A client of ours needs to display the UNC path to a document (pdf, jpg, xls, etc) on their intranet. They want to be able to click on this and open up up the path, preferably in file explorer but browser is ok. They do not want to use sharepoint or anything else like that due to “reasons”.
Nav Link will no longer allow you to put in file:// as a url. And I have yet to find another way to get this to work.
Has anyone else been able to get something like this to work?
Thank you,
Opening local files from a browser is a terrible security risk.
Word is that Epicor is building that capability into the Edge Client, but I haven’t tried it due to reasons. 
Yeah, unfortunately it is a security link, but the situation where this would be used is all internal. I might be able to get away with in app viewers, but I’m not sure if those will allow UNC paths either. At least I haven’t tried yet.
Any hints on how to get around this?
I think using the attachments feature is going to the best line of investigation
I agree with Evan that you should investigate the Edge Client attachments.
The other option is to run an internal web server to serve up those files. Won’t do uploads through Kinetic but will display in the browser.
It would be a good idea but unfortunately the client doesn’t want to do this since the files in the file share can be updated by an outside process, and there are thousands of them they wouldn’t want to keep in the epicor database… Unless this will store a link to them on a UNC?
I’ll take a look at the edge client. Where can I find some documentation on its capabilities?
Yes, there is an attachment type that is just a link. The files wouldn’t be crammed into your database, just the text for the file path.
Not really sure about any documentation. I installed it on my test 2023.2 (directions in the setup guide), and I was able to open a file using a UNC path in the browser. Not sure if it works in the Smart Client though, didn’t try.
Yes, there is an attachment type that is just a link. The files wouldn’t be crammed into your database, just the text for the file path.
This might be exactly what I need!
I’ll give it a try and mark this as a solution if it works.
What control is the Attachments feature under?
This is how we do attachments, but the browser will still not retrieve the file using a UNC path without using the Edge Client, because reasons.
The attachements button is under many different screens, I’m not sure if there is a list anywhere. Jobs, orders, quotes, etc. Example below is job entry:
A panel will fly out. It has the file path and buttons to either view or download the file(s).
AS of 2023.2.6
Kinetic Client and Browse will both let you view documents attached.
They will both let you add documents manually, we use the mapped drive letter not the UNC path.
But unlike classic when you drag and drop to prepopulate the mapped drive letter and path to the document the application just drops in the document name with no path which is understandable, it’s not a 2 way path yet.
Where does document type DDL get populated from? I apparently have none available to show. And checking the technical details gives me nothing.
System Management/Document Management/Attachment Type Maintenance
This definitely worked. Now I just need to see if the customer is ok with the edge agent running on their machines if they’re using the browser client.
Thank you!
