So SaaS clients got upgraded to the new version over the weekend… and I played around a little this morning.
When AutoUpdate ran, it took about the same amount of time any other full version upgrade ever has (about 8 minutes). The login splash screen looks pretty much the same, but has the new branding. Checkboxes for “Classic” (which brings up the V8/E9 baby blue menu) and “Home Page” (the Kinetic Home Page) are there, if you leave both unchecked the Modern Shell menu comes up.
Embedded Education (Demo environment) and System Help (both environments) are not yet fully functional (and sometimes this takes a bit anyway), and in EXTREMELY LIMITED TESTING the Modern Shell interface looks the same and acts the same as it does in 10.2.700. There is still the ribbon bar at the top saying that Kinetic screens are available, just click here! Some items open directly in the Kinetic screen, some in the Modern Shell screen. Launching Epicor in either of the three modes only appears to affect the main menu… if you launch in Classic mode and open the Order Tracker it comes up in Kinetic.
There is a customization on the Order Entry screen, and it appears to work properly (it’s just UD fields) in that I can put data in the box and it gets saved.
HOWEVER… when I open this environment in a browser, and open Order Entry, the customization is NOT run. No error message, no nothing… but no UD fields on the page… and that makes perfect sense TECHNICALLY but it would be nice if there were a message of some type.
That’s really all I’ve played with for now. Please jump in with your own experiences!
I have found that forms are loading extra slow. Not unbearable, but noticeable.
I also found that queries that utilize ttResults inside a bpm, now have a new name, and therefor are not updated and linked correctly. I had to change all references of ttResults (in my update by query widgets) to queryResultsDataset_Results. Making the change seemed to fix my outdated BPM. I hope this helps someone!
Kinetic 2021.1 has the same funcitonality for that as 10.2.700.12 does (from the Modern Shell main menu, select Settings, the Preferences, and the “Form Choice” dropdown is the same as it was).
I don’t have a System Administrator-level account so I can’t test beyond that yet.
I explored a bit today. Was trying out the Application Studio. Can’t seem to get a new layer attached to a screen load via menu maintenance… I also can not open as either Classic or Kinetic using the combination…Ahh, the learning curve…
Angular not node, (Angular client side), Node is a server side runtime that isn’t necessary to run an Angular application. Not that it matters much for your point but its an important distinction for development purposes. Angular runs completely client side in your browser so a “faster server” doesn’t help your workstation is doing most of the work.
Moving to Angular apps is a very different architecture for deployment. My assumption is that they will start caching all of the assets with a CDN which will dramatically improve the JS speed.
It’s an entirely different architecture. Microsoft is moving away from WinForms (not abandoning it though!) because they want native cross-platform capability in a single code-base. Epicor is rewriting/has rewritten every single form in Angular for the Kinetic UI.
WCF is dead though. Everything will be https (REST) [and MAYBE gRPC] for communicating with the server.
As an Epicor Dev, we need to get back to basics. Separating the UI from the business logic. Epicor is providing App Studio which does most of the simple UI changes. Business logic will go into Epicor Functions. This is a good place to start: Kinetic Resources (epicweb)
I see in some of the FAQs that C# custom coding will not be supported. So does that mean all my dashboards with extensive customizations in C# will break? I expected to have to redesign the layout for the kinetic forms. Now it sounds like I have to rebuild my dashboards from the ground up.
I have not seen what the new Dashboards look like. Yes, those C# customizations will not transfer over. Sorry. There’s been several discussions on the list (like this one: Planning for the Browser-based world, Kinetic - ERP 10) as a warning to others about putting too much effort into C# customizations.
It’s a good time to distill requirements again to make sure you have what the users need (outcomes - not specific solutions) and see how to translate that into the new world.
