The Dynamics GP Blogster

If you thought Post to GL and Post through GL were confusing, wait until you have to explain batch posting versus transaction posting and the implications of either to your client. Fortunately, MVP Mark Polino breaks it down in easy terms in his new Weekly Dynamic article on the subject. Remember that every implementation is different and that the options you select during configuration will impact the way the business conducts its operations, so go on and read Mark's article to get some insight on how these options work. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, MCP, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

You know that I don't often deviate from everything Dynamics GP, but this is got to be the most hilarious stuff I have seen in the last ... who knows how long. Sorry Microsofties, but even you have to admit this is too dagarn funny. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

This one was actually a very interesting case reported on the Dynamics GP newsgroup, so I figured I needed to get to the bottom of it. The very frustrated user reported seing the following error trying to get into a company in Dynamics GP. In an attempt to replicate this issue, the most logical place to start was to login into Dynamics GP as my 'sa' user and open the Clear Data window and try to do something there. Since Clear Data is a distructive process, the Dynamics GP Development team figured they had to find a way to prevent users from accessing the system while this process was being executed by, perhaps, the system administrator. This is how the Clear Data Comp reserved user ID was born. When the window is first accessed by the system administrator, Dynamics GP checks for any users currently available in the system. If there are no users, it will display the Clear Data window and create a record for the Clear Data Comp user ID in the system databases User Activity...

This question came up in the Dynamics GP Partner forum a few days ago, the specifics inquiried by the consultant were as follow: " I was just looking at the PM10000 table in SQL Server Management Studio. I found a column named PMWRKMSG , with a data type of binary(4) , which I cannot understand. In addition, I found entries like, 0x00019000, 0x00009000, 0x00000000 as column values. I know that they represent error messages, generated on the Batch Edit List and Posting Journals , but how can I check which message is being generated by just looking at this column? Do I need to convert this entry to some other integer and refer to some other table, which in turn would have a list of all the error messages? " Answer The 'PM WORK Messages' field (PM10000.PMWRKMSG column) is a Dexterity multi-select listbox control (so are the 'PM WORK Messages 2' and the 'PM Distribution Messages' fields) which contains static texts. The only way of storing such contro...

By now you probably read David Musgrave's series on Microsoft Dynamics GP and Illegal Characters and have come to realize that the single quote character is perhaps one of the biggest culprits in the errors you are receiving when running reports such as your age trial balances in both receivables and payables. It's enough for the single quote character to be in your customer ID, vendor ID, or even document numbers to cause some error while running a report or inquiring a transaction. The following is an actual case reported by a user on the Dynamics GP newsgroup when running the Payables Historical Aged Trial Balance report: The stored procedure pmHistoricalAgedTrialBalance returned the following result: DMBS: -127, Microsoft Dynamics GP: 0. After some research the user realized they had a few document numbers that contained the illegal single quote character, for example INV'23002. Note that this case is specific to the document number. So, what to do if you are a victim...

This is a rather complex question. To understand how Check Links works one needs to step back a bit into the history of Microsoft Dynamics GP. In its origins, Dynamics GP was conceived with the idea of running on multiple operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Novell Netware), and "database" platforms, namely Ctree and Btrieve . The term database is a misnomer because in reality Ctree and Btrieve at the time were nothing more than Index Sequential Access Method (ISAM) -based file systems, with Btrieve being at best a record manager environment that could run on Netware and Windows. However, ISAM-based systems lacked referential integrity capabilities. This brings me to Microsoft Dexterity -- the Microsoft Dynamics GP development environment. Within a Dexterity application, such as Dynamics GP, developers can define table structures and relationships that the Dexterity Runtime Engine then replicates into physical files depending on the file system platform. This table replicat...

Every so often you get these development requests that seem to push Dexterity to its limits. One of such requests is being able to read a Windows Registry key value using nothing more than SanScript. The following example will show how to use the Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Scripting library, ADVAPI32.DLL to retrieve a Windows Registry key value by examining how to retrieve the default Internet browser software being used. The code will use the RegOpenKeyA and RegQueryValueExA DLL functions to a) return a handle for the registry path where we can found the key, b) then retrieve the actual key value. In order to access external DLL functions, it is necessary to create Dexterity prototype global procedures for the external DLL functions. RegOpenKeyA@ADVAPI.DLL { prototype procedure RegOpenKeyA@ADVAPI.DLL } out long return_value; {function returns ERROR_SUCCESS } in long hKey; {Handle ...

One of the tasks that is often necessary in any Dynamics GP implementation is to get data across from the test company to the production "Go Live" company once we are ready to make the cut over. Those records are usually configuration and master records, but can also be beginning balances for subsidiary modules and General Ledger. This article will show you how to use Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Import and Export Wizard to transfer data across company databases. The article assumes you are familiar with SQL Server Management Studio and that you know your way around databases and objects. 1. Click Start , point to All Programs , point to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 , and then click SQL Server Management Studio . 2. In the Connect to Server window, click SQL Server Authentication in the Authentication list, and then type the sa user name and sa password. Click Connect. 3. In Object Explorer, double-click Databases. Right-click the database from which you want to export the data...

Strategies to gear up for the future My new article is out on MSDynamicsWorld.com! This article focuses on the coming shifts in priorities inside IT departments running Microsoft Dynamics GP. The article is based on some of the strategic initiatives coming out of Redmond and carried around to customers and partners over the last few months. You can read the full article here . Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

Ok! For those of you who are familiar with me, you may know that I don't blush too often (or maybe is a bit difficult to tell... ehem!), but this morning I woke up to the news that I am number 82 among DynamicsWorlds's 100 most influential people within the Microsoft Dynamics community for 2009. I have the honor to share this spot with some truly awesome people: MVP Mark Polino , MVP Leslie Vail, Richard Whaley, and MVP Monzer Osama. Now back to work! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

I have been a Microsoft Dynamics GP consultant for more than a decade now and have always found that a big point of contention (and confusion) during the implementation of Sales Order Processing in any environment has always been selecting whether posting accounts will default from the customer or from the item for the effects of creating an accounting distribution for transactions entered and processed. From a business perspective... Typically, organizations use one of these two criteria -- there may be many more -- for reporting profitability: by customer or by product, these two terms used in the broader sense. Posting Accounts From can be found the Sales Order Processing Setup window by going to MSDGP > Tools > Setup > Sales > Sales Order Processing Accounting wise, Customer may refer to a segment in the chart of accounts that represent geographical market location (for example, sales territories, regions; or domestic customers vs international customers), or specific ...

5 suggestions to prepare for the economic recovery In his new article on MSDynamicsWorld , MVP Frank Hamelly provides insight on what your company should be doing NOW to take full advantage of the economic rebound. Frank asks " In an economic downturn, layoffs inevitably occur, leaving many companies more lean than they've been in years. While that's great when business volume is down, what happens when activity increases? ". The question is, is your organization prepared? Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

You outta love technology! Kindles have certainly improved the way people interact with the written word. If you can't be away from that important troubleshooting tip, need a script that is only found here, or simple have a good read while you are waiting at the airport for that flight that will take you to your client's site, now you can catch my blog on Amazon Kindle . It's risk free—all Kindle Blog subscriptions start with a 14-day free trial. You can cancel at any time during the free trial period. If you enjoy your subscription, do nothing and it will automatically continue at the regular monthly price. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, MVP, MCP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

As you may know, I have been working with Support Debugging Tool since the pre-release of build 9 and have been a contributor to the development and beta testing of the product since that time. Today marks the release of Build 11, the third installment of the product, in a marathonic 130-hour development effort by my friend David Musgrave . Read what David has to say and the myriad of enhancements introduced in this build in his release notes article. The focus of this post is the new Company Colour Coding feature. I am very excited about this feature for many reasons, but I will highlight two scenarios where I find it highly valuable: 1) With the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 came the release of the Single Document Interface (SDI) . SDI is a method of organizing graphical user interface applications into individual windows that the operating system's window manager handles separately. A window does not have a "background" or "parent" window cont...

The Microsoft Dynamics GP Product Management and Marketing team has published some performance stats that are good enough reasons to upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 if you are a Microsoft Dynamics GP customer running SQL Server 2005 or even SQL Server 2000 . Their stats revolve around the use of SQL Server 2008's row compression and page compression features and their ability to save a good amount of storage space. Don't forget that the vardecimal storage format, the predecesor of row compression and page compression, was made available in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP2 and can be enabled to save data storage once you understand all its capabilities. For more information on vardecimal storage format check the following article: Microsoft Technet: Reducing Database Size by Using Vardecimal Storage Format For more information on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 row compression and page compression features visit the following articles: Microsoft Technet: Creating Compressed Ta...

MVP Mark Polino , in his new MSDynamicsWorld article narrates his adventures with Microsoft Dynamics GP v10 navigation bar . Mark says of the feature " Because it's combined with easy drill back, it's changing the way I use Dynamics GP and it's changing the way I show clients how to use it ". If you are still romanced (and glued) to the menu toolbar, I can understand the sentiment, but let me use another phrase that I have been hearing lately: "that's so 90's!". If you want to follow Mark's adventures with the navigation pane and lists, take a look at his articles from his Weekly Dynamic series: Module Homepages in Dynamics GP 10 My grand UI experiment for GP Navigation Pane, Lists and Financial Data Sales and Lists Navigation, Lists, and Project Accounting Feel free to drop Mark a comment on any of these articles and be sure to start your journey away from the Dynamics GP toolbar. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MIS, MCP Maximum Globa...

I am amazed at the useful little things you can find out without even trying too hard. Many times I ask users to provide me with the build number of their Dynamics GP dictionary or SmartList dictionary and, whether because of lack of familiarity with the product or simply the amount of information found around the Dynamics GP application set, this task can become a bit confusing. Typically, you would click on Help > About Microsoft Dynamics GP to access dictionary build numbers under the About window, as shown in this picture. Most dictionary information can be found below the Version Information section of the window. However, if you are an overall systems administrator and need to provide this same information to a support engineer you can do the same with the following steps: 1) Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the Dynamics GP installation folder, typically located under Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics\GP 2) Method 1 : mouse hover the Dynamics dictionary (or any ...