The Dynamics GP Blogster

If you happened to have attended the past Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 in Fargo, North Dakota, USA ( David Musgrave and I co-presented 2 sessions at this conference) and also attended the Microsoft Dynamics GP Testing 101 session presented by Rob Bernhardt and Grant Swenson you may remember that they showcased a number of tools to assist in the testing of Microsoft Dynamics GP. You will be glad to know that the toolset is now available for download on the MSDN code library, here . If you are a Microsoft partner, ISV partner, or even a customer who happens to have a product developed, you will want to take these tools for a test drive. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 is now gone and I am certainly looking forward for what's next. This Convergence happens to be the first I attended since the days of Stampede and the stats are even more impressive: 8,500 attendees and 400+ sessions, 84 Microsoft Dynamics GP specific sessions, 100+ presenters. Thanks to all of you who went to our sessions and showed your support and encouragement for the work we've done over the years in the Microsoft Dynamics GP community. We sincerely appreciate it. On our end, we will continue to encourage you to fill out your evaluations, use the tools we demonstrated, visit the Microsoft Dynamics Community site, use the forums and newsgroups, and ask the hard questions. Note : Evaluation forms will be open until Tuesday, May 11, 2010 11:59pm PDT. Convergence will continue to donate $1 to UNICEF for every attendee who completes an evaluation. It was finally great to meet MVP Mark Polino in person, who delivered one of the most acclaime...

Tuesday- Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 day 4 marked the beginning of the end. However, it wasn't looking like that for David and I. After all, this would be the day we would be repeating both sessions, CSGPR28 - Microsoft Dynamics GP Customization Tools Unravelled and CSGPR29 - Administering Microsoft Dynamics GP Like the Pros . First up was CSGPR28. The session went down well with attendees demanding more time given the number of tools involved. David and I reckon an hour is definately short for this type of topic, but the overall idea of showing the capabilities of the various tools is there, highlighting there is not one "best" tool to get the job done. We took a break to go to lunch in the Meal Hall, we were joined by Mr. Beat Bucher from Forensic Technology . Lunch was short lived and off we went to catch MVP Mark Polino 's session CSGPR07 - Getting more out of Microsoft Dynamics GP: 50 MORE Tips in 50 Minutes . Mark wowed the auditorium with useful tips ...

Monday - Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 day 3 began with a bang. David and I would be on stage at 10:30 AM to present our second session, CSGP29 - Administering Microsoft Dynamics GP like the pros . We had high expectations for this session since it was our chance to present the Support Debugging Tool . We attended a security session presented by Microsoft's Lucas Miller which would serve as entrée to our session. Very interesting to note is that most attendees in the security session showed up immediately after to our session. CSGP29 went down very well with the attendees, as Support Debugging Tool one again proved that it can centralize a great deal of Microsoft Dynamics GP administrative tasks. I believe the feature that attendees appreciate the most is the powerful security administration via Security Profiler Our session concluded with a round of applauses and did our presenters duties for the day. We are now both very hopeful that our session will lead customers and pa...

Sunday - Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 day 2 began as a big day for David and I. After all, today is our first session (CSGP28) presentation. Today, I had the opportunity to drive down to the Georgia World Congress Center with my wife. Not a bad thing considering the long day ahead. Taking one car was also a smart move as we figured it would be quite a long day and we both would need the other to talk to stay awake on our way back home. The big event of the day was the opening keynote sessions with Stephen Elop and Kirill Tatarinov. I had the opportunity to update The Dynamics GP Blogster Facebook page with the highlights of the event. If you were there, you will have to agree with me that one of the coolest moments of the Keynote was the introduction of the New Orleans Saints superbowl champion coach Sean Payton. New Orleans Saint's coach, Sean Payton Following the keynote session, we attended the General Session, presented by Errol Schoenfish and Chad Sogge. These two g...

Saturday - Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 day 1 began with me driving down to the Georgia World Congress Center first thing in the morning. I met up with David to register at the event and go to the Expo hall where we were scheduled to assist with the Microsoft Dynamics GP booth setup. Most of the partners and ISVs with a booth on the Expo hall were also in the process of setting up their stands. Microsoft Dynamics GP booth Partners and ISVs getting ready for action Our assistance consisted of transferring some Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Hyper-V images off external hard drives onto the computers that would be used to power the demo flat screens. That would take approximately one hour! We then deciced to take a small coffee break and went for some fresh air, but captured these images of the banners with the event sponsors: Back from the coffee break, we returned to the Expo hall to check on our Hyper-V images, but found out that they were still being downloaded, so we decided to ...

I have seen this question come up multitude of times on public newsgroups and forums. In fairly large Dynamics GP installations, Navigation Bar shortcuts tend to be deployed in a standard fashion for groups of users at a time, this is, to ensure all users have the same set of options to perform their functions, or access to company documents, etc. With this in mind, it is very common to setup one user's shortcuts and wanting to replicate these across other Dynamics GP user accounts. Unfortunately, there isn't a facility in GP to allow this. The following T-SQL script allows you to copy the Navigation bar shortcuts from one user to another: CopyNavShortcuts.sql 1 : use DYNAMICS; 2 : GO 3 : 4 : declare @sourceUser char(20); set @sourceUser = 'LESSONUSER2'; 5 : declare @destntUser char(20); set @destntUser = 'LESSONUSER1'; 6 : 7 : if exists(select * from SY01990 where ScbOwnerID = @destntUser) 8 : delete from SY01990 where ScbOwnerID = @destntUser; 9 : 10: insert i...

Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 will be here in the blink of an eye and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank in advance all of you who will be attending the sessions that David and I will be presenting. If you have not made plans yet to attend our sessions or are still not aware of the schedule, please take a look at the information below (click to enlarge). Now, visit the Convergence site and make sure you register to attend if you haven't done so. Even if you are not going to be attending our sessions, make sure to still benefit from the wealth of information that will be delivered by other presenters. See you soon! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP, MCP, MIS Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

This is article 7 of 7 from the series Microsoft Dynamics GP Architectural Foundations Series - featuring Microsoft's Tim Brookins . Unfortunately and due to Tim's various commitments, it was not possible to have him provide his final insight on the white paper reproduced on this blog. I will continue to work behind the scenes to bring this information to you as it becomes available. For now, I leave you with a review of Tim's background and accomplishments. About Tim Brookins Tim Brookins is a Distinguished Engineer working in the Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division . Tim joined Microsoft in 2001 as part of the Great Plains Software acquisition and has 20 years of experience in the business applications space. At Great Plains he was instrumental in producing the company's first offering based on Microsoft SQL Server. Brookins also designed the model-driven architecture that enables products from multiple parties to merge seamlessly into a single solution wi...

Welcome to another edition of From the Newsgroups , where you will find real life cases of everyday issues. This edition comes courtesy of the Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner forum: Q: I have setup Safe Pay Configurator. I am having issue with the overall [file] total, which I assigned as a Standard field, Check Amount, and then Amount type, Net Total. When we were testing for the trailing record, the overall document amount is coming out as Issued - Void which is correct because it's a net total, but the issue is our voids are coming without the negative sign so the value is off. Below is the example: Issued: 1,000 Void: 100 Overall total: 900 Our bank is requesting absolute value [ Ed: Checks + Voids ] so overall total should be 1,100. I exported the configurator and imported it to Fabrikam and it works/calculate correctly. Only thing we have different from Fabrikam is Multicurrency is not activated. When I tested it in Fabrikam, here's the result: Issued: 1,000 Void: -100 Ove...

This is article 6 of 7 from the series Microsoft Dynamics GP Architectural Foundations Series - featuring Microsoft's Tim Brookins . Tim's whitepaper was originally published in 1999 and it's reproduced here with his permission. Conclusion A typical architecture white paper will usually babble on about the popular technologies of the day like Client/Server, SQL Server, Thin Clients, Browser Clients, Stored Procedures, FRx, Office Integration, Report Writing, 2-Tier, 3-Tier, ODBC, Internet, Transact SQL, Windows NT, etc. This document operates at a more strategic level, primarily because the endless list of technologies are changing constantly. In short, technologies come and go, but architectures are built for the long term. Any meaningful discussion of product architecture must be based on principals or philosophies that are technology independent . The eEnterprise product architecture is based on a single fundamental premise, with four supporting philosophies: The value o...

This is article 5 of 7 from the series Microsoft Dynamics GP Architectural Foundations Series - featuring Microsoft's Tim Brookins . Tim's whitepaper was originally published in 1999 and it's reproduced here with his permission. Built to Fit Buyers in the midmarket require more than shrink-wrapped applications. It is imperative the system fit seamlessly into the customer’s overall business. The overall fit of the software is determined in two principal ways: customization and integration. No matter how feature-rich a business management system, each customer will have unique needs not covered in the basic software. The Dynamics architecture must accommodate significant product customization as a basic part of the system. Additionally, the customized business management application must be integrated with all the other applications in the business. The Dynamics architecture must also recognize that “Built to Fit” must not interfere with the “Built to Grow” philosophy. The pr...