"Simple Solutions" Category

A category similar to Experts Corner, with straightforward examples of how to do the basic things that get asked time and time again. I’m thinking mostly customizations.
Like …

  • Adding a UD field to a table - The basics from the Extended UD Table Maint. form, to Regenerating the data model.
  • Adding a User Code to a Combobox on a form
  • Using a combobox in a grid
  • Referencing native form controls vs added controls

Topic should include:

  • Expected skill level -
    • Basic - “I know how to enter Developer Mode”
    • Medium - “Ive successfully implemented a customization before”
    • Advanced - " I’ve made customizations with custom code"
  • Mention of the version (and environment, like cloud based) of Epicor the solution works on. And if known, versions that it doesn’t.
  • If it requires any non-common modules (believe it or not, not everyon one has CRM or Advanced Materials :slight_smile: )

Limit the replies to “valuable” insight like limits of the provided solution. If a “better” solution is determined, make that it’s own “Simple Solution” entry with a link in the original SS, pointing to the new one.

Most importantly. It describes how to accomplish a task with a very narrow scope, without mentioning all the other things that you could do to expand on it. KISS :kiss:

(That KISS is for “Keep It Super Simple” - or “Keep It Simple, Stupid”.

6 Likes

With the search capabilities of the site currently in place and the already numerous categories AND you just volunteered the moderators time to police this, I’m gonna give this a thumbs down

:slight_smile:

2 Likes

As much as I am annoyed by the same simple questions getting asked over and over again, I have to agree with @rbucek on this one. Basically, that’s what the help files are for. Luckily they are getting better than they used to. Especially with the user guides right in the help files now. And if the posters aren’t going to search help, they aren’t going to search the forum either, so even with a new category, they still aren’t going to find it.

3 Likes

I like this idea. I use search all the time when I am trying to find a solution to something.

Having this category would reduce the same questions posted over and over but I also believe would highlight things I didn’t know that would be useful.

Call it common questions/simple solutions. Would mean that the question someone asks that isn’t common stays visible a little longer and has more of a chance to be seen and potentially replied.

1 Like

I guess it’s really about the audience that e10 is catering for. I’m all for not discouraging anyone from using e10help. At the same time I appreciate and respect the fact the Moderators have a day job.

The “simple solution” people like @Banderson pointed out, if they aren’t going to search help, check epicare or even use a broader google search most likely aren’t going to use the search to it maximum capability, I agree totally. and even for some of the regulars like myself who forget to use some of the more exotic search terms, For example try adding site:epiusers.help.

It’s those situations where you come across a problem, that you know surely someone has come across this before, and you can’t work it out for yourself, case in point was one I logged the one the other day

I think this sort of situation is what @ckrusen was referring to. I just couldn’t find the other post.

I vote for better highlighting and educating people about the search capabilities. E.g. promoting advanced search more. Which reminds me that the drop down icon for the Tags is missing.

Encouraging users try to make their topic titles meaningful, which can be tricky when in some instances you don’t know what you don’t know at the time of the initial post.

The other thing that might be of worth considering is putting the FAQs category at the top of the list instead of E10 (just make that second).

Anyway there’s my suggestion and if any of it gets adopted then great, if not, it was just a suggestion.

Cheerio

I was mostly thinking of when a solution is developed for common problem - especially if someone outlined it, step-by-step - it would be good to have just the solution posted, without all the ancillary info of exactly why its being done, or all the suggestions people had tried.

I think a good example would be the one about limiting the number of characters of a field - like:

1 Like

yeah, just to be clear, I’m not trying to stomp on creativity or changes, but we have to make hard choices on things like site design or it becomes chaotic, jittery, and hard to manage if we start going down the path of implement everything someone suggests. Push back will ultimately can things that don’t make sense or are too narrowly focused and others will rise to top. Either way we don’t want to get too reactive too quickly or the user experience will suffer regardless of intent. Ironically @Banderson will be making an outstanding presentation on effective use of this site in the E10Panel disucussion at Insights this year. I’m sure he’s taking notes already.

5 Likes

As someone who may be guilty of asking basic questions, I do search before posting. But when you are not sure how to do something it can be difficult to know what the right search terms are.

Another problem I run into when searching is that the solutions do not work for my hosting (cloud) or they are for the wrong version of Epicor.

So, I’m hesitant to bring this up because I tried to get EpicWiki going years ago, but this is what a Wiki is for. Any tidbit, process, hint, etc. gets catalogued and tagged (version, on-prem, etc) in an article. Easy to search, easy to update, and easy to link back to the original source to capture the discovery process or whatever source might be (EpicWeb, EUG, etc.).

But the Wiki syntax has a bit of a learning curve. What it needed was some templates that people could copy/paste into an article to make it easier.

1 Like

It is also so helpful when someone that has done it gives you that quick answer if you have tried a solution and just didn’t quite get there.

**Josh Owings **| JR Automation

ERP Applications Manager

O: +1
(864) 397-9193 | C: +1 (864) 884-6587

1 Like

When people have questions like “does this exist? I don’t know what it’s called? How do I find the documentation?” those types of questions are ones that the community likes answering. If the user is clearly trying to learn, and not just being lazy and letting someone else google it for them, that’s what this place is for.

And I agree that this is something that could be a good thing for a wiki like @Mark_Wonsil suggested and @ckrusen’s idea of a section for it. I even thought about the same thing as I was trying to learn. But, the question becomes, who’s going to curate it? and if it get’s big enough, it will just turn into a duplication of the help documentation, so is it worth it? Once it’s big enough, you will still have to search it, so we will have some of the same problems with it that we currently have. Basically, what’s going to differentiate it from the resources already out there from the company we pay all of this money to make this type of stuff. And they are investing a lot of time and money in to training and educational resources, so why do we want to duplicate their efforts?

My biggest gripe is when someone can literally copy paste the question into the search bar here or on google and the answer shows up in the top 10 of the list, this is what can get frustrating.

@Mark_Wonsil and @ckrusen if you have clear ideas on why this would work better/different than the epicor help, I personally would be interested in hearing your ideas. (I have no sway on whether the new section is actually made)

1 Like

Agreed things would get messy…the discussion of such things is good though.

1 Like

Yes, a new category might be overkill?

On a related note…
I have been developing an interest in narrowing search results.
To date I’ve only read the FAQ “Searching Help” (good examples) and experimented (just a little bit).
A few things I am now wondering

  • what other Search FAQs, topics or user tips I might look at?
  • if there is a way to list tags in use?
  • what types of search phrases work/don’t with E10Help?
    e.g. thinking of examples I’ve seen in Google’s Advanced Search:
    “All these words” - type key word(s), e.g. tricolor rat terrier
    “Exact word or phrase” - enclose exact phrase in quotes, e.g. “rat terrier”
    “Any of these words” - use OR between words, e.g. miniature OR standard
    “None of these words” - prefix words with a minus sign, e.g. -rodent, -“Jack Russell”
    “Numbers ranging from/to” - put 2 periods between the numbers, e.g. 2010…2011
1 Like

Maybe it would be good to make a permalink somewhere to google advanced search

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

And mention how this works to limit the searched to epiusers.help. I didn’t really know that existed until @Hally (I think) mentioned it.

Side note, it’s kind of funny to google yourself just in this site and look at images. Some of the memes that show up bring back some good memories!

1 Like

Can’t take credit for it I’m afraid, but I keep forgetting to use it myself when I am struggling to find something.

Yes, thanks for mentioning…
I’ve started playing around with this & the extra filters are already coming in handy.
I’ve got the basic syntax down now & have started typing directly into the standard search. e.g. site:E10Help.com epidataview epidataview RQ.dataView -Yahoo -E9

The only caveat might be some newer topics will not show up in Googles results.
Wonder what Googles frequency for crawling sites like E10Help.com.
or the new URL is. More than an hour? since site:epiusers.help doesn’t seem to working yet today.

I see Google also offers a Custom Search Creator (https://cse.google.com/cse/all)
I will have to play with this sometime too.

Google crawls us pretty frequently once a day at most.