Not sure how we haven’t before, but our organization came across the Epicor Users Group today. Wanted to inquire and see if any of you are members and find the cost worth it. Between the application help, EpicWeb resources, Knowledge Base articles, Epicor Learning Center, and, most importantly, this forum, there is a ton of information already out there. Is a paid group (albeit not super expensive) worth it?
Personally, left EUG long ago and helped get this forum going after the Yahoo Group dropped off.
Th EUG is the official user’s group for Epicor products and has a tight relationship with Epicor. Many folks participate and gain benefit from doing so (Insights discounts for one!) and that group is working hard to maintain its usefulness to the user community.
I will say that the support is much more “level 1” than the level 2+ support found here, but there are still good conversations to learn from and participate in.
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And I’m happy you did!
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I find the EUG most useful for our local group (eastern PA) that gets together every few months thanks to the efforts of a few of the members. There’s always some presentations by attendees or others, sometimes a tour of a facility, and open discussion. It’s a great way to make connections locally. I have also attended a remote meeting or two with some of the members on this forum, I think it was a Wisconsin or Minnesota EUG.
Nancy
You can join your regional EUG for free, FYI. The website is kind of confusing.
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Thanks for the advice everyone
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@josecgomez and @jgiese.wci did most of the work, I just offer my never ending list of suggestions.
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For knowledge and help, I generally stick to this forum as the folks are a tad more responsive.
If your company sends 2+ people to Insights, however, the EUG discount pretty much pays for the membership. I believe you get around $200 off.
Yes. The EUG covers all products and the entire world. It is a standalone organization that many Users Groups used to be the past, and frankly is amazing that it still exists. HP World used to be run by Interex, The International HP Users Group. HP was invited to participate in the annual user group meeting. This all has changed as companies started their own marketing, …, er, I mean User Groups. Now, the EUG pays Epicor to be at the conference - if you wanted to know where some of the dues are going. The first EUG forum software was written by a member and was getting creaky. They moved to the current platform, but the owner of that platform sold the business to someone less attentive - at least that’s my understanding. Yeah, the EUG forum software is nowhere near as nice as what’s available nowadays with Open Source. The EUG has always had excellent access to Epicor personnel. And as mentioned, they organize most of the Regional Groups around the world (with a few run by companies that sell Epicor services). They also get discounts to Insights and used to run some nice Education programs that one would have to pay Epicor for otherwise.
The “original” Vantage email group was created in September 1995 - still in Web 1.0 world and email was how discussions happened. After a few stops, it made its way to Yahoo!Groups. It was a cantankerous group to Epicor and was known as the “Gang of ###”, which started with a low number and grew to hundreds over the years. When the managers of the Yahoo!Group moved on, Jose and Josh created this group in Discourse funded by Patrons. You may have noticed the actual Yahoo!Group Archive was imported into this group. It’s a fun read if you’re waiting for your Model Regen to finish.
EpiUsers carries on the spirit of the original group. Its access to Epicor personnel is directly tied to the creators’ pull with Epicor. So be nice to them.
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Access to the information, local EUG groups and the Insights discount make it a valuable tool - well worth the money.
I personally use BOTH groups. There might be someone in one group with good answers to an issue that are not part of the other, pretty rara but does happen. The regional groups DEFINITELY provide a lot of great resources. We’re lucky to have 2 great ones locally, the Wisconsin group(largest and most active in thr country) and the Midwest group
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My company used to use the EUG. As mentioned, the savings on Insights registration alone was worth it. As a user, I found it very useful as it was more of a USERS group. I find this forum to be very IT focused rather than individual user focused, which isn’t as useful for me. But our company only uses this forum now and for me it’s better than no resource at all. But a lot of what gets discussed here is way over my head.
Hi Cynthia,
While we do discuss a lot of technical things, please don’t hesitate to ask any questions that aren’t technical. Our community has many people who have vast Epicor and Manufacturing experience outside the Technical aspects and you should be able to get help for almost any topic of conversation as it related to Epicor.
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Hi Cynthia,
Don’t sell yourself short. I’m a consultant, and a lot of the stuff that’s discussed on this forum is way over MY head too!
As @josecgomez didn’t say out loud but certainly meant, there is no such thing as a bad question. All of us have different areas and levels of expertise, and we’re all here to help each other.
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Pretty sure I totally agree, but I am curious exactly what you mean.
Obviously software is in the IT realm, but I think you are getting at the idea that like 60-80% of the posts here reference something beyond the user interface, such as
- Any kind of code
- BPMs and Functions
- Queries (BAQs)
- REST calls
- Application Studio
- Other UI customizations
- External software
I think I land somewhere in the middle as far as IT geekiness, and I will say that when I try to find a post I can actually help answer, there is a lot of “Nope, can’t help with that one.”
I was thinking how there is a category here for Code Review / Sharing but per the description, it is intended for working code, not help with coding issues.
I’ll spin this into a separate topic, but maybe we need a standalone category for any kind of coding questions, so as to declutter the other topics.
I have found that each group serves different purposes. People in the organizations I worked for use the two groups differently. Users search and ask questions of the EUG members about various use cases, MRP, Demand Management and ask more strategic questions. We’ve always greatly enjoyed and benefited from the local regional meetings we’ve attended. We definitely find the Insights Discounts to make membership worth the price of admission, the definition of a no-brainer.
EpiUsers is more often used by our developers and analysts to ask questions of other developers and analysts. And yes, since these IT pros have also implemented and troubleshot their systems, they are also a wealth of experience for module value and the various knobs and settings withing the central config apps and server settings.
Epicor Life would not be as rich without both of these fantastic resources and I would urge you to not even consider it an “either or” and Just participate in both to the limit of your available research and learning time.
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