February 2016 Newsletter

Happy 2016!
 
Hopefully everyone made it through the holiday season in one piece.  I know for me it's back to work as usual.

One focus of the Marketing Committee in 2016 is to better explain the UFO offerings so users get the most out of their membership.

Have you looked at our website lately? We have many live webinar trainings as well as pre-recorded sessions you can view at your leisure.   On the main page of the website you can see a snapshot of the upcoming classes.  Click the View Entire Schedule link and you'll see what we have posted for 2016. When my company rolled out Solar we required all of our associates to watch the UFO videos on Solar.  It was a great intro to the product and it was included free with our membership!
 
If you have time jump onto the Bulletin Board section.  Here you can view a variety of categories containing questions and answers from other Eclipse users.  The Bulletin Board is searchable, merely type a keyword into the search box to view posts related to what you're looking for.  If you don't find anything you can post a question and, more times than not, get a very detailed answer from another user.  I use the Bulletin Board all the time to search for help.  Often, you get a response much quicker than if you put a ticket in with Eclipse.
 
Do you have an idea for a feature you'd like to see on Eclipse?  Jump on our Ideas Site and post your thoughts.  These ideas are reviewed regularly by the Enhancement Committee and they directly influence what goes into the Eclipse releases.
 
Looking for information about vendors that do business with other Eclipse customers.   Take a look at our vendors page on the website.   All our vendor partners are listed on the site along with contact information.
 
Don't forget about Encounter, our training conference coming in September.  It's packed full of valuable classes, many of them taught by users.  Keep checking the website for more information on Encounter 2016.
 
Just a reminder, coming  up  April 17-20 is Epicor Insights at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, NV. We hope you can make it to that conference and stop by the UFO booth to say Hi.   
 
If we don't see you in Las Vegas in April, we hope to see you at Encounter in September!

Alison Levy, UFO Marketing Committee Chair 
In This Issue
Click on the link above - It will take you to the February Calendar on our website. You can click on each class to see the detail, make sure to click the back button in your browser to get back to this newsletter.
New and Returning Members January 2016
Name
City
State
New


PirtekUSA LLC
Rockledge
FL
Returning


Longley Supply
Wilmington
NC
PathGuide Technologies

PathGuide Technologies, located in the greater Seattle area, provides distributors and warehouse operators a complete warehouse management solution designed to increase productivity, improve customer satisfaction and lower labor costs. Founded in 1989, the company today has of clients spread across North America.
Our Business is WMS
Whether a company is looking to increase its picking and shipping speeds, reduce inventory, improve order accuracy, or implement advanced functions such as driving material handling systems and shipping, PathGuide views the warehouse as a crucial part of the supply chain machine - it needs to run smoothly in order to maintain a business's profitability.
PathGuide offers best-of-breed warehouse management solutions that make distribution businesses run more efficiently. The company's enterprise-grade Latitude WMS offers advanced features and flexible customization that provide the tools to expand sales, improve customer service and outperform the competition. Latitude has been designed to be modular, offering a growing range of core and advanced features tailored to the needs of wholesale, retail and electrical distributors.
Epicor Eclipse Support Corner

Beginning in April 2016, Epicor will begin the rollout of our new support model and system named EpicCare.  The EpicCare platform is based on ITSM principles and will be used across all Epicor products, in all service locations, and by all customers.   As I'm sure you would expect, the changes we are introducing impact our business processes everywhere, including how our customers interact with Support.   The most visible change with be the new Customer Support Portal which provide access to all Epicor Support Services.  Shortly prior to our go live, you will receive a Contact Registration e-mail.   This e-mail will kick off your registration process on this new portal.  
 
Only contacts that have valid e-mail addresses in the current portal will receive this notification.  In addition, every user of the portal is required to have a unique e-mail address.  There are capabilities that will allow your team to see all support tickets and receive notifications, so there is no longer a need for using a common email address.  Please take the time to ensure your e-mail address is current.
 
--Chris
  
Chris Orr | Vice President Support Strategy
Epicor Software Corporation  |  224-888-2655 (Office) | 847-420-4387 (Mobile)

How Automation Drives Customer Service Excellence

If your Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) are forming better relationships with the piles of paper on their desks than your customers, it's time to reexamine your priorities. 

Check out the Customer Service Workbook to learn best practices for bringing efficiency and profitability to order management in your existing Epicor system while allowing CSRs to do what they do best - serve your customers.

Discover how businesses of any size can:
  •  Gain real-time access to every order
  •  Eliminate up to 99% of order processing errors
  •  Process 100% of orders regardless of format
Give your Epicor solution a boost by simplifying your order and claim management now!
Users Helping Users Article
 
Users helping Users:  
This section of the newsletter is dedicated to you!  We wanted to showcase some of the postings on the Bulletin Boards that we felt were great examples of users helping users.   So if you have not been on the Bulletin Boards lately hopefully this will help to stir your interest!
 
This post came in on 12/02/15 at 6:25pm and had the first reply at 8:45pm!  That is dedication from both of these members as I'm sure they were both out of the office when it was posted and replied to, at least I hope so!
 
Question:
Thread: HELP! Locations with @1 on the end
In the location main screen on some of our tagged material items, they have a "@1" at the end of the location. What does this mean and how do we fix it?? See attachment
 
Answer:
The @ prefix to a location indicates that it is a temporary location created by Eclipse RF when the item is in process. Sometimes that location is not released when the receipt is completed. If the item isn't still in process I just fix it with a location adjustment. It happens often enough to us that I created a report writer report that runs nightly showing me products with an @ location. It's out of the PROD.LOCS file and selects @ID = "@ (in brackets)".
 
Screen shot of the Report Writer that he created is attached as well.  I am going to use that too.  Great information!
Trade Service & Second Phase Bundled Content, PIM, and Web Storefront Solution with Integration to Eclipse Enterprise

Trade Service and Second Phase have joined forces to offer a bundled content, PIM, and e-commerce solution that seamlessly integrates to the Eclipse enterprise.  For several years, Eclipse users have relied on the combination of Second Phase storefront technology and Trade Service eDataFlex rich product content to power their e-commerce solutions, but now the two service providers have upped the ante by offering a unified solution that already integrates to the Eclipse enterprise.
This new offering provides best-of-breed content, PIM technology, eStorefront, and enterprise integration without the hassle and headache of trying to patch disparate solutions together using consultants or already overcommitted IT staff.  By taking advantage of this offering, the Eclipse distributor can roll out a complete e-commerce project, including ongoing content management capability, in less than 30 days, and provide their online users a very compelling shopping experience. 
Because of the tight integration of the attributed content, taxonomy, images, resources, and product descriptions within the PIM, the resulting storefront environment provides a superior search/find/select experience for online users.  Online users are expecting a compelling experience, similar to what they enjoy with consumer sites like Amazon or eBay.  If the distributor's storefront does not provide a comparable user experience, they will look elsewhere for the products they wish to order online.  The Second Phase eStorefront is specifically tuned to the high quality Trade Service rich content, resulting in the type of user experience that is necessary to compete with other online options.
From a technology standpoint, the solution takes advantage of the cloud, so that the distributor is not required to deploy any additional hardware, and does not have to worry about backups or service levels.  Additional content can be automatically loaded if it is obtained from Trade Service, or the distributor can import or create additional content as needed.  Distributors can even partner together to share the cost of obtaining new content that can then be loaded into the PIM at a fraction of the comparable cost to acquire it individually.
Demonstrations of the new integrated solution are available by contacting either Trade Service or Second Phase.

Contact us: sales@tradeservice.com Phone: 800-701-7003
User Tip
Uploading a GL Budget
 
You can use Eclipse's upload process to easily upload your GL budgets all at once.
The first step is to create the file you will upload.  After that is complete, use the file upload process to upload your data.
Below is an example of the format you will need to use.  In this example we are looking at the year 2012.
The ID field consists of the GL account number followed by an asterisk, the year, followed by an asterisk and the branch number.
In the table below we are looking account number 755 for year 2012 in branch 5.


You can see below how the table above corresponds to the GL Budget Maintenance Screen for each month.  Please note that Eclipse will add two decimal places when it uploads.  Do not put the actual decimal point in your upload file.





After you have created a spreadsheet containing the GL data you want to upload, save the file as a CSV.  Follow the Eclipse File Import process to upload your file.









For my own piece of mind I usually create a test file with one or two entries in it to be sure the process works correctly. That way if something doesn't go as planned you only have a couple records to fix in the system.  Once I'm satisfied my test file works as desired I make sure my main file is setup the same way and I do the import.
 

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