Whats New In Epicor 10.2.400

[hkeric.wci (Haso Keric)]

Here is what 10.2.400 has in store for us. It looks like Cloud Customers have been recently upgraded to 10.2.400 and on-prem should follow shortly.

The Epicor 10.2.400 Major Features:

1. Automated Order Entry (DocStar)
2. Connected Factory
3. Lite MES (Kinetic)
4. Scheduling Boards 2.0
5. Mobile Time & Expense Mobile App
6. Project WBS Phases Revenue Recognition
7. OData 4.x REST v2

Automated Order Entry

Automated Order Entry allows you to transform a purchase order from an email attachment or scanned image into a sales order in Epicor.

For example: PDF, Excel, Word Document, .tif, or other image files that contain a screen capture of a purchase order using DocStar to scan the email attachment, the relevant data is extracted. When the data successfully passes through the validation workflow a sales order will be automatically created in Epicor.

Connected Enterprise

Connected Enterprise is an IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) platform for Epicor. It is designed to work alongside Epicor and provide improved visibility of your various sites and machinery. It leverages the power of Microsoft Azure IoT Hub platform.

It can monitor equipment, assets, inventory locations and even intelligent products.

Events and data (such as sensor and machine telemetry) flow into the IoT hub. From there this data is propagated to the cloud-based analytics platform. The data analytics service has an advanced rule-based engine that is able to detect fully configurable patterns and raise alerts and notifications that propagate into Epicor where they can be used to trigger business process changes (for example raising a maintenance job when equipment degradation is detected).

• Review and monitor site-wide and equipment specific fully configurable KPIs, driven by Epicor BAQs
• Anticipate equipment and production degradation through extensive rule-based alert system
• Track and visualize dynamic inventory to help locate process bottlenecks
• Monitor ERP status, such as job scheduling vs actual data, stock adherence to safety limits, resource usage and others
• Reconfigure and control equipment and products over-the-air - change CNC program, trigger alert status and change operating parameters

Once connected, Epicor provides a set of tools to visualize the IoT data and setup any alerts and notifications that might be needed. The information about sensors can be utilized to display a range of configurable and fully customizable Epicor Data Discovery (EDD) IoT widgets on the Active Home Page.

A powerful alert engine allows you to define BPM rules that trigger alerts and notifications.

To process IoT rules in the cloud, you will need to install a package manager, the AzureRM and IoT Cloud Rule Processor PowerShell modules. The Help Documentation will cover this in more depth and will have instructions how to connect to Epicor Labs NuGet Server.

It looks like it will Integrate with EVA (Epicor Virtual Assistant)

Lite MES - Kinetic

You can use the Lite MES on touch screen devices like a tablet or phone, or you can run it from an ordinary workstation. It is an easy-to-use and easy-to-read application. It includes most of the same functionality as the previous version of MES in a modern and simple interface. It will be accessible via a Browser just like the Active Homepage.

Example: /Apps/ERP/MES/#/home

The Lite MES can operate across multiple function areas such as resource scheduling, order execution and analysis of production.

Your employee role defined in the shop employee program determines what specific MES functions you have access to.

Scheduling Boards

Epicor delivers completely redesigned scheduling boards that enable you to easily locate overload problems and slack conditions, then perform cost and throughput analysis on schedule changes before they are firmly committed.

• Manipulate the schedule with drag-and-drop and drill-down techniques for multi-level assemblies and operation details.
• Dynamically change the timeline of the view to see short-run operations and analyze the impact of long running operations instantly.
• View indicators, such as late status and material availability, to proactively alert the master scheduler to potential problems in the schedule. Optionally customize colors to denote actual, what-if or delinquent load by job or operation.
• Schedule and reschedule with flexible, finite real-time schedule capabilities for a single job and plant-wide global finite capacity. Features include job locking for key operations or jobs, user-defined priority, and capacity load leveling by resource and resource group.
• Drag-and-drop scheduled load hours forward or backward to alleviate the overload and effectively reschedule when faced with overload conditions at critical resources or resource groups.
• Display each date and resource/resource group, where scheduled hours exceed capacity based on what-if or actual job schedules. Access resource, resource-group and job scheduling information to review the causes of an overload and make schedule change.
• Schedule jobs in what-if mode, with the ability to analyze potential bottlenecks before finalizing the actual schedule.
• View the potential changes for cost and throughput to the schedule after creating what-if scenarios, and more.

You will still be able to access the Classic Scheduling Board they will appear in the Menu with the word Classic.

Time & Expense Mobile Application

The Time & Expenses Mobile Applications are designed for use by Requestors, the people who create and submit timesheets or expense reports for approval, and Approvers, the people who approve or reject timesheet or expense reports.

The application can be deployed on Apple iOS 11 version and 12 devices, or Google Android 7.0, 8.0 devices.

REST v2 OData v4

Epicor REST API has been upgraded to version 2 to take advantage of the newest OData v.4. It will also allow for a friendlier way of specifying current Company as well as custom ERP-specific parameters in REST request URLs.

However, note that simply changing v1 to v2 will not work, there are several breaking changes, so review them properly.

Example BAQ Call:

https://[EpicorServer]/[ERPInstance]/api/v2/odata/[Company]/BaqSvc/[BaqName]/Data?[baqParam1]=x&[baqParam2]=y

By default, a valid API Key is a required parameter for every request to the REST API and must be specified either in a request header or as a custom querystring parameter.

Epicor 10.2.400 introduces the following Maintenance Screens:

• API Key Maintenance
• Access Scope Maintenance

Improved Exception Handling

The customErrors flag in web.config now hides only the errors that are not supposed to be shown on the client. By default, these are errors with HTTP code 50x.

Main properties are the same as before, but ErrorDetails is the list similar to what Business object exception have now in the Epicor.

Office Excel 365

You will be able to get data in Excel 2016 or higher now.

There are many more improvements that are beyond the scope of this article.

WAIT There Is More…

1. Asset Part - Serial Numbers
2. Booking Voucher Reports
3. Ability to Recalculate Inter-Company AP Invoice Taxes
4. Link Global Customers - Skip Contacts and Ship To
5. Stock Movement Report
6. Stock Aging Report
7. Create Shipment from WIP
8. Customer Maintenance - Use Blind Shipping
9. Quick Ship
10. Ability to Ship a Stock PCID
11. Several Improvements to EDA
12. Several Improvements to EDD
13. Active Homepage Widgets (Discovery Dashboards, Web Apps, IoT)
14. New Kinetic Theme
15. Epicor Commerce Connect (ECC) UD Fields in Supplier Portal
16. Menu Maintenance - Web Bridge Type (Local or Kinetic Apps)
17. CSF Improvements & More…

Perhaps a New Argument which we can leverage for Custom Kinetic built Apps /app=name

Looking Ahead

When you get a chance to review the Schema Changes you might notice a new table Ice.IdentityProvider which means it is possible that Epicor is working on a identity management solution.

Photo Credits:

• Ray Wang: https://twitter.com/rwang0
• Kerrie Jordan: https://twitter.com/KerJordan
• Patrick Fetterman: https://twitter.com/LNS_PFET

What's New in Epicor 10.2.400

[Evan_Purdy]

@hkeric.wci

You will be able to get data in Excel 2016 or higher now.

I could already do this, did some aspect of it change?

[Hally (Simon Hall)]

Yeah! I’m liking MES Lite

[hkeric.wci (Haso Keric)]

@Evan_Purdy

I could already do this, did some aspect of it change?

Maybe I misread, in a few docs they say “Excel 2016 and up”, “Office Excel 365” supported now. But perhap’s its just a better compatibility for BAQs?

REST v2

1. REST Service Root URL has changed the format to include the current Company. The /api/v1/ segment of the request URL has been replaced with /api/v2/odata/.

2. The format of Business Activity Queries (BAQs) data requests has changed to include /Data in the request URL. This is critical for enabling REST API compatibility with Microsoft® Excel® 2016/365. Refer to the BAQ Feeds topic of this guide for detailed information and examples (Display Data in OData Applications Display in Excel Table).

3. Atom XML format is no longer available for both input and output. OData v.4 standard does not support it, which means that OData v4 infrastructure libraries do not provide such functionality.

4. The formats of the $expand and $select OData parameters on expanded entity subsets, row counting, etc. have also been changed in compliance with the latest OData standards. You can find more details on this in the OData Parameters topic of this guide or on the official OData website.

5. By default, a valid API Key is a required parameter for every request to the REST API and must be specified either in a request header or as a custom querystring parameter. Refer to the API Key Maintenance section of the Application Help for details on API Keys.

6. Locale, Language, and Plant (erp.plant) can now be specified as custom query parameters in the request URLs. Previously, they could only be added to request headers.

[Olga (Olga Klimova)]

At least now you are able to get BAQ from any company, not only from current one, like before.

[Aaron_Moreng]

Are the API keys replacing other forms of authentication?

[pferrington (Patrick)]

I am not the long term owner of API Key capabilities, but I can speak to where Epicor Erp is with them in .400. The intention of API Keys today is not to replace authentication at all, it is to serve as an additional security level to limit the scope of access to the system.

So what does that mean:
Today when a user authenticates against an Epicor Erp server - regardless of method (from the standard client, Epicor Web Access, via Rest or a third party connection via WCF) at the server level service and method security is the limiting factor.

So if you authenticate via REST as user pferrington, you have the same access to the Server that user pferrington would have from the smart client.

the purpose of the API key is to narrow the scope. An API Key would be assigned to an application - Let’s say the Mobile CRM application - it does not exist yet today as API Keys are brand new but bear with me. That API Key is associate with what we call an Access Scope - that scope will say that anyone connecting with that API Key ( the mobile CRM API Key) should only be able to access 180 of our say 1800 services.

So now as that user pferrington - if I authentication and log in with the smart client I may have access to all 1800 services and their methods. But if I authenticate as pferringtion with the Mobile CRM API key I can only access the 180 services associated via the access scope - regardless of what my user security allows.

This allows you to control the footprint you expose in your app server to third party, internally built applications or other Epicor applications to only the services they need to perform their tasks - this reduces the threat surface exposed to the world.

The concept of Access Scopes can also be applied to Service Accounts (user records intended for use from a service like Task Agent, Enterprise Search etc…) so that that service accounts access is also limited via an access scope to just what it needs.

Finally we added the ability to attach an Access Scope to an app server as a whole, so that you could expose one app server outside your firewall with a limited set of services, will another app server is deployed internally for your standard clients with full access to all services.

Long term we intend to use API Keys for licensing, for Scoping (Access Scopes). At this time no requirements have come in to have API Keys be a primary authentication method. Today you have to authenticate as a user. I could see that coming in the future but it is not on the near term roadmap.

[hkeric.wci (Haso Keric)]

@pferrington

So if you authenticate via REST as user pferrington, you have the same access to the Server that user pferrington would have from the smart client.

Agreed, if let’s say your Customer or Supplier is smart enough to use Chrome Developer Tools, they can read the API Call being made and simply call any Epicor Method they’d like, or query someone elses data.

Access Scopes and API Keys are heading into the direction to protect us from someone calling other BO Methods. Kinda like BO Security

What if you have a BAQ That accepts CustID as a parameter, well anyone can press F12 and see the call and simply try other ID’s. If you are using Angular or React… The only way up to this point you would be protected is to use a middle-layer like ASP/PHP and then do the API Calls in a Controller for example, where you have additional checks/balances to make sure the User is correct… It’s a step in the right direction.

[Vinaykamboj]

Is 10.2.400 available for general release now. We are planning to go to 10.2.300 from 10.1 and can maybe wait.

Thanks

Vinay Kamboj

[dmaclucas (Derek MacLucas)]

Hmmmm.

So how would mandatory API keys combine with using REST to pull data into Excel via a BAQ?

[Hally (Simon Hall)]

@Vinaykamboj

Is 10.2.400 available for general release now

Keep an eye out in the download a on Epicweb, it will arrive soon…My bet is around May 15, but it may be earlier…

Better yet just set up an alert on the page an you will be emailed.

[Vinaykamboj]

Thanks Simon

Vinay Kamboj

[Hally (Simon Hall)]

Just an additional update for all those handheld users. The Biscit App is now on the Epicor price list. Do a search on the Play store for Biscit MHH. No details on the licensing as yet.

[John_Mitchell]

@Hally Is this the first Alliance ISV app?

[A.Baeisa (Al)]

fantastic, excellent features

[Hally (Simon Hall)]

@John_Mitchell

Is this the first Alliance ISV app

Not sure, but I believe Greg Hyslop from Biscit is roaming around Insights at the moment.

[hkeric.wci (Haso Keric)]

Can someone who is on the Cloud and has been Upgraded, share a screenshot or two of the “New Scheduling Boards” @Mark_Wonsil @josecgomez

[Mark_Wonsil]

In Public Cloud, you can get the option to defer upgrades. We deferred our 10.2.400 upgrade to August so I don’t have that screen in my Pilot yet. Sorry!

[danbedwards (Dan Edwards)]

Here you go

[hkeric.wci (Haso Keric)]

So It’s built using Kinetic! Sweet. Thank you, you are a scholar and a gentleman. I dont care what Mark Wonsil says about you.