1. Grow
  2. Epicor Modules
  3. Prophet 21 Integration

Integrating Grow with Prophet 21

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Grow’s connection with your Prophet 21 data helps you get greater insights out of your data. With the pre-built content, you will have a foundation of valuable information that you can then modify, clean, and blend with data from other data sources to see a fuller picture of all your data and the overall health of your company.

Your company’s operations are intricately woven together in a complex supply chain with razor-thin margins. Success hinges on your ability to manage this process with precision. Epicor Prophet 21 unlocks the potential of your supply chain to help grow sales, boost productivity, and drive profits.

  • Data-driven distribution solution with industry-specific functionality.
  • Cloud-based applications to modernize and mobilize operations.
  • Connected ecosystems to ensure visibility across your business.

Grow is a BI solution software that lets you bring data from all your other applications into one visualizing platform. This enables you to make impactful decisions regarding your business, as you can see the information collected from different sources all in one application. You can also use different filters and grouping logic to tailor the information you need. You can manage roles and permissions to make sure everyone has only the necessary information required for their work.

Integrating Grow with Prophet 21 brings critical business data into operational reports and dashboards you can actually work with, and act on. It also brings robust reporting for insight and visibility into your business and ERP data.

In this article, we will cover:

Connecting to Data Sources

Data Sources are the multiple applications that you want to pull data from. Data Source Connections connect Grow to the application, retrieve the data, and store it in the Data Warehouse. Once the data is in the Data Warehouse, you can clean and prepare it in datasets to display the required information in your metrics on your dashboards.

To create a data source connection, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Data tab > Connections. Select Connect.
  2. Select the type of connection from the panel. The respective pop-up window appears.
  3. Enter the credentials and select Connect.
  4. Select the data that you want to store in the Data Warehouse and select Save.

Now that you’re connected to your data source, you can pull data from it periodically.

Creating Datasets and Metrics

The data present in your warehoused tables is raw. You can create datasets from this information to present it in a meaningful way in your metrics. You can sort the data, change the date format for a date field, or filter out any data you do not need, etc. You can also join data together based on common columns from multiple tables to get comprehensive information in your final primary report.

To create a dataset, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Data tab > Datasets. Select Add Dataset. The Dataset Builder window appears.
  2. Select the source from which you want to build the dataset. You can create a dataset from a warehoused table, a data source connection, or another dataset.
  3. Add any transform, other reports, joins, or unions you need to clean and organize your data into a more usable format.
  4. Enter a name and description for the dataset, select the primary report and select Save.

Metrics are the visualizations that you can create from your datasets. You can add more transforms to a metric if you want to narrow or define your data even more than you have done in the dataset.

To create a metric, follow these steps:

  1. Select Add New from the top panel and then select Metric. Select the data source for the metric, probably a dataset that is already cleaned and ready for charting. The Data Explorer window appears.
  2. Review the data in the bottom panel. You can view details of the data source in the Data tab and add other transforms.
  3. Select the Chart Type and choose your data series and grouping in the Chart tab. You can also add filters and change colors in this tab.
  4. Select Save, then name your metric and choose which dashboard to add it to.

You can create multiple datasets and metrics from the same data source and warehoused table.

Visualizing in Dashboards

The dashboard is where you monitor your metrics, and it serves as a starting point to creating new metrics or sharing the dashboard with other users and stakeholders.

To create a dashboard, follow these steps:

  1. From the left panel, select the + icon.
  2. Enter a name for the dashboard.
  3. Add metrics to the dashboard either by creating new metrics or moving or sharing already existing metrics from other dashboards.

You can perform multiple operations on the datasets and metrics to get the most out of Grow. You can add filters at the dashboard level and share these reports with others as well.

For more information, access the Epicor Learning Center.

Staging Your System for Grow

Activate the Feature

Before beginning this process, make sure you have your registration and login information for Service Pro handy.

  1. From the main menu, navigate to Setup > System Administration > System > P21 Integration Center.
  2. Select Grow from the Integration drop down menu.
  3. The Company Integration tab opens. Here, enter the following information:
    • Company ID
    • End Point - your Grow URL.
    • API Key - the key for your API connection.
    • Secret Key - your Grow license key.
  4. Select Save.

Granting Access to Grow Metrics

You can manage which individual metrics are available to appear in a user's Prophet 21 home portal. Until you open a metric to a user or role, they cannot add it to their portal.

  1. From the main menu, navigate to Setup > System Administration > System > P21 Integration Center.
  2. Open the Grow Metric tab.
  3. The tab displays the available Grow Metrics and Descriptions. You can set the following qualities for each:
    • Height / Width - the display size of this metric on the Prophet 21 home portal. These values are in pixels.

      Users can also manually adjust the size of their Grow metrics in their home portal by dragging and dropping the borders to new sizes.

    • Show Focus Values - Grow can display a total at the top of a metric. This is called a focus value, and activating this check box displays it in the portal metric.
    • Show Title? - activate this to display the metric's title in the portal.
    • Theme - determines if the metric displays with a dark or light background.
  4. Place your focus in a metric row to select it, then move to the Permissions tab in the window footer.
  5. Here, Prophet 21 displays two lists. One for roles, and one for individual users. Check the Enabled check box next to each that you want this Grow metric to be available to.
  6. Selec Save.

Setting User-Specific Data Filters

You can also limit the data that a Grow metric will show a user.

  1. Once you have established access for a metric, open the Filters tab.

    All filters you place on a metric apply to everyone who accesses it according to the permissions you put in place. So if you granted access to an entire role, the filter you put in place also applies to that role.

  2. Select the Column Name. This is the aspect of the metric you want to filter.
  3. Select an Operator and a Value. These establish what a user can see through the metric. For example, if you set a salesrep to equal a specific name, then the metric will only display data for that selected salesrep.
  4. If the metric is a date, select the Is Date check box.
  5. Selec Save.

    Each row is a separate filter. You can set multiple filters on the same metric.

Embedding Grow in the Prophet 21 Home Page

You can add Grow metrics to your home portal, making it available directly through Prophet 21 and removing the need to log into Grow to access this data.

Add Grow metrics the same as you would any other widget.

  1. In your home portal, select Add Widget.
  2. From the popup list, select Grow Widget.
  3. Name the widget, then select the type you want to add from the drop down of available options.
  4. Select Save.

Embed a Grow Dashboard in an iframe

You can display a Grow dashboard in an iframe. See this article for more information.

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