I have been testing 2023.1 and see that there is a LOT of improvement for attachments. You can now open PDF’s in browser without downloading! That is what the view button does in the screenshot below. The last line is an email. Will we be able to open emails directly like we could in Classic UI?
The drag & drop is also very nice. But it just attaches the file to the level it is attached without the Document Type. So, the user has to select the Document Type themselves. This is an extra step compared to the Classic UI. Will we be able to drag & drop to a Content Type?
John, were the View links working for you in the Smart Client as well? It’s working for me in 2023.1 in Kinetic web but the Smart Client doesn’t open the link. I’ve submitted a case for it.
I have an open PRB (PRB0263619) on 2022.2 about Link attachments not opening with Kinetic. File system or Google drive attachments work in classic, Kinetic client, and browser but our Link type attachments do nothing when clicking the View icon. The download link is also greyed out.
The browser can only revender certain things natively if you can find and register an extension that opens eml within the browser then I suspect you can otherwise you have to download and open in the file system like you would any other file
Understood @josecgomez , but I do not think that we should lose functionality on an upgrade. That being said, if moving to the browser means that functionality goes away, I am fine with that trade off. But Epicor needs to do a better job communicating these things as I am not technical and do not understand most of this back end stuff. So when users ask me why these things happen, I can’t answer them. All I can do is try and find out if the functionality will be restored.
Agreed on the communication part
I don’t think you are losing functionality it just works differently in the browser but you can still access your attachment
@josecgomez is correct… it works differently, but this is not all “bad different”… but we also have a little more cleanup to do on attachments. For example “Link attachments” which is one of the many types of attachments we support is not yet fully supported in the browser. In the 2023.1 release, we got closer, but it is admittedly not our final desire.
Link attachment is not really an attachment, but simply a link to a file on your computer/network. Browsers natively are NOT allowed {per security rules} to simply open a file on your network. THAT would be BAD!.. instead, it currently pushes a copy of the link address to your clipboard, and then you have to take the second step to open it.
In the FUTURE (Safe harbor) we plan on enhancing the edge agent so that link attachments will open when you click on them. But we have to make sure that any changes such as this pass all the security regiments that have already been established.
@timshuwy has the edge agent been enhanced or is there an ETA on when it might be? Does this issue opening links only apply to the Web Browser or does it also impact the Smart Client Kinetic & Classic?
We currently don’t have Document Management (Doc Attach) but are looking into this for attaching links to local server files. I don’t want to pursue buying a module that isn’t going to work.
Edge agent has been enhanced and I believe that all former attachment types are now supported in the browser, including the “link” attachment type which was originally a challenge prior to 2023.1
Thank you @timshuwy - was the “link” attachment type also an issue in the Smart Client or was this only the browser? We are still using the Smart Client as we have some custom Classic menus that we haven’t transition to Kinetic yet.
it was only a browser issue. Also, in 2023.2, we have “browser first” mode, where you can log into Kinetic via a browser, but still launch your smart client versions of applications from the browser menu (still only consumes a single license). This makes converting to the new kinetic screens much better because you get faster performance.
@timshuwy I am testing a trial of the Document Attach Tool and we are still on 2023.1. I am using the Smart Client and for Classic menus the Attachment links open fine. On Kinetic Menus in the smart client I am getting a message that the Edge Agent is not Detected. We have not had to install this up to this point. Is it absolutely required for Kinetic Menus? Can you tell me what it does as our IT manager is concerned about installing it? We are in the Cloud and I did see something regarding Edge Agent for printing where support has to enable something.
I think she’s asking if she needs the edge agent (like is it mandatory) to open attachments in kinetic forms?
I also ran into this @dgross and subsequently had to install the edge agent everywhere so we could open attachments, which is ultimately what Epicor envisioned anyways. This happened to be the only thing that made us install the edge agent because seemingly everything else worked fine without it when running kinetic forms from the smart client as an on prem customer.
However, we would have had to install the edge agent when moving to browser anyways, so not installing it was just delaying the inevitable.
I think @Olga may be able to speak to why your IT manager should or shouldn’t be concerned about it though.
Its functionality is the same as in smart client, so if you install smart client locally, the Edge Agent is nothing different. It is requried because native browser does not allow users start an external program to open a file in a separate program.
Initially Kinetic browser UI only suggested to download an attachment, but people did not like it and wanted to open it automatically.
(Safe harbor) we plan on enhancing the edge agent so that link attachments will open when you click on them. But we have to make sure that any changes such as this pass all the security regiments that have already been established.