Hi Brandon! We have deployed with the stock EDD BAQs and the plan forward is to create additional for the business needs.
So, it appears that a dashboard might be the best workaround if an upgrade to .300 is feasible at this time? We have two international sites we need to bring up in the next three months…so an upgrade is probably not going to fly 
First step is to make sure they are getting you what you want. If they are trying export them to Excel, I’m assuming that they aren’t?? I’ve haven’t messed with EDD since we installed .200, and there were enough things lacking that I didn’t feel it was ready to be used by the masses yet. I am working on a .300 upgrade now, but am just checking the basics so I haven’t dug into EDD.
That being said, if you can figure out which BAQ it’s pulling from, you can pull that same BAQ into a traditional dashboard. But you loose the graphing, grouping, filtering stuff that you get with EDD. So you have to define that yourself.
There’s a lot to learn for sure.
Yes, the root of the issue is not being able to export to excel. The user base just wants to dig into the data.
The graphs are nice for a visual but without access to the data, they are losing interest and the requests for BAQs and reports are growing.
I don’t think I’d have to create all the graphics, moreso just a general dashboard with matching parameters so they can get to the data. Luckily, the name of the BAQ displays at the top left hand corner. It would be nice if the userbase had access to BAQ but due to SOX, they are not allowed.
This was a very helpful conversation. Thank you for your input!
yeah, but throwing into a dashboard is super easy. So that’s not really a problem. Do you know how to do that?
Yep, I can move forward on the dashboards. Seems like a plausible solution because upgrade probably won’t take place for 6 months or so.
Brandon, you are awesomeness. Thank you!
The EDD BAQ Grid I showed was one that I made, not a standard EDD BAQ.
It looks like the Epicor provided tiles do not allow you export to Excel, sorry if I misled you.
I agree with Brandon, turning these into dashboards is the best option. I even do this for BAQs and EDD Tiles that I create myself and have my users put a link to the dashboard next to the related tile.
Sounds like a plan. Thanks!
How do you export data discovery information to excel?
Just curious about adding new items to the EDA sync list. Ours came preloaded with a number of different views but many of the essential tables have been left out (like OrderHed and JobHead). As far as I can tell there seems to only be 2 ways of getting new items (directly from the database) added. I can either choose “SQL” and write out the entire view or “Database” which seems to want to sync the entire database. Does anyone know if there are any different options like some sort of designer (similar to BAQ designer) that I am unaware of?
@jasond - Writing SQL is the way to do that. You can write SQL in any editor, but you need to adapt your SQL to the EDA synch by
adding the lines at the top of every other EDA SQL query, as well as th changes in the WHERE clause (eg transactions after a date value),
and adding the concatenated key field columns that EDA uses for linking to other dimensions/fact tables. You can test an individual synch script by disabling all the others and enabling your new one and clicking sync button.
Remember, you are not adding tables to EDA but rather dimensions and fact tables that need to be joined to other dimensions and fact tables in order to create the cube of data that you can then apply dashboards to.
I’ve added a handful of tables from two other non-epicor tables and merged them with my epicor data seamlessly inside EDA.
Haven’t stopped by this thread in the while apologies all i see some questions piled up which i can answer… so here come a few
For users that want to see the transaction details behind an edd view there’s a transaction panel which you can get at like so. If you select data points in the chart it will filter the transaction details down to the records behind the selected data points.
What you all need and we have not yet done is an export option on that transaction details panel so you can export the full details out to excel. That’s coming but not in yet. We have export for selected data point data behind the chart in right now which you can do by selecting one or more data points in the chart then clicking the export option in the data selection panel, but it’s the data in the chart not the raw transaction details which is I think what’s missing that most of you need.
What @MikeGross said. It can be customized to push different tables or data from another data source entirely such as another sql database or csv files using the EDA sync application. For the data from E10 we use direct SQL extract scripts and you can augment that to add whatever else you want. If you are a SaaS customer or just don’t want to have to figure it out our professional services team can help with these also.
Mike makes a good point in that EDA’s modeling tool only knows how to do single-field joins while ERP uses company+key for almost everything so we have a pattern of building concatenated key fields in the scripts we write to make joining easier up in the tool. If you look at one of our simpler scripts like a dimensional d_* script as a starting place there are some common patterns worth taking a look at. If you need advice feel free to reach out.
@bconner is there any best practice documentation for implementing EDD. Example should the database be on the production server with the Epicor database or a different server. Just trying to find some documentation for implementation. I do not have EDD in service on either of our 10.2.300 sites. Thanks!
@jeowings beyond the installation guide we don’t have anything more extensive though there’s not a lot to it really. EDD is a relatively lightweight application & db. The datasources (erp baq, others) really do the work when you use it. Here’s the adhoc version:
All the new web apps we are bringing out have the same prerequisites including edd which are
EDD can be on the appserver or on another machine. It’s slightly simpler when on the appserver but works fine either way.
EDD wants to have it’s own app pool - while we let you configure this during install to use an existing one at least i don’t recommend sharing an app pool with erp app server.
The EDD Database can be installed on erp production database server - it’s small, no data is stored long term, and does not get large query loads. We cache details about data sources and store the views/dashboards/queries and security setup in here, but that’s it. Pretty tiny.
That’s about it for just getting it running. Beyond that once it’s installed everyone with an erp license will have rights to enter and build personal views based on baqs they have access to run. Next steps are
Set up rights for the out of the box views in menu maintenance - there’s a set of security codes under processes > homepage which our boxed baqs for edd are under. Set up which users/groups should have access.
Create your own views and dashboards in edd based on existing or new BAQ. I’m attaching an informal guide that we use internally as a how-to on creating baqs that work well with edd Designing BAQs for Data Discovery.pdf (459.5 KB). I can summarize it in a few words though - the baq should return data that would work well in a pivot table.
Awesome response. Thank you!
Brian I am a new SaaS client (Public) with epicor (been using it on EMS). Right now the EDD appears to not be active on our active home pages and want to show this future during training. Hoping you or someone else can tell me where that gets turned on since it does not seem to be out of the box
If you’re not seeing EDD active in your site in live saas you should raise a ticket with support. If you want me to put some extra vinegar on it behind the scenes as well I’m happy to do that.
One caveat is the SaaS team is currently only bringing edd into pilot environments on request which also can be requested via support so perhaps that’s the reason.
Brian that is just another crazy action on Epicor. How do you test out and confirm things are working right if Pilot is not properly configured for testing? I have an open ticket with Epicor about this as I do not have it in Live or Pilot.
Remember @GTI07094, Epicor is absorbing all of the Azure costs for SaaS. It’s not in their best interest to run software that most users are not using in Pilot. They aren’t preventing us from enabling it, just using the resources wisely IMHO. It SHOULD be in Live however.
Mark W.
