Currently we are implementing on 10.1.600.6, as this was what was installed by Epicor last year, we have several modifications built by Epicor. I am seeking clarification as to upgrades and these modifications.
Can anyone clarify if upgrading within the version won’t cause us to have the modifications being rebuilt or not?
I appreciate that you would need to retest, just as you would for your own customisations.
Any clarity as to what the process is, or should be would be appreciated. I really don’t want to be in a situation where we are hamstrung to a single version.
There is a really good chance you will be fine to upgrade within 10.1.600 (i think 24 is the latest) and beyond. There are a couple things to watch for and one is the Software Interface changes in the release notes and comparing those to your customizations to estimate the impact. As of right now, there are a couple interface changes but they are minor. Reports are another one to watch but typically only if you want the fix or enhancement that is included. Typically I do not see many go through full regression testing unless they are heavily customized and have the staff and processes to pull it off. Most will test critical processes and then deal with issues as they arise post upgrade. With the releases of 10 most of the upgrade pain went away.
Agree with @danbedwards and based on my experience few reports had major changes which we managed to fix to change or rebuild data definition(approx 4-5). upgrade is so easy made by Epicor for E10 and improving with every release.
One more thing to add. Make sure you review the resolved issues and application enhancements, in the release notes, when upgrading to see if you can possibly eliminate custom code that may have been used as a workaround for a problem or created for missing functionality that may now be present with more current releases. While this may create a little more effort during the testing cycle it will pay dividends down the road.
I concur with the others comments up here. Review those release notes to check breaking changes - areas to investigate in your upgrades as well.
The .6, .7, .8 biweekly patch roll ups are pretty heavily monitored and my team did a fair bit of work on analysis tooling to catch any changes that would break those. The community response has been positive that these patch releases have been more stable so I appreciate the effort seems to be working. There will always be that scenario where a bad bug may need to break something but I cannot remember the last one of those so always review in case.
As to the SDK comment - I cannot answer without more details. The SDK can be used to recreate all of E10 so that’s a pretty wide topic to be able to answer. You have something in mind with the question so I need to dig a bit more as to what you are thinking.
Are you developing new Services?
New Internal Server Libraries?
Forms?
Contracts?
I could go on listing every building block in the system so the more details and context, the better the answer or at least advice on where to look for issues.
Thanks Bart I appreciate your time. The customisations are additional forms that are called from the PO form and the SO forms they essentially allow the users to enter in 1 part with many different QTY and UOM at once, then return the lines back to the main form exploding the lines back to one line, qty UOM. There are also other customizations around handheld and MES.