Dynamics,Technology,Partner,Gr computer Dynamics GP Technology Partner: Great Plains Customizations

----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc

We assume that the decision to implement Microsoft DynamicsGP was made in several comparison cycles, where you have seen competitors: SAPBusiness One, Accpac, MAS 90, and you are now ready to begin Dynamics GP customadd-ons implementation, and if these are too expensive or do not exist for yourCorporate ERP business requirements, this small publication should give your GPcustom development perspectives: 1.       DynamicsGP customization specification writing, programming, testing and versionupgrade.  Specification is first step andit often is decisive in the success of failure. We encourage you to involve your Dynamics GP ISV partner in thisprocess.  If you are in partner selectionprocess, please, check with your prospects if they have your industry GP implementationand modification expertise and if they carry in staff Dexterity, eConnectprogrammers with multiple years of coding experience.  For programming and testing phase, based onour experience, we recommend you either to dedicate separate Testing Server ordo QA and Testing on the copy of you GP production company.  Custom logic is often your settings and datadriven and it is too generic to test in GP Lesson Company.  GP Custom Add-on has its own life cycle, mostimportant is to plan its code review for each Dynamics GP version update.  This paragraph was for IT directors, we triedto be not too technical 2.       GreatPlains Customization tools.  Beingmid-market ERP, GP has various tools and modification options.  We will list them here and you will need tocome through others FAQ style articles to get more info on each one to makeyour homework done.  eConnect is perfectnew set of libraries and SDK sample code snippets - if you are experienced oreven probing your after college steps Microsoft Visual Studio C#, VB or other.Net language programmer, you may quickly familiarize yourself to eConnect andmake introduction programming exercises. eConnect allows you to manipulate master objects (Customer, Vendor,Employee, GL Account, Address, etc.) and Work Transactions (SOP Invoice, Order,POP Purchase Receipt, etc.).  MicrosoftDexterity, formerly known as Great Plains Dexterity, it is the shell ofDynamics GP user workstation and it is part of current architecture on the datastructure level.  Dexterity is moreproprietary, comparing to eConnect, for example, and we do not recommend you toconsider programming Dex in-house. Dexterity programmer has complete control over GP objects and such GPAdd-ons as Alba Spectrum Posting Server is coded in Dexterity Sanscript, whereour Software Development Factory Programmers had access to Dex nativeprocedures and functions and that would not be possible in C#, SQL or other nonDexterity programming 3.       IntegrationTools.  Here you should consider eConnectand Dexterity, especially eConnect as integration typically feeds somethinglike Sales Orders and Customers from your ecommerce website, or EDI compliantPurchase Orders.  However, if yourobjective is not customization, but rather pure integration, please reviewDynamics GP Integration Manager module. It was recently redesigned with eConnect connectors, meaning that youcan deploy eConnect logic and performance even if you are not a softwaredeveloper, but rather business logic savvy end user.  Plus in IM you can tweak integration logic inevent driven scripts: before integration (where you set up global parameters,such as date, exchange rate), before document commit (where you check andmodify document parameters before saving them in GP).  With IM you typically expect integration ondemand, meaning that GP user should launch integration manager manually.  It is definitely the most popular way,however you can also schedule IM with Windows macro based third party smallprograms, and we even saw the scenario, when ecommerce computer parts andservice reseller implemented real time IM integration by calling it every 2minutes 4.       DexterityCustom Add-On upgrade.  If your custommodule coded in Dexterity triggers exclusively - you might be lucky in justreapplying Dex chunk file to new version Great Plains workstation.  For the rest of us, especially when you hadto alter existing GP windows, consider some budget for Dex customizationupgrade 5.       Barcodeintegration in retail, wholesale, shipping and receiving, logistics.  Please, refer to our recent articles on thesesubjects.  You should decide on Barcodescanning integration point, plus if you are OK with Batch mode or need realtime Barcoding data upload 6.       EDIIntegrations.  Here you likely have toread these lines if existing Dynamics GP ISV EDI add-on is too expensive or youbelieve that you can program EDI integration in SQL Stored Procedure or simpleeConnect programming 7.       GreatPlains Customization in International Environment.  Please, note that Dexterity is not compatibleat least in its current version 10.0 with Unicode.  If you plan to roll out Dynamics GP in thesubsidiary in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, pleasegive us a call on your possible options. If you plan to implement simple GP interface in European language:Bulgarian, Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbian (when taxcompliance localization requirement is not a concern), you may consider totranslate Dexterity strings from English into your local country language 8.       ConsolidatedGP Reporting.  Here we recommend you todeploy FRx financial reporting with Reporting Trees, Multicurrency 9.       Ifyou need additional help, please call us: 1-866-528-0577, internationally1-630-961-5918, [email protected] or skype: albaspectrum.  We would be happy to give you your industrycase from Great Plains customization and integration perspective, as well as togive you second opinion, if you are not happy with your current Dynamics GPPartner support level