Find the method a screen calls

The hardest part of writing a BPM is rarely the logic. It’s working out which method to hook, what the tableset looks like, and which fields hold the values you care about. Guessing wastes hours; a trace answers the question in minutes.

The approach

1. Decide on the exact user action you want to react to: “clicking Save on a new order line”, “changing the ship-to on an order”, “ending an activity in MES”.
2. Start a trace.
3. Perform that action once, and nothing else.
4. Read the trace to see which service methods ran, in what order, and with what data.
5. Put your directive on the method that matches the moment you care about.

Tracing in Kinetic

Kinetic screens talk to the server over REST, so every method call is visible in the browser.

1. Open the screen in a browser (not the desktop wrapper).
2. Press F12 to open DevTools and switch to the Network tab.
3. Optionally filter on Svc to hide static files.
4. Perform the action.
5. Select each request. The URL ends with the service and method, for example Erp.BO.SalesOrderSvc/MasterUpdate, and the Payload tab shows the tableset that was sent, including each row’s RowMod.

The community-built Kinetic Trace Helper browser extension (see Sources) records these calls into a readable list, which is quicker than clicking through raw network requests.

Tracing in Classic

The Classic client can write a trace log of every business object call. Turn on tracing from the client’s Tracing Options, tick the options to include the dataset, perform the action, then open the log file.

If your server is on-premises, server-side tracing is also available; see the Epicor system administration documentation.

Kinetic and Classic may call different methods

Don’t assume a directive built from a Classic trace will fire in Kinetic, or the other way round. Screens were rebuilt for Kinetic and some call different wrapper methods or extra helper methods. Trace in the client your users actually use, and trace again after upgrades.

Finding tables and fields

Once you know the method, you need field names.

• Data Dictionary Viewer (System Setup > System Maintenance > Data Dictionary Viewer) lists every table, field, data type and index. Indexes matter: filtering on indexed fields keeps BPM queries fast.
• In Application Studio, select a control and look at its binding (the EpBinding property) to see which table and field it shows.
• In Classic, Field Help on a control shows the table and field under its technical details.
• The trace payload itself shows every column in the tableset, including calculated ones that don’t exist in the database.

Reading someone else’s code

Sample code from forums and existing directives in your own system is a good way to learn syntax and the names of types. It’s less useful for finding the right method, because the sample may have been written for a different version or a different screen. Use samples for “how do I write this”, and traces for “where does this go”.

Next steps

• The BPM tableset: ds, tt and RowMod explains what you’re looking at in the payload.
• Method directives vs data directives helps you decide whether the method you found is the best hook at all.

Sources

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

• EpiUsers: Kinetic Trace Helper Utility 1.0 (Kinetic web Chrome extension)