We are on prem and would like to add a link to the drawing file on our parts details screen. The link would be to a network location, e.g. \fps1\drawings, and the file name would be the middle of part number dot dwg (e.g. part # 124-224453-233 would be file 224453.dwg). So, the full path would be \fps1\drawings\224453.dwg.
The ep-nav-link component only seems to work with https://site locations. Does anyone know of a way to make a local like, like above or using file://??
Thank you.
use attachments, link type
We’d LOVE to, but can’t get drag-drop to work in Kinetic for network files as link 
Browser does not provide full path for the file when user uses drag-n-drop or open file dialog. It is against its security.
It loads from the full network path just fine (our ~100k attachments work via browser without issue).
Also, it works fine if we manually type in the full path.
Just doesn’t grab the path on drag/drop (like it does in classic). Very frustrating.
What’s weird is that I think this worked in an earlier version of kinetic with an earlier edge agent.
Edge Agent gets the file itself, because file path is not availble from browser. The file then is copied, so it is not a link.
In the latest version Edge Agent can open File Dialog window to select path instead of browser. But it is not for drag and drop, because dnd happens in browser
I was going to say, “No, way,” but then you mentioned the Edge Client, which acts as a local web browser and fetches files for you. Not sure if reinstalling the Edge Client would help and not sure this helps either…
We must be talking about something different. Our attachment entries point to the full network path and open the network file directly from the browser via Edge agent (not a copy). We can make changes to the file, click save, and the file on the network is updated.
And it’s not ever going to.
This can however be worked around pretty easily.
What they need to do is provide somewhere to define on the screen, a base path.
You combine the base path + the filename (from the drop), and store that.
Bingo Bango
Guess we can put in an idea.
Or since the edge agent exists, they could add a drop target to it.
Yeah, I get how the browser can’t grab the full UNC path. I was hopeful that with Edge Agent and IIS integration they would make it work…
As for the “base path”, this would work if all our files reside in one directory. Our main issue, thus this post, is that engineering drawings are such:
//server/drawings/1234/1234.dwg
Where 1234 is the part number.
This format works great for the engineering department. They access the files directly. The rest of the business, however, accesses the drawing files for reference through Epicor.
Currently in 10.2.700 (classic) engineers drag the dwg file and Epicor saves the whole UNC link. Perfect. Users open a part, see the attachment, open the cad file when on a call with customer.
Now that Kinetic won’t allow this we are kind of stuck. Either engineers have to manually type the UNC path (annoying) or we go a different route.
My hope was to add a dynamic button on the part screen in Kinetic. The button called “view drawings” and have it coded with something like //server/drawings/{Part.PartNum}/{Part.PartNum}.dwg
This way engineers could do their thing and wouldn’t even need to attach the file. If it exists in that format, the button would just open it.
My problem: I’m not sure how to get there. It seems doable, but so far ChatGPT hasn’t got me there. Perhaps Insights will roll out their AI tool to help me figure this out???
I thought about it, but I cannot imagine how it should look like visually, EA is just an icon in a tray.
My idea was more along a tool that would allow you to define base paths for a specific workflow, ie, today I’m doing engineering documents, select or provide that base path, and do the attachments.
Then if you switch over to some other thing, you chose the other one, and keep on trucking.
None of these are perfect.
We chose to keep all our files in SharePoint online, works great.
In general I would recommend ditching local storage.
That being said, if you are not opposed to it, you could also build your own tooling outside the browser, but that has it’s own complications, which brings me back to not using local storage.
The web just isn’t designed to deal with that very well.
I can, but I didn’t say it was necessarily a good idea. Basically you’d launch a popup target, and drop to that.
Nothing is ever going to be perfect. 
So what if the files were in One Drive, or similar. Right mouse click and copy link then paste? Or did I miss the boat totally and it has to be 100% drag and drop…
I am sure if you wanted to on-Prem solution you could do something with a Synology NAS and a Docker/Portainer container that ran a file service similar
DnD is fine when you copy file itself elsewhere, like in SharePoint.
The problem is with links - when you don’t want to copy it, just get the path of it.
This is going to be a stupid question, but how does Kinetic cope with the upgrade when you have paths like this…Do they just don’t work anymore?
Drag and drop is just what they are used to, and is super convenient.
I see some Windows tools that will give a right-click, copy path feature which may work for us.
Overall, the dynamic button idea would probably be a win-win, if this is even possible. (they sometimes forget to add the attachment and this would be great).
Existing paths continue to work. The problem with new attachments. Previously you only could paste the path manually. now you can select it using file dialog.
The UNC paths migrate fine. The letter-driven attachments fail in Kinetic (browser), so we need to SQL update everything to //server instead of S:/.