanda’s.
Todd,
We are currently deploying a very robust and powerful (might I add FREE) solution that relies on two pieces of software. One is Grafana, which is a dashboard building functionality that can directly query MSSQL to garner data. We also built an API plugin that allows us to run BAQ via the REST API to return data where business logic was needed from inside Epicor itself. For the actual display functionality we are using a product called Xibo. This gives us the ability to schedule different dashboards for display on end point devices and ensure best visibility. We have toyed with Raspberry Pi’s over the years and just did not find them robust or reliable enough without alot of baby sitting. If you run into bumps trying to test Grafana or Xibo let me know I would be happy to provide some guidance.
Hmm, not sure about that. I believe this is what drives the Active Desktop so it may not. As for the problem at hand, I’m with => Tim, use a REST service and a single page web app that refreshes every so often.
But to add more to the mix, Epicor Mobile is designed to publish BAQs (even updatable ones) on web pages.
There is a product, Display Monkey, that works with Power BI that offers a nice inexpensive digital signage solution. Using REST with Power BI you create your content and let Display Monkey do the rest.
Keep in mind that PowerBI is a full BI stack and you need Office 365 and to be able to install the Gateway if you want to make use of the more advanced features.
For example: with their Q&A features users can type specific questions into Cortana and will get an answer from the dataset. So “Hey Cortana, how many shipments did we have today” would run a PowerBI query (REST or SQL with the Gateway) that would say (literally) 50.
I wouldn’t go this route unless you are ready to put in the work to get BI to work in your environment. If you want something similar to this out of the box, Epicor is white labeling the Phocus BI tools as Epicor EDA. Keep in mind this tool replicates your data on the Phocus servers on a schedule so you are not getting real time data.
Which is where EDD comes in. EDD comes free with 10.2 and displays BAQ’s or SSAS Cubes as Javascript cards. These cards can be displayed on the new Active Homepage or you can browse them directly on the server. If you want this same thing, but need it to run outside of your network on mobile devices check out bezlio.io
Not to scare people off but Power BI is a very nice tool to step into. No Office 365 or gateway required and without those features, it meets 95% of most BI requirements. Very nice for this specific requirement and almost free!
You can share reports \ dashboards for free using a couple methods with Desktop (free). The downside is that acts more like EDA at that point and is really only a point in time view. You can schedule the refresh so you can update as needed hands off. I have seen some people go overboard using this to actually make data seem real-time (not real-time). I mentioned this as a solution for this post, not as a BI solution by any means although the premium is very competitive with all products in the BI space from a pricing and functionality standpoint.
I totally agree. I was only trying to say if that’s all you want to do EDD is a simpler way to do that then bringing in a 10,000 pound gorilla called PowerBI. But if you go the PowerBI route, the sky is the limit.
You should even be able to embed PowerBI charts in the Active Homepage since it is just rendering a web page.
I wouldn’t say PowerBI is a 10,000 pound gorilla, especially for something like this. If you tried to replicate all of the content of EDA then sure, that would be quite the task but for single use scenarios I think it is super quick to develop if you just use REST to grab a few BAQs. You can refresh every half hour or so like Dan said, making the data seem almost real time.
For the digital signage side of it, if you want super cheap look at just running a chrome stick with chrome OS in kiosk mode also.
