The Dynamics GP Blogster

I have been swamped lately working on 3 different projects, and it's been difficult to get back to blogging as often as I am used to. However, this week I found myself with an interesting situation where my client needed to import a customer master list into GP, but was migrating from a system that autoassigned an internal key to each customer record. My client wanted to move away from this "unique internal number" to an alphanumeric nomenclation similar to that of Fabrikam, for example, Aaron Fitz would have a customer ID of AARONFIT0001. They thought it was a very intuitive way of identifying customers and that it would serve the AR staff well. The customer data was staged in a SQL database and the goal was to create a query that will assign these customer IDs based on the customer name. So, here is the solution: AutoCustomerID.sql -- Created by Mariano Gomez, MVP SELECT -- evaluates the 9 first characters of the customer name and removes any blanks -- other characte...

As mentioned in my earlier post, See you at Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 , I would provide details of the sessions that David and I will be presenting. So here they, please make sure you attend these sessions as we have some great material to show you. CSGP28 - Microsoft Dynamics GP: Customization Tools Unravelled Session Type : Concurrent Session Track : Microsoft Dynamics GP Skill Level : 200 - Intermediate Session Description : If you have plans for a Microsoft Dynamics GP customization and don’t know where to start, or are wary of upgrade issues, then this session is for you. Gain some introductory knowledge of Dexterity, Visual Basic for Applications, Visual Studio Tools, and Extender from two of the leading Community experts. We'll compare and contrast all of the tools and help you sort through the complicated terminology, leaving you with a clear picture of the choices available for your next project. This session will be repeated as CSGPR28 . CSGP29 Tools for Adminis...

Just got off a conference call with some of the Microsoft Dynamics GP executives who announced general availability of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, the highly anticipated new release of Microsoft's ERP solution for the SMB market, on May 1, 2010 -- just five days after Convergence Atlanta event. In preparation for the launch event, Microsoft has scheduled a number of partner roadshow events around 19 cities in the United States, giving partners the opportunity to come in contact with the product and learn the key closing strategies. If you are a Dynamics GP customer, expect a number of partner events that will give you a chance to experience the GP 2010 buzz . Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

"If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.' - Abraham Lincoln" MVP Frank Hamelly quotes Abraham Lincoln in his new MSDynamicsWorld article and presents a tale of sorts to illustrate the importance of keeping your skills "axe" very sharp through training. Frank also discusses the different training options available and how employers and employees can take advantage of these to improve productivity during these difficult times. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

For those of you who had the opportunity to be at last year's Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference and attended the Troubleshooting session presented by David Musgrave and I, you had a preview of the administrative and troubleshooting capabilities available in Build 12 of the Support Debugging Tool . After the tremendous feedback received from YOU at this event and a round of revisions, David Musgrave has released the final version of Support Debugging Tool Build 12 . Please be sure to check out the improved Security Information window, which can now be used as a security explorer if no resource is selected. Security Information window Downloads Support Debugging Tool for Microsoft Great Plains 8.0 Support Debugging Tool for Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 Support Debugging Tool for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 NOTE : The tool is posted on PartnerSource and so can be downloaded by partners. If you are a customer, you will need to obtain the tool through your partner. Any feedba...

You had a chance to review the first set of enhancements in my Part 1 article . Now we will review a second set of features to conclude the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Service Call Management enhancements series. Generate payables vouchers for subcontractor charges You can automatically generate vouchers in Payables Management for subcontractor labor, expenses, or additional charges. The vouchers are created during service call billing. To enable this feature, you must specify a Vendor ID for each subcontractor technician. You also can designate subcontractor service types. Post labor information to U.S. Payroll You can now post labor information from Field Service to U.S. Payroll. New setup options, Payroll Integration and Post to Payroll, are added to the Service Setup window. When these options are activated, Field Service integrates to U.S. Payroll for labor or indirect labor . Payroll transactions can be based on the information that is entered in the Service Call Entry – Labor ...

Recently, a system administrator reported a user getting this error and was asking what could be the possible cause for this. Replicating the error is very simple, and for this, we need a Microsoft Dynamics GP window where many note windows can be entered/opened at once, take for example the Sales Transaction Entry window, which has access to 7 potential notes: the document type, the document number record note, the customer ID record note, the batch ID record note, the site ID record note, the currency ID record note, and the item number record note. If you attempt to access all these notes at a time will prompt the system to error out when attempting to open a 6th note window. Taking advantage of the Windows 7 Aero interface , one could see why an end user will not realize they have 5 note windows opened at once. But now to the technical issue... To display notes -- record level notes -- the Dynamics GP development team has created five forms, righfully called Form_Note_1 , Form_Not...

As I prepare to do more work with the Field Service Series modules, I wanted to blog about a few of the enhancements to the Service Call Management module in the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 . So let's get started. 1. Users now have the ability to automatically move service calls to history when the billing process is complete. I don't know about you, but this one is huge! I did not like the fact that this process had to be done as a routine in Service Call Management, but I guess now is a choice. To enable this feature, the Service Setup - Service window has been provided with a checkmark. *Click image to enlarge 2. Field Service Series has been provided with a Check Links routine! Fi-na-lly! However, a bit of a caution: you should only run check links on the Field Service Series if the reconciliation routines have been run, but the original problem persists. In other words: BACKUP YOUR DATA before your try this. *Click image to enlarge You can choose to run Check Li...

Over at Developing for Dynamics GP , Patrick Roth has a new article describing the new Visual Studio Tools 2010 shiny features , in particular Modal Dialog handling, passing table buffers as parameters, and function and procedure notifications. Patrick also provides sample code showing how to respond to Modal Dialog events as well as code to display notifications. For the most part, VST now behaves likes Dex so, don't complain and enjoy the new enhancements. PS. Wait until you see the new Menus for Visual Studio Tools... sure not to dissapoint. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

"It didn't take long to figure out that the problem wasn't with Business Portal, but rather the way they were trying to use it and NOT using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Both tools have a place in their environment, but one is not a substitute for another" My friend Michael Johnson , a.k.a. "The MBS Guru" has finally come out of hiding and has decided to publish a really clever solution for filtering salesperson-specific data in GP using SSRS over at MSDynamicsWorld. The good thing about Michael's solution is, you can apply it to pretty much any report that requires such type of access and filtering capabilities. They don't call this guy the MBS Guru for nothing! Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Welcome to another weekly edition of the new From the Newsgroups blog entry. This week's topic revolves around Multicurrency POP Receipts and a feature available in GP. As usual, no names will be given out, just the question and the answer. Q: Functional currency is CAN [Ed: Canadian Dollars]. Item has a receipt that was for qty of 6000 each at .62 each USD currency. Vendor is setup as a US vendor. In the fifo layers it shows a receipt for 5999 at .62 each then another line for a qty of 1 at $12.57. Why is the system showing two lines for this receipt and breaking out the exchange all in one line. The exchange should spread over the qty of 6000 not qty 1. We know there is an issue with split receipts when the item has more than 2 decimal points or there is landed cost involved. That is not the case here. This appears to be because of the exchange rate. The response is as follows: A: Good Day. Thank you for using Forums. With your exchange rate, it would appear that you have 600...

Just recently, I fielded a question where the user wanted to group a number of customer invoice transactions in a file based on the invoice date. The file happened to contain invoices downloaded from the billing system in a date range, for example 02/01/2010 - 02/05/2010. They wanted the resulting transaction batches in GP to be something like, AR02012010 AR02022010 AR02032010 AR02042010 AR02052010 This would facilitate analysis by day and to make sure control totals matched those created on a daily basis. The solution involves adding a field script to the batch ID field which in turn reads the transaction date field from the source query and forms the new batch ID with that information: Very simple, but useful script. Keep in mind that you must enable the option to Add Missing batches for the integration as shown below: When the integration is executed, it will create as many AR batches in Microsoft Dynamics GP as unique transaction dates there are in the file. Until next post! MG.- M...

My friend, MVP Mark Polino is hosting a 2-day class from March 1 - 2, 2010 at the IBIS, Inc., offices in Norcross, Georgia (20 minutes north of downtown Atlanta). Mark promises some blood after you leave this class as nothing will hold you back anymore from connecting Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Office Excel -- not my words! Take advantage of this unique opportunity to get some training from one of the best in the business, so click here for more information. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/

Great News! I am going to my first Microsoft Convergence conference as a presenter and will be presenting two concurrent sessions (more on this soon) with my partner in crime, David Musgrave . David and I presented together back in November at the Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2009 and it was a great success. So now, at the Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 , we get a chance to do it again. Here are some Microsoft Dynamics Convergence resources to start gearing up for April: Microsoft Convergence 2010 Atlanta Registration Site - Click here David Musgrave 's Convergence 2010 announcement article - Click here for more info. If you did not get a chance to see MVP Mark Polino at Convergence 2009 in New Orleans, then no worries. He is back with his "50 Tips in 50 Minutes" session this year in Atlanta - Click here for more info. If you are interested in volunteering opportunities at Convergence you need to watch the following video for more information. ht...

After spending a week in Costa Rica enjoying the spectacular beaches and the fabulous weather in San Jose (although my purpose in San Jose was to deliver Microsoft Dexterity training), I thought it was just appropriate to blog about the international features sported by Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 . The bottom line, there are quite a bit of enhancements for the international community, so let's get right to them: 1. VAT Daybook . You will be pleased to know that the VAT daybook has become a feature available for installation to all countries. Since value added taxes are very common across the globe with most countries requiring pretty much the same tracking and reporting capabilities, the good folks at MS have decided to make it available to everyone. For you folks up in Canada, the VAT Daybook can be used to generate the Canadian GST/HST return in electronic format. You can set up the reporting periods for the return as specified by the tax Canada Revenue Agency . You can assign t...

"When I first started using Microsoft Dynamics GP almost twenty years ago... there were limited options for getting help" MVP Victoria Yudin gives an account of her 20-year career history with Microsoft Dynamics GP and how the support landscape has changed over those years. She also gives out some important pointers on how to request help on newsgroups, forums, and even from Microsoft Dynamics GP Support. Be sure to check out her article over at MSDynamicsWorld. Until next post! MG.- Mariano Gomez, MVP Maximum Global Business, LLC http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com