Send email and auto-print from a BPM

Notifications are one of the most useful things a directive can do: tell a buyer a PO needs approval, tell sales a quote task is done, tell planning that last night’s MRP run failed. This page covers email from widgets and from code, a pattern for process alerts, and the Auto Print widget.

Your system’s SMTP settings must be configured in Epicor before any of this sends mail.

The Send E-mail widget

Add a Send E-mail widget and fill in its template: From, To, CC, Subject and Body. You can insert field values from the tableset and directive variables into any of them, and choose whether to send one email per matching row.

The widget can send synchronously (during the call) or asynchronously (queued, so the user isn’t kept waiting).

Email not arriving?

If emails from the widget silently never arrive, switch it to synchronous and test again. This has fixed failures for some sites, and a synchronous send also surfaces SMTP errors to you during testing instead of failing quietly in the background.

Put email in the right stage. Send from post-processing or a Standard data directive, so the email only goes out once the save has succeeded. An email from pre-processing is sent even if the save is later rejected.

Sending from custom code

Code gives you full control over the body, such as building an HTML table of lines:

var mailer = this.GetMailer(async: false);
var message = new Ice.Mail.SmtpMail();

message.SetFrom("erp@example.com");
message.SetTo(recipient);
message.SetSubject($"Order {orderNum} is on hold");
message.SetBody($"<p>Order <b>{orderNum}</b> was placed on hold by {Session.UserID}.</p>");
message.IsBodyHtml = true;

mailer.Send(message);

GetMailer(async: false) sends immediately; true queues the send. SetCC is available as well.

Getting recipients from data

Hard-coded addresses break when people change roles. Look them up instead: the buyer on a PO from PurAgent.EMailAddress, the user who made the change from their user account, a contact from the customer or supplier. See Query the database with LINQ for a buyer lookup, and always handle an empty result so a missing address doesn’t throw.

Example: email when a CRM task on a quote is completed

1. Create a Standard data directive on the Task table.
2. Add a Condition:
   • Complete of the changed row has been changed from false to true, and
   • RelatedToFile of the changed row is equal to "QuoteHed" (the task belongs to a quote).
3. Add any lookups you need for the message, for example the customer ID from the task’s customer number, into directive variables.
4. On True, add Send E-mail with a subject that includes the customer ID variable and the quote number, so the recipient can tell at a glance which quote it’s about.

The change-based condition means the email is sent once, when the task is ticked complete, not on every later edit.

Example: alert when a scheduled process finishes

Processes run from the System Monitor (MRP, Generate PO Suggestions, scheduling and so on) record their progress in the SysTask table. A Standard data directive on SysTask can watch for a particular process finishing:

1. Create a Standard data directive on SysTask.

2. Add a Condition:

   • TaskType equals "Process", and
   • TaskDescription equals the process name exactly as it appears in the System Monitor, for example "Generate PO Suggestions", and
   • TaskStatus has changed from any value to "COMPLETE" (or to "ERROR" if you also want to hear about failures).

   

3. On True, send an email with the task description, status and end time.

This is particularly worth doing for MRP: if an overnight run fails, planners find out at the start of the day rather than when the suggestions look wrong.

Test and pilot environments

Copying a production database into a test environment copies its directives too. Disable email directives in non-production environments, or make them check the environment, so people don’t receive alerts about test runs they then act on.

Printing a report automatically: Auto Print

The Auto Print widget runs a report (a packing slip after shipment, a traveler after job release) without the user opening the report screen. You pick the report and style, a printer or output option, and then the report’s parameters.

The Report Parameters list comes from the report’s parameter table in its report data definition, so it’s different for every report. In most cases you only change the key parameter (for a packing slip, the pack number) from its default constant to an expression or directive variable that holds the value from the transaction, and leave the rest at their defaults. If you need extra fields available as parameters, they have to be added to the report data definition first.

Related

• BPM conditions for sending an email once rather than on every save
• Common BPM problems

Sources

This page is written in our own words. It was informed by:

• EpiUsers: Email alert - MRP and Production Planner process
• EpiUsers: Documentation of what the parameters of Set Up Auto Print are