Dyn - Why is my inventory-related transaction posting so slow?

It is not uncommon for Microsoft Dynamics GP v9 and v10 users to report system sluggishness when posting inventory related transactions in Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing or Inventory, especially if using the Average Perpetual valuation method.

The main reason why you may experience slow posting of inventory-related transactions is because Microsoft Dynamics GP uses an "inventory ripple" effect approach to recalculate the average cost of each inventory receipt layer due to inflow and outflow transactions in SOP, IV or POP. This is normal because in GP9.0 and GP10.0, the system is already observing the so-called "moving average" calculation. In addition, the system now "ripples" all item transactions. Hence, if transactions are backdated, each transaction would have to "ripple" through approximately n lines in the Inventory Purchase Receipts Work table (dbo.IV10200).

This new costing functionality in GP9 and GP10 also includes a new table, the Inventory Purchase Receipts Detail table (dbo.IV10201). To illustrate, if one of those lines in the Inventory Purchase Receipts Work table (dbo.IV10200) has been "sold", there should be a record of that sale in the IV10201 table. So now, we also have to "ripple" through the Inventory Purchase Receipts Detail table (dbo.IV10201) and each "layer" in that table, from the location of the "sale" record to the present. If you are a fairly high-volume transaction environment, this can take for ever!

A single transaction with a single line item, could very likely be updating quantity on hand and adjusted unit cost for over nth lines in the Inventory Purchase Receipts Work (dbo.IV10200) and an equal number in the Inventory Purchase Receipts Detail table (dbo.IV10201). This Microsoft Dynamics GP "inventory ripple" process may take considerable time to go through each receipt layer.

Average Perpetual and back-dated transactions seem to exacerbate the slowdown. But other know issues are also contributors, such as sold receipt layers not being removed during the Inventory Year-End Close (YEC) process.

These two issues could be the main causes why Microsoft Dynamics GP is slow in posting due to the "ripple effect" in inventory that they are producing.

Related Articles

To further explain the enhancements made to average cost calculation in GP 9.0 and above, please refer to KB 923960 - "Enhancements made to the calculation of average cost in Microsoft Dynamics GP".

https://mbs.microsoft.com/knowledgebase/KBDisplay.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;923960

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 - Time to say goodbye

The Conference ended with David and I dragging feet, with little to no sleep, but with the satisfaction that we delivered to the best of our abilities. I woke up the following morning after spending part of the previous night packing my suitcase, only to come to the realization that I left my pair of Louis Vuitton glasses somewhere along (ouch!).

After having breakfast downstairs, we (David & I) hopped a ride to the Microsoft campus with Mark Rockwell (Rockton Software) and Jim Peliksa (Rockton Software). It was time to go get some goodies for the trip back home. After the campus store opened, we went downstairs and I got a remote controlled Warthog (Halo 3), a cool MS presenter's mouse, and an ultrasleek MS mouse for my wife. I also managed to pick up an embroided Bing hooddie sweater for my daughter.

We went back to the Oak room. David went off to a team meeting and came back after 1 hour. We then went to Scott Stephenson's office to get our goodbye picture taken. I have to admit, it was a bit worst than an Internet break up. Dave and I had worked closely for the past 18 months on more than one blog and in the last 3, on the conference materials. We finally got to meet in person, then had to say goodbye.


Ok, I know what you thinking... After THAT hug, I felt we owed it to each other to bring our wives together.

David had a few more meetings and I had to go pack up my laptop and goodies to go meet the shuttle down stairs, not before saying goodbye to long time friends Dave Gaboury (a.k.a., Father Dexterity, now working on the AX team) and Emily Roen. Emily and Dave escorted me to the shuttle and my journey back to Atlanta began.

Upon arrival to Hector International (Fargo's airport), I had to maneuver a bit with the goodies and pack them in my suitcase somehow.

As for David, I had a chance to speak to him today and he is on his 36-hour journey back to Aussie land. Good luck my friend and talk to you soon.

I have to thank the entire Microsoft Business Solutions organization for vouchering my participation at the Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009. It was one of the most gratifying experiences of my career as a Dynamics GP professional.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 - Day 2

The good results of Day 1 and the hard work we put into preparing for the double whammy Troubleshooting session ahead of us had began to take their toll on Dave, Leslie, and I. We had a good breakfast at the hotel before being shuttled back to the Commons building. Upon arrival, Dave, Leslie and I went back to the Oak room to perform one last pass on the presentation, print out the cheat sheets and try to relax a bit.

We were on at 10:30 AM and the presentation went really well with minor unnoticeable glitches. It felt good, but not good enough. At the end of the first session of our Troubleshooting topic, and despite being extremely tired, Dave, Leslie and I returned to the round table to analyze the things that went wrong in our first session. After a few touch ups here and there, Dave and I went off to the table topics. I joined Nick Hoban who runs the Microsoft Dynamics Community website to discuss some improvements to the site.

We were back on stage at 3:30 PM for our second session. This one went just smooth... no glitches, no issues, just like if we had done it...once before! Our session ended just 15 minutes before the closing session.

The closing session futured Mr. Dave Coulombe and the some of "The Powers to Be" at Microsoft answering tough questions from ISVs Mark Rockwell (Rockton Software) and Bill Marshall (mc2 Software). By their expressions on this picture, you can conclude Mark and Bill were not asking easy questions... :-)

From left to right, Jeff Trosen, Chad Sogge, Gary Tronson, Scott Stephenson, and Errol Shoenfish

Note worthy of the session was the demo performed by John Hancock of PowerPivot the new cool add-on that will be made available with Microsoft Excel 2010. The demo featured the new in-memory BI engine which allows PowerPivot to process some 100 million records in less than 1 seconds and do all sort of data mining via SharePoint 2010.

The evening went along with the Study Hall session where I linked up with more friends including the good folks of the Tools Support and the Dexterity Development teams. Here are some pics from that evening:



I went to the hotel and crashed for the rest of the evening! I still had to get up early the following morning as I had one more final stop to do: the Microsoft Campus Store!

A special THANK YOU to MVP Leslie Vail for her invaluable contribution, time and patience into making our Troubleshooting session a success. Without her, we could not have got our presentation contents and timing refined and provided the level of criticism required to deliver the quality presentation expected by attendees.

Downloads:

For materials of the Troubleshooting Your Developed Solution session, click here.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 - Day 1

D-day, literally! If I had to qualify scary moments throughout my entire life, this certainly had to be at the top of the list. After completing the prep work for the Customizing session the day before, David and I attended the opening session the following morning which offered this cool Spinal Tap video attempting to explain why GP "11":


URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll7rWiY5obI

While at the opening session, reality began to set in and I had my first flash of panic -- 130 people will be attending our presentation! The next hour leading up to the presentation was absolutely worst than Dante's Inferno as I felt I was going through more than the 3 realms of death myself, with no hopes of being rescued by Virgil.

After the opening of our presentation, things began flowing and growing progressively smooth with time being our only enemy. We had a good number of questions throughout and received positive feedback by the end of the session. However, we went over the scheduled time by 4 minutes.



At the end of the Customizing presentation we were off the hook for the day and went to the Oak room in the Horizon building to work on Day 2's Troubleshooting sessions -- we were doing a 10:30 and a 1:30 repeat. We were joined by MVP Leslie Vail who assisted us with baselining the presentation timing and refining the slide deck. Her vast experience as a Microsoft Certified Trainer was a big asset in the process.

NOTE: we had an extra topic on "Certified for Microsoft Dynamics GP" in the slide deck that did not make it into the actual Troubleshoting session presentation, but that topic can be found in the Downloads section of this post.

The evening began with Study Halls where David and I had the opportunity to interact with partners and Microsoft staff on a variety of development topics and met up with a few long time friends.

From left to right, Steve Kubis (Microsoft), Michael Johnson (The MBS Guru), Dave Musgrave, Constance Guilleland (Q-Factor)

After Study Hall, we were joined by Constance Guilleland (Q-Factor) and Rob Wagner (Microsoft) to discuss some of the new Microsoft Word integration features available in GP 11 and provide some ideas on document security management. After our meeting with Rob, we went back to the Ramada, where we met up with Leslie to continue refining the session... time went by and we were done by 1:30 AM.

My THANK YOU goes out to all of you who expressed your simpaty for this blog and its contribution to the partner and customer communities.

Downloads:

For materials of the Customizing the Microsoft Dynamics GP Client with Visual Studio Tools, Dexterity and Modifier with VBA, click here.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC.
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 - Final prep work done!

Yesterday, after an afternoon catching up with Leslie and David, I was finally able to link up to the rest of the team staying at the Ramada, namely Mark Rockwell, Richard Whaley, and Darren Hunt from IBG. After weighing the possibility of leaving the hotel for dinner vs. eating at the restaurant by the lobby, we decided for the hotel's restaurant. This is the crew that went to dinner:

Left to Right: Mariano Gomez, Mark Rockwell, MVP Leslie Vail, Richard Whaley, David Musgrave, Darren Hunt

Today, the morning started with a breakfast at the hotel. The hotel shuttled us to the Microsoft campus. I have to admit, the new Vision building is amazing! The Horizon building also underwent some upgrades getting some new war rooms and training areas. Here are some pictures from the Vision building:

Panoramic view of the Vision (left) and Horizon (right) buildings

Vision building

A few in our group were attending eOne's eXtender classes, while David and I went to catch up with the Tools & Developers Support team, Scott Stephenson, Patrick Roth, Dave Dusek, Dawn Langlie, among others. The morning was flying away and we could not seem to find the time to begin working on the presentation. Our presentation timing was really off, lunch was upon us, we had a few more friends stop in to say hi, presenter's shirts were in... after lunch, we sat into a quick meeting with the Dex team, then went to do the technical testing of our laptops with the presentation equipment... still, not much prep work for the presentation at this point.

It was 4:00 PM and we finally were able to take a couple hours to streamline our timing. Hopefully the adjustments will pay off tomorrow. After a long and relatively stressful day, we wrapped up and went down to the event Registration session were we linked up to old friends, had some food, and played some table games, all the while enjoying the venues commons venue. Here are some pictures of the dining area in the Vision building:

Fire pit (it's my understanding this pit is capable of launching water during the summer months)

Food bars. You can get anything from Asian, to stake, to subs and burgers, all with an extensive salad bar to pair up with your meals

Seating area. Equally impressive is the amount of space dedicated to dining

Tomorrow is D day for our presentation. We are up first at 10:45 AM EST (GMT -5:00), but will get together in the morning for some breakfast at the Vision building, then will be moving to our Conference room to get setup. More on how we did tomorrow!

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 - A star filled afternoon

Following my Journey to the Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009, I arrived in Minneapolis without a hitch and 20 minutes before the original schedule of 10:10 AM CST - hat tip goes out to Delta! We waited 2 minutes at a staging area on the runway before ground control authorized the pilots to taxi to the arrival gate. My arrival gate at Minneapolis International was F13 and I had to walk over to gate C2, approximately a good mile, adding to the walk I did earlier in the morning from the parking lot at Hartsfield-Jackson International. The following is the Lindbergh terminal layout at Minneapolis International:



I had a relatively short layover as my flight to Fargo was departing at 11:25 AM CST, but could not make the rest of the day without a coffee. So I went over to Starbucks and picked up my favorite: a double-tall mocha with wip. Upon boarding, I sat next to United States Air Force Lt. Sarah Reich who happened to be an Officer and Communications specialist en route to Fargo to pick up some belongings to haul back to Washington D.C. We conversed about her career in the Air Force until the topic turned to what I did for a living. Having to explain that you do ERP implementations is not always an easy subject, but we had a good time talking.

I picked up my luggage and waited for the shuttle that would take me to the Ramada. While I was standing outside the airport. I saw this woman standing and talking on the phone. I thought she was very familiar, but could not quite make out the face from far. As she approached me, I realized it was no one other than MVP Leslie Vail. We both got into the Ramada's shuttle van after waiting for 15 minutes and caught up a bit from the last time we had seen each other -- some 5 6 years aback.

Upon arrival to the hotel and at check in, I discovered that my room was not ready -- I guess, the previous guest had checked out a bit late and the room was still being cleaned. So Leslie and I just sat in the lobby and were talking from one subject to the other until we decided it was time to ask if David Musgrave had checked in already. The receptionist called him down stairs and after 20 minutes he showed up. Finally! David Musgrave and I, face to face, for the second time since 1997! Here are a few pics from that encounter:

Me and David

David and Leslie

Leslie, David, and I

I can't wait to reunite with a bunch of my fellow professionals: former MVP Richard Whaley, Mark Rockwell, Steve Chapman, Michael Johnson and many more who I know will be in town for the Conference.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 - The journey begins!

This morning I got up (with a bump on the side from my wife) at 5:00, a bit too early for my scheduled trip to the Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009, which will take me through the beautiful city of Minneapolis, where I will be transferring planes to get to Fargo. Given that I live in Atlanta, a major hub in the United States, it's just about right that you give yourself enough time to depart.

By 5:30 I was ready and decided to drive my car and park at the airport for the days I will be out... I was at the airport by 6:15 after what seemed like a very uneventful morning in the Atlanta traffic. In fact, there was nothing, no one on the road. Surprising? Very much so considering Atlanta's traffic is ranked 3rd in the US for congestion. the one thing I did not count on was the fact that the check in counter was located a good 600 meters away from the parking lot. May not seem as much, but try that when you have to stroll around a big bag and a carry on (laptop).

Check in was really smooth... for a change I got an actual human being who was willing to assist in making the experience satisfactory. For those of you who have never traveled through Atlanta, security checkpoints can be a nightmare, with never ending lines of people waiting to get through. Aside from the usual shoe removal, all-things-metalic removal, belt removal, jacket removal, laptop out of the carry case, cell phone demo, laptop catton swabbing, laptop demo, ID verification, and gentle smile from the security agent when everything is ok, I was out of the security area very fast.

Atlanta's airport, because of its layout, requires you to then hop a tram that will get you to your departure concourse, but not before going down some really steep electric stairs where you have to hold on for dear life and hope that the person standing behind you does not let go of their carry on.

Now, I am sitting at the gate where there is a line of people hoping to sit in the same seat upfront. They have all so far been turned away, because the flight is a full flight and there will be no re-arrangements of seat. The flight to Minneapolis is a 5-hour flight, hence the reason I think people are just trying to get comfy. This is what my trip looks like, so let's see what else will the day hold.



I will provide an update from Minneapolis.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Lunching with Developing for Dynamics GP Team

The moment of truth has arrived... next week David Musgrave and I will be facing those of you attending the Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 in Fargo, ND., to deliver some really exciting sessions on developing and troubleshooting Microsoft Dynamics GP.

To make matters even more interesting, Patrick Roth has announced that he will be hosting a lunch topic session to obtain your input on the Developing for Dynamics GP blog site. You may not know what you will get, but maybe having a chance to sit with Pat, David, and I should be enough motivation to get you started. We would definately love to steal more chairs and join a few more tables to accomodate all of you who decide to sit with us. I know I have a few comments for the site and a list of topics I would like to see them address more often. Why not come and introduce yourself, say what you like (or don't) from the site, and have some food in the process. You will sure get their attention by doing so and voice your opinion.

It's not too late to register, so take advantage of the open seats left and come enjoy the beautiful weather in Fargo, while having a chance to sharp up some of your skills -- I am not kidding, check the weather in Fargo, this is the 5-day forecast.


See you all at the Conference next week!

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

"Unhandled Script Exception: Set Precision.." when selecting item in Item Maintenance window

Background

The user was attempting to select an item in the Item Maintenance window and received the error:

Unhandled script exception:
set precision passed bad precision value -1.

EXCEPTION_CLASS_SCRIPT_OUT_OF_RANGE
SCRIPT_CMD_SETPRECISION

The error only happened for a handful of items in a catalog of a few thousands.

Solution

Dynamics will attempt to set the decimal precision for the currency and quantity fields on the Item Maintenance window based on the number of decimal places for the functional currency (this is the default) or based on the number of decimal places used to define the item list price under the Item Currency Maintenance window; and in the case of the quantities, the number of decimal places for the quantities. To fix the issue, you will want to look at the columns DECPLQTY and DECPLCUR for any values at or below zero which would sure render an incorrect precision value when Dynamics GP attempts to set the value of the drop-down list on the screen. In this case, a zero value in any of these columns will result in a precision value of -1, when the system attempts to set the drop-down list value.

The following query will identify any suspect records causing the problem:

SELECT * FROM IV00101 WHERE (DECPLQTY <= 0) OR (DECPLCUR <= 0);

SELECT * FROM IV00105 WHERE (DECPLCUR <= 0);

To fix, you will want to at least set them to the values of your functional currency, for example:

UPDATE IV00101 SET DECPLQTY = 3 -- 2 decimals
WHERE (DECPLQTY <= 0);

UPDATE IV00101 SET DECPLCUR = 3 -- 2 decimals
WHERE (DECPLCUR <= 0);

UPDATE IV00105 SET DECPLCUR = 3 -- 2 decimals
WHERE (DECPLCUR <= 0);

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

The Technology Corner - Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Folks, as you may (or may not) know Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is feature-complete with the beta release being shipped in the next coming days. Microsoft Office 2010 beta should be out almost simultaneously -- for my previous posts on Microsoft Office 2010 click here.

In addition, you may want to clap for this one: SharePoint 2010 will run on Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP2, at least the developer's version, eliminating the need for tedius virtual machine or virtual PC images for those of us who are developers or consultants trying to demonstrate things like Microsoft Business Portal and Workflow.

While most of us don't have beta code yet, it is safe to say you can get a head start on setting up a SharePoint 2010 development environment by reading this MSDN entry. Make sure you observe all the system requirements.

Here is what SharePoint Senior Director, Tom Rizzo has to say about the product.

http://media.nuveminc.net:8080/spc09/tom_rizzo.wmv

You may also visit the SharePoint 2010 site for videos and more infomation about the subject.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/