In house upgrade from E9 on Progress to E10?

Epicor ERP 9
1

Hey all,

I just had a conversation with an Epicor rep about a potential upgrade to 10. Long story short, I think their prices are too high, and their move to limit support for 9 in order to push you to 10, while then charging you 15K+ for the upgrade to 10 is a tough pill to swallow. They also informed me that there is no official documentation to assist in upgrading in house. That’s another strike on them in my book, at least my move from Vista to 9 was aided by Epicor documentation.

So, has anyone here successfully completed the upgrade to 10 in house that would be willing to share any docs that would give me some idea of what I’m up against? My main concern is the data conversion for Progress to SQL…not that the rest of the process would be a cake walk.

It’s a tough spot for us as we are paying a lot of maintenance and receiving basically nothing for our annual investment…to then be gouged while trying to get to a current release and actually gain back some of the support they stripped away doesn’t sit well.

Maybe we are stuck with 9 permanently, but I’d feel better about taking a stab at the move to 10 after hearing from some others that have pulled it off.

Thank you!

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I have and it is doable, however why wouldn’t you use Cirus and still do it yourself? Cirus is a tool Epicor makes it available to you fairly cheaply and it is a fantastic tool. Take your 9 DB and upgrades it to the latest 10 you still need to uplift your own customization and such but the bulk of the work is done for you and it is not expensive.

I suppose that depends on your opinion of expensive… too but it was very very cheap when we’ve used it.

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Thanks, Jose! I’ve never heard of Cirus…I’ll have to investigate.

I know from being in the community for a while that I don’t have your skill set, but at least I know it’s been done.

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Ask your cam about getting access to the ERP Analyzer and how much Cirus (they have a fancy Cloud Upgrade Tool name for it these days @aidacra?) would be for your organization. it is worth it.

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I’ll do that…our CAM doesn’t often respond to my emails, but maybe I’ll get lucky this time.

Does Cirus come with any docs or are you basically on your own to figure out how to use?

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Its pretty intuitive… Basically you install a Util in your Epicor Server… hit a button, then hit upload…then watch it work then download the new DB. But yes there are docs
@Vic is going through this right now he can give you some feedback on it too.

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Awesome, I’ll wait to hear from our CAM and go from there. Much appreciated, Jose!!

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While the upgrade tool is a preferred path the in-house upgrade path is documented and works 9 out of 10 times - in my experience. You can also run into problems with the upgrade tool and neither are 100% - but you do get better support with the upgrade tool.

http://patches.epicor.com/Epicor%20ERP/10.2.300/Epicor10_MigrationGuide_Progress_102300.pdf

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9

Hey Ryan,

I’m currently in process of an upgrade from Vantage (Progress) 8.03.410 to E10.2.200. I opted to use Epicor’s Cirrus program and do the “self-serve” option. That basically means Epicor will give you 3 “passes” or upgrades for about $3,500, IIRC. And that’s it. They will support you through the process, but not assist you with the upgrade itself.

Each pass results in two SQL databases being available for download: a “vanilla” db that only has your data and nothing more – no custom BAQ’s, no form/screen customizations, etc… just data. And the second version of your db generated after each pass will have your customizations, etc.

Support will help you. For example, due to our Product Configurator, we had some fields containing data wider than the db schema allowed (clueless on how that could happen). Support looked at my db and wrote me a few conversion programs to run on the Vantage side prior to performing another upgrade pass – and it was a “free pass” until I got my data to E10 correctly once.

I’m not sure how many modules you have or how large/transactional your current E9 db is, and if you have a lot of bolt-on apps like Manifest or Service Connect… obviously each customer is a different scenario. We use Epicor as it was intended to be used, therefore we don’t have a ton of bells-and-whistles and crazy customziations in Vantage. I may have 20~ custom Crystal Reports and BAQs, Maybe about 25 BPMs mostly for email notifications, and perhaps about 30 customizations, however most of those were work-arounds; therefore I may only have a 10 customizations in E10 needed.

We’ve been on Vantage for 11 years and we’re at about 25 users. I had considered a “fresh”, new E10 install and then use DMT to populate the master tables rather than a laborious upgrade process, but once Cirrus came out it was a NO-BRAINER for me… DMT costs more than Cirrus. Plus, added bonus, I get to keep my 11 years worth of historical data (sales, finance, etc.).

I’m taking my vanilla db and piloting on that version without all of our “stuff”. Because E10 offers many more features than Vantage, many of our customizations, enhancements, BAQ’s, etc, may already now exist in E10 or it may just be easier to recreate whatever you need in E10 rather than trying to rely upon your upgraded stuff – it might be a little flaky. Plus, some of our customizations were actually bug fixes or workarounds in Vantage – probably (hopefully) not applicable in E10.

I’m uncertain on your Epicor and SQL experience, but I will say the process is documented nicely. Not perfectly, but you will be able to plod through it with a bit of trial-and-error and learning-on-the-fly.

If I feel I end up requiring assistance, then I can choose to give my CAM a ring for a SOW on a task I’m stuck on. For example, I may need help with Product Configurator, so I may reach out to Epicor or another party for some consulting or hand-holding.

Good luck, feel free to reach out to me with any other questions.

Vic

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We were on 8.03 (Progress), and decided to skip over 9, and go straight to 10. But instead of going an upgrade route, we decided to do a fresh install of E10, and set it up from scratch.

We used DMT to port over the selected data (Parts, Customers, Vendors, BOMs, etc…), which allowed us to cull the DB of bloat. We started on Vista 4 in 1997, and converted to 8.03 back in 2007.

This might only be acceptable for smaller companies. We only have 15 seats, and a less than 50 customizations/BPMs/DD’s. But it’s a good way to break ties with “old ways” and “sacred cows”.

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Hi Dan, Vic and Calvin…thank you for your input!

Dan, I need to figure out what credentials I’m missing before I can access, but I appreciate the direct link!

Vic, great info, thanks for taking the time to post that. Our db is pretty small, currently only 3 gigs. Over the years, I’ve customized quite a bit, but probably nothing compared to that of larger companies. I just ran the analyzer again, but I forget, is there a way to view the results, or do I have to wait for Epicor to share them with me?

Manifest is our only add on app, I know I’ll need help with that aspect.

I’ve been the Epicor admin here for about 6 years, but most of what I know was learned painfully on the fly during our upgrade from Vista to 9…nothing formal, no coding abilities, low efficiency/high drag, if you will. I have no SQL experience worth mentioning, just a few ugly queries built through a database browser program. I know it won’t be fun, the last upgrade almost did me in, but there is no way my boss will sign off on the expense to have someone else handle it, so I’m it… There were a few customizations that I wasn’t able to duplicate in 9 with just the GUI, and I needed a consultant to help code them in. So I know I would need some consulting help again, but again, my budget wouldn’t leave much room for a ton of outside help. I really appreciate the offer for more help, I’ll do what I can to bother you as little as possible.

Not a bad idea, Calvin, but I know we would want all that historical data intact. I’d have to kill those cows in order to break with the old ways :laughing:

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Never mind that question about the analyzer results…I just needed to look a little closer.

We have 26 dashboards, 29 UI customizations, 50 BPM’s, 395 queries, 417 reports, and 14 UD fields used.

Quite a bit of work to do!

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Now is the time to determine which of those are actually NEEDED in E10.x.

  • How do you know which reports you need? You already know which reports are needed for month end, quarter end year end. You know which reports were run in the last month by looking at the sysrptlst table. If you see a report that you don’t know what it is? Rename the .rpt and wait for someone to complain in the next few months. If no one does, hey, you don’t have to do anything with it! If someone does, then, work on getting it into a dashboard–reports should only be things that need to be sent to customers in a physical form, or for legal compliance. For ad-hoc data, dashboards are always a better option AND dashboards have less ongoing maintenance than custom reports, which is a bonus.

  • Those BPMs? Were you working around some quirks in the older version that have since been addressed? Test 10.2.x with no BPMs at all that AREN’T related to autoprinting or change logs, and see what is actually needed on the other side. You’d be surprised as to how few BPMs you’ll probably actually need in 10.2.

  • Those customizations? Were you working around some quirks in the older version that have since been addressed? Test 10.2.x with no UI customizations at all and see what everyone actually needs.

Through the Cloud Upgrade services program, we provide two copies of your data–with all of the custom stuff removed (called the “vanilla” database), and with all of your custom stuff migrated/upgraded (called “non-vanilla” but I’m really trying to get them to rename it “rocky road” as that is what you’ll have if you work with it as-is)

Here is your chance to clean things up to make your life easier in the future–be a friend to future you and use this time wisely :slight_smile: Do not just bring all of the custom stuff over if it isn’t really needed.

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