The Dynamics GP Blogster

The independent "All things Dynamics" news and resources outlet, MSDynamicsWorld.com has released its top 10 stories of 2008 and I am pleased to announce that one of my articles -- Maximize your investment in Dynamics during uncertain economic times -- made it in that roaster due to the traffic and acceptance it has received among the Dynamics user community during the course of the year. If you are always looking for more than just the technical or functional stuff, be sure to check MSDynamicsWorld.com for comprehensive news and articles about all things Dynamics. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, PMP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com Disclaimer I am a member of the MSDynamicsWorld Editiorial Advisory Board , but in no way influenced the selection of my article for the top 10 stories of 2008.

Fellow MVP Mark Polino has important information for you if you happen to be working with Extender windows. Make sure you read his article on the subject BEFORE you attempt to remove that Extender window you have been working with for a few months now. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Dynamics GP consultants outta be some of the most dedicated professionals on the face of the planet. In the past days, many GP 8.0 users have been wondering how to get 2009 tax updates applied to their systems. What was more discouraging is the fact that Microsoft had released a not-too- promising memo about the availability of the 2008 year end and 2009 tax updates. Nonetheless, my friend Doug Pitcher over at Rose Business Solutions, now has an answer for everyone of you still on GP 8.0. He had been playing around with the 2009 tax update SQL Scripts for 10 and noticed they could work on GP 8.0, so just stop by and download the scripts from his site. Great job Doug! Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

As Microsoft continues to launch products on the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS 3.0) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS 2007) platforms, namely PerformancePoint and Workflow , and as they continue to enhance the integration between Dynamics GP and these applications, I thought it would be important to point out some good SharePoint resources, in particular Paul Andrew's blog . Paul is a Microsoft Technical Product Manager for the SharePoint Developer platform and he has compiled a good Getting Started with SharePoint Development article with tons of links to other resources and a good step-by-step approach on how to become a pro. I started learning about SharePoint development techniques about a month ago as part of a project that I am working on and Paul's article has been vital in providing a roadmap to becoming proficient. In addition, I highly recommend this free Microsoft Learning clinic course: Clinic 5045: Inside Look at Developing with Microsoft® Windo...

Business Situation A sales order entry clerk has been instructed to change all requested ship dates on a 100-line item sales order. This sales order is also linked to a purchase order for the 100 line items. However, the clerk has discovered that Dynamics GP will not allow these changes to take effect by changing only the Requested Ship Date on the transaction header and must go into each line item to accomodate the for the new request. In addition, the clerk must communicate to the company's buyer that all line items on the PO must be changed to meet the new Required Date. Solution It would be much easier sometimes if certain Dynamics GP functionality was available out-of-the-box. However, that would leave a lot of us without a job :-). Throughout the application, we get so many messages about rolling down changes across multiple records, but SOP seems to be one of those modules where rolling down changes to line items don't seem to be a choice. Take for example Requested Ship...

As many of you get ready to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or simply relax in the company of your families and friends, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you the best throughout these festivities on behalf of my wife Marina and children. Thanks for all the great comments I received and support to my blog. It keeps me going and working to bring you the some of the best content you will find about all things Dynamics GP. You can always count on 2009 bringing new and exciting articles with innovative approaches for using Microsoft Dynamics GP and getting the best out of your investment. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, MCP, MVP, PMP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

This article should suite me really well! I for one, spend a lot of time trying to find the same Dynamics GP pages over and over: in PartnerSource, in CustomerSource, in the Knowledgebase... It is quite frustrating when you have to get back at these pages more than once and have not bookmarked them or add them to your favorites. Fellow MVP Victoria Yudin must have been experiencing the same issue, but she decided to take action! Victoria has now created a Resources page on her blog pointing to the most typical links: systems requirements, printer compatibility list, installation guides, user guides, and much more. If you feel lost, then this is the best place to get started. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

The questions have started to flood the newsgroups and apparently many users and customers are not aware (and perhaps, were not made aware by their partners) that there will be no Year End Update pack for Microsoft Great Plains 8.0. According to a support bulletin from the Product Lifecycle page last modified on April 1, 2008: " Mainstream Support for Microsoft Dynamics GP 8.0 will end October 13, 2009 (previously October 9, 2007). Microsoft will provide a 2007 Year End Regulatory/Tax update. (U.S. and Canadian tax updates will be provided through October 31, 2008.) No additional tax or regulatory updates will be provided for 2008 Year End as well as 2009 . " The complete article can be accessed as follows: PartnerSource - Click Here CustomerSource - Click Here What to do now? There are a few options: 1. Upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 - For this you may contact your Microsoft partner to establish the viability of this option -- you can contact me or any Maximum Global...

Many GP administrators and partners have been experiencing issues after applying the Year End updates. These issues may range from corrupted reports dictionaries, apparent posting errors, and system crashes. My 2 cents on the issue and how to prevent them from happenning: since these Year End updates are inclusive of service pack 4 and Service Pack 3 for Dynamics GP 9.0 and Dynamics GP 10.0, respectively, you must follow all procedures outlined for a service pack installation, especially as it concerns modified reports and modified forms for Dynamics GP and third party products: 1) MAKE SURE TO EXPORT ALL CUSTOMIZATIONS (Forms, Reports, VBA Customizations, References) TO A PACKAGE FILE (.Package), UNDER TOOLS > CUSTOMIZE > CUSTOMIZATION MAINTENANCE IN GP 9.0 AND MICROSOFT DYNAMICS GP > TOOLS > CUSTOMIZE > CUSTOMIZATION MAINTENANCE IN GP 10.0. 2) REMOVE ALL EXISTING MODIFIED REPORTS DICTIONARIES AND MODIFIED FORMS DICTIONARIES FROM THEIR CURRENT LOCATION. TO BE ON THE SAF...

Over at Developing for Dynamics GP, my good friend Scott Stephenson with Microsoft Dynamics GP Tools Support has released a schedule with upcoming developer workshops. These workshops are partner-only workshops and will be held in the month of February. If you or your organization are interested in these classes, Scott has published dates and prices. Please click here for more information. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Fellow MVP Mark Polino, continues his journey into the new Project Accounting features released with Microsoft Dynamics GP 10. This time, Mark takes a look at Updating Budget Lines in his all too famous Weekly Dynamic column. The ability to quickly update budget lines across multiple cost categories is certainly to benefit any company using Project Accounting in industries such as Light Construction, Installers (Field Service), Professional Services, among others. So make sure to read this article and all the previous ones posted by Mark and don't forget to let him know what you think or what you would like to see covered in the future. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Business Situation How many times have you walked into a GP implementation done by a previous VAR and cannot establish what changes have been done on a report, if any? Or how many times have you come across forms and reports dictionaries with tons of objects and cannot tell by simply looking at these if they have been changed or not? Or have you made some changes to a report a few years aback and now cannot remember what these changes were? I get this question every once in a while and finally someone was keen enough to post it on the Dynamics GP public newsgroup. Solution Let me start by saying that ALL modified forms and reports should ALWAYS be backed up in the form of package files, and that ALL these package files should be stored in a source code control repository -- for example, Visual Source Safe -- and versioned if all possible, with notes on all changes done from version to version. However, this is not always possible, especially if the company happens to be a small compan...

Finally! Leslie has decided to come out of hiding with her new Dynamics Confessor Blogspot . For those of you not familiar with Leslie, she is a Microsoft Dynamics GP Certified Trainer and a long standing consultant. She has authored the Quickbooks Movers Guide and co-authored the all to famous Confessions of a Dynamics GP Consultant published by Accolade Publications. Stop at her site and let her know what topics you would like to see on her site. However, I am sure she will be putting up some good stuff pretty soon. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

With David Musgrave out on vacations it would seem the articles would cease. Not the case at all! David made sure he left enough scheduled published articles so he did not have to get on the computer during his cruise throughout the South Pacific, perhaps enduring some hard knocks from Jennifer in the process. So let's see what David left for us. If you are using Dexterity 10 (build 10.00.0320) Source Code Control with either the Generic Provider or Visual Source Safe, be aware of a bug when checking in multiple resources at once to the code repository. Click here to find out more about this issue and how to resolve it. On the topic of Source Code Control, David explores the proper use of Index Files . An index file will help with keeping resource IDs in check, more so when you have more than one developer working on your Dexterity product. Make sure you check this article, since it also includes links to published KB articles on the subject. This one evokes some nostalgic moment...

Let me start by saying, if you are not using Support Debugging Tool you really are making things more difficult for yourself than you should! Back in August, I was part of a selected group of beta testers and was introduced to the tool, and have since writen a number of articles about it, including my First Look article, which also got featured in MSDynamicsWorld.com. Back then, I presented some of the coolest features I had had the opportunity to explore in detail. This time, David Musgrave does it again with this revised version. Let me say it again just in case: if you are not using Support Debugging Tool you are truly making things more difficult than they should for yourself. This build of Support Debugging Tool has been enhance with a number of performance improvements and now introduces two new features I believe will blow you away: Security Profiler and Screenshot capturing . Security Profiler Security Profiler is by far the most notorious new feature in Support Debugging Too...

Business Situation The holidays are around the corner and your organization is looking to send season greetings on each invoice to all customers. However, the traditional Microsoft Dynamics GP text comment is all too dull and does not reflect the image or the character of your organization. Your marketing team has spent some good hours designing a holiday banner and would like to see it on the invoices at all cost. Lets take a look at some cool ways to deck the halls with Report Writer. Solution For this example, we will work with the SOP Blank Invoice Form report. 1) Open the Sales Transaction Entry window, select an invoice and click on the print button. When the options window is displayed, select the Blank form type and then print to screen. * Click on image to enlarge 2) Press CTRL + F9 on your keyboard to modify the current report. This will open Report Writer with the report in the layout window. 3) We will now add a picture to the Picture library to include on our invoice. In...

Oh my goodness! Just when I was getting comfortable with SQL Server 2008...The toys, for us SQL Server developers and practicioners, are seemingly becoming endless. Microsoft SQL Server codename 'Kilimanjaro' (my gut feeling tells me this will become SQL Server 2010) will be released in its Community Technology Preview (CTP) version by mid-January '09, with a duration of 4 to 5 weeks. Kilimanjaro is jammed-packed with improvements to the BI engine and during the demo, it performed a 1-trillion row query in seconds ! Kilimanjaro was first unveiled at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference in Seattle this past October. During the conference, Microsoft committed to provide easy-to-use analysis tools in Kilimanjaro, described under their code name, "Gemini." According to a Microsoft announcement , the Gemini tools " will enable information workers to slice and dice data and create their own BI applications and assets to share and collaborate on from with...

Fellow MVP Victoria Yudin, goes to great lengths to explain how to report on Extender data . Extender can be a valuable time saving customization tool, but data storage can be confusing even to the pros. Remember that Extender stores data in separate tables according to data types and the only way compile the data is by creating Extender Views. Also don't miss out on her previous article about Extender and SmartList . Victoria provides great detail on how to accomplish this with screenshots that will help you understand the process from beginning to end. More importantly, let her know what you think about her work by dropping her a comment. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Business Situation The current economic climate is forcing businesses to be a bit more creative. Some of these companies are resorting to No interest, no payments terms that allow customers to walk out the stores with the merchandise and begin payments at a future date. But, how is a company using Microsoft Dynamics GP going to deal with this type of payment term? What if the promotion is only being ran for the month of December only? What if all invoice generated in December are all due simultaneously on June 1, 2009 regardless of the date the invoice was generated? Solution Implementation Since invoices from SOP and RM flow to the RM Open table (dbo.RM20101) after they are posted, it is safe to say we can add a SQL Server trigger to overcome the hurdle. However, we must setup a payment term ID that will serve as an identifier for our trigger to take action. Follow these steps to implement the solution to this problem: 1) Setup a new payment term called JUNE012009 . Open the Payment ...

From time to time the question comes up in newsgroups, informal conversations between developers, and surprise phone calls. The questions come in many flavors: What is the DEX_ROW_ID? Why do all Dynamics GP's SQL Server tables have a DEX_ROW_ID? How is the DEX_ROW_ID related to IDENTITY columns in SQL Server tables? Can I build reports using the DEX_ROW_ID column? To start unreeling these questions it is best to start with two key concepts: active and passive record locks. Active Locks An active lock allows other users to read a table record, but not make any changes or delete the record. Active locking ensures that the user who has the active lock is the only user who can make changes or delete the record. If other users try to delete or change the record, a table-sharing error will occur. An active lock is applied each time a record is read using the Dexterity change or edit table statements with the lock keyword included. Passive Locks A passive lock allows other users to acce...

With this suggestive title, fellow MVP Frank Hamelly explains in great detail, over at MSDynamicsWorld.com, the concept of purchasing accruals and how to take the pain out of reconciling the purchasing accrual account . Not being an accountant myself, I had to read through this article as it truly details the steps needed to get to the bottom of it all. I would say, you are nuts not to go read Frank's article before trying a reconciliation on your own. DISCLAIMER : I am a member of the MSDynamicsWorld.com Editorial Review Board and a regular Dynamics GP columnist... now go on and read! Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, PMP Maximum Global Business, LLC. http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

The TAB key is often used to navigate sequentially through multiple controls on a Dexterity window. The order in which you move through the controls depends on their Tab Sequence Index value, not their position on the window. In this article , David provides you with the method and techniques used to set up a required tab sequence on a window. Remember that this is not only a "Dexterity thing" and that it is required when adding fields or changing how you jump from field to field in Modifier. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

You outta know you are doing something well when fellow MVP Mark Polino references you in one of his Weekly Dynamic articles. This time Mark speaks about a method I devised to reconcile ACH batches in a newsgroup exchange with a Dynamics GP user. Thanks Mark, truly appreciate it! Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Microsoft MVP Victoria Yudin seems to be everywhere in these days. If you have ever wondered how GP calculates all these pesky SOP invoice accounting distributions , wonder no more! Victoria decodes in a very friendly and illustrative manner how GP decides the fate of the accounting distributions to be posted to General Ledger when an invoice is posted in the Sales Order Processing module. If I may add one more thing about the SOP distribution types, this field is used to categorize the distributions for the purpose of verifying the distributions on a document and can be framed in one of these 23 types: 1 = SALES 2 = RECV 3 = CASH 4 = TAKEN 5 = AVAIL 6 = TRADE 7 = FREIGHT 8 = MISC 9 = TAXES 10 = MARK 11 = COMMEXP 12 = COMMPAY 13 = OTHER 14 = COGS 15 = INV 16 = RETURN 17 = IN USE 18 = IN SERVICE 19 = DAMAGED 20 = UNIT 21 = DEPOSITS 22 = ROUND 23 = REBATE The corresponding numeric value is stored in the SOP_Distribution_WORK_HIST table (SOP10102). Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, M...

On a recent Microsoft Dynamics GP newsgroup post , a user created a Smartlist Builder based on a SQL Server view. After granting permissions to the DYNGRP database role, the Smartlist was still not accessible to the end user. After testing a few things, fellow MVP Victoria Yudin was able to resolve the problem by assigning a specific Smarlist Builder security task to the user's Dynamics GP role. Recreating the issue The following steps are needed to recreate the issue. 1) Run the following statement against your SQL Server company database. This simple view will show all contact information on sales documents that have been purchased from suppliers. CREATE VIEW dbo.vwPurchasedSOPDocuments AS SELECT a.sopnumbe, a.docdate, a.custnmbr, a.custname, a.cntcprsn, c.ponumber, c.vendorid, c.vendname, c.docdate as podate, c.contact FROM SOP10100 a INNER JOIN SOP60100 b on (a.SOPNUMBE = b.SOPNUMBE) and (a.SOPTYPE = b.SOPTYPE) INNER JOIN POP10100 c on b.PONUMBER = c.PONUMBER GO GRANT SELECT O...

Well, I believe my friend and fellow MVP, Frank Hamelly , has succumbed to the daily pressures I inflict on him and have turned out to the blogosphere as many of us have done throughout this year alone. Not only has he setup tent over at GP2 TheMax , but he has written his first article on the all too confusing subject of Received not Invoice . Please join me in welcoming Frank, but more importantly, please stop by his new blog, read his articles, and enter a comment (or two, or three, or...) about his work. One interesting fact about Frank: he is an aviation fanatic with an already astonishing 300 hours of flight. His already familiar picture was taken at the Empire State Aeros ciencies Museum in Schenectady, NY. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Convergence 2009 registrations are now open. Come visit the Crescent City and spend a great time meeting peers, partners, and others who share your ever growing interest in the Microsoft Dynamics GP application and technologies. For your convenience, I have reposted the links that will allow you to register according to your registration needs: Register as an Existing Customer or Partner Register as a Prospect Customer or Partner Register a Group Register with an RSVP code Sign up before 11:59pm PST on Jan. 14, 2009 and enjoy a $300 early registration discount. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

David Musgrave unleashes his toolbox of useful SQL scripts in his traditional Developing for Dynamics GP blog. David will address this topic in a series of articles that you must be sure to check out. The articles will be released in the following order: Mon, 12/01/2008: spSearchOnAllDB: SQL Stored Procedure to Search an Entire Database Wed, 12/03/2008: Releasing Stuck Batches and Transactions without exiting all Users Fri, 12/05/2008: Identifying Duplicate Transactions The links will be available on or after the posting date according to your time zone. While you enjoy these scripts, be sure to check my own collection: How to automatically send all posting reports to screen How to split Dynamics GP's alphanumeric column values in SQL Server Create your own taGetNextNumber stored procedure How to automate a PDF file output name for a posting journal report Restricting access to metrics on Microsoft Dynamics GP Homepage Resolving SQL duplicate key error messages when executing RM...

Much has been asked about the Microsoft Dexterity OLE Container lately and I wanted to address this topic by providing some background on the technology and how it is used from GP. In addition, I will address how to automate OLE externally from other applications. Definition In principle, OLE is a compound document technology from Microsoft based on the Component Object Model (COM) . OLE allows an object such as a graphic, video clip, spreadsheet, etc. to be embedded into a document, called the Container Application . If the object is playable such as a video, when it is double clicked by the user, a media player is launched. If the object is allowed to be edited, the application associated with it (the Server Application ) is launched. An object can be linked instead of embedded, in which case the Container Application does not physically hold the object, but provides a pointer to it. If a change is made to a linked object, all the documents that contain that same link are automatical...