Never Warp your Brain with Time Zone Math Again !

An excellent new website – www.everytimezone.com shows the time in various time zones. Should be handy setting up a conference call with people in different time zones.

 

GPWindow is like a Supermarket for Dynamics GP (only everything is Free!)

In Steve Krug’s highly recommended book on Usability - “Don’t Make me Think”, Krug compares Searching vs. Browsing a website to the difference between asking a clerk for help and simply walking through the aisles in a supermarket, until you find what you're looking for.

Here’s the flow chart from Krug’s book -

Finding GP Information on GPWindow.com -

1. For people who look for Department Signs and walk the aisles (Browse the Categories)

You can review the 200+ categories in GP Window, and browse straight to the top content in a category.

I highly recommend using “CTRL + F” to look for a category. In the introductory post on GPWindow.com I had listed the Top Categories and some of the top posts in those categories.

2. For People who ask the clerk (Use Search).

You can search using Custom Search Engine which is prominent on every page in GPWindow. You will be shown results from the Dynamics GP MVPs and experts. As only GP Specific websites are indexed by this search engine your chances of finding a relevant result are higher.

Personally, I almost always ask the clerks, on my first time in a supermarket, and then love going straight to the departments . Rubal rarely asks even if she has to walk up and down the aisles many times (she likes the categories)!

Management Reporter Installation Guides, and a Gift

I am going to gift you something today – “Time”.

Before you get started with the Management Report Install make sure you have the following installed on IIS -  

1. IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility Feature for IIS 7
2. ASP.Net
3. WCF HTTP Activation

Two other things to keep in mind before you get started

1. Management Reporter requires a domain (thanks to Tina for the link)
2. Management Reporter would not work with GP 10, it only works with GP 2010

Here’s the gift – Read the Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP: Installation, Migration, and Configuration Guides, and read them carefully. Its a little overwhelming with about 34 files, but you just need about 5  –

These are the files you should be getting, if you have a US Install (Otherwise take the other files on the same page)-

1. System Requirements for Management Reporter - MRSystemRequirements_ENUS.pdf
2. Installation Guide for Management Reporter  - MRforDynERPInstGuide_ENUS.pdf
3. Migrating from FRx 6.7 to Management Reporter - MRforDynERPMigrfromFRxGuide_ENUS.pdf
4. Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP Data Provider Configuration Guide - MRforDynERPDataProvInstGuide_ENUS.pdf
5. Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP Readme - MRv2Readme_ENUS.pdf

Recently there was a question in the newsgroups about a Management Reporter feature, so I thought it would be good if I had the latest version running on my PC. It would only take a few minutes I thought, and I quickly glanced through the System requirements, Readme and the installation guide and launched the setup.

I knew I needed IIS, I set that up and then proceeded with the install – getting quite a few errors because I missed the parts above in the System Requirements - 

IIS 6 Metabase compatibility role must be installed with IIS 7.0. I missed this and got the following error.

 

Easy enough, I set that up - Under Program and Features opened up “Turn Windows Features on or off”

Ran the installed again and got the – Management Report application service requires that ASP.NET be enabled

 

 

Set that up

Then I got the following error – WCF HTTP Activation be enabled in the Microsoft .Net Framework features. At this point, I was ready to kick myself. I was reading the installation guide again and again, but these 3 items were in the system requirements document.

 

 

 

After that I got this error – and understood that this was not going to happen on my PC. Shifting over to a VPC.

 

 

Another error that my colleague Tina mailed me about was the “Invalid version of GP or invalid database”'

Management Reporter only works with GP 2010, it doesn’t work with GP 10.

 

 

 

I’ve added the Install Guides and other Management Reporter Installation posts under the Management Report Installation Category on GPWindow http://www.gpwindow.com/REPORTING/MANAGEMENT_REPORTER/Installation/

Here’s a nice Management Reporter Server Install Guide - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dynamicscpm/archive/2010/01/15/installing-the-management-reporter-server.aspx

GPWindow.com – Thousands of GP Tips and Tricks from All MVPs and Experts

For a while now, we have had the custom GP Custom Search engine which searched handpicked Dynamics GP Blogs. Now you have an easy to remember Address for this Search Engine-  www.GPWindow.com.

In addition to the Search Engine, the GP Articles by various MVPs and Experts have been organized by categories, for people who like browsing rather than searching. There are over 6000 articles in various categories. The topics are ranked based on their importance based on how often they are recommended by other GP Experts.

As of today, there are 6169 articles organized into various GP categories like  - 

1. TIPS AND TRICKS BY MODULES (782 Sub-Items) 

In this category, right on the top you will see Mark Polino’s extremely famous “50 MORE Tips in 50 Minutes” presentation. Under the main Tips and Tricks category, you can find hundreds of great tips for each module like -

• Under Multicurrency Management (17 Sub-Items) you will see Effects of disabling Multicurrency Management by Mariano Gomez amongst other tips.
• Under PM (Payables Management) you will see the fantastic It's "Payables Management" NOT "Invoices I need to pay" by Belinda Allen and many other tips
• Under GP Budgets (26 Sub-Items) you will see tips like the one on GP Budgets by Frank Hamelly
• Under RM (Receivables Management) you will see posts like Michael Johnson’s post about Automatic Aging for GP
• Posts about Manufacturing by Waqas Butt and the GL Trial Balance Script by Steve Gray in the GL (General Ledger) Tips category
• Post on Revenue and Expense Deferral by Duke Del Prado

 

2. REPORTING (531 Sub-Item) which includes MANAGEMENT REPORTER, SmartList Builder, Report Writer and so on.

• You will see a post about the The Future of FRx and Management Reporter (for Dynamics GLs) by Jan Harrigan
• Using the built-in Report Writer Functions by Microsoft Expert David Musgrave
• The Feature of the Day: Drill Down Builder described at the official Dynamics GP Blog which is maintained by Andy, Pam, Errol and others in the Dynamics GP Team
• Metrics: Gross Profit for the Past 12 Months Calculation Method and many other metrics by M Daoud
• Excellent Posts about Crystal Reports by Victoria Yudin and others

3.  A category for the red hot SUPPORT DEBUGGING TOOL under TOOLS FOR GP (102 Sub-Items)

• Here you will find the Support Debugging Tool Portal which is regularly updated and maintained by  David Musgrave. This is also one of the most recommended links on GPWindow.
• See other posts about Rapid Migration and Implementation Tools (18 Sub-Items) and Professional Service Tools (9 Sub-Items) by Leslie Vail and Mariano.

4.  OFFICE INTEGRATION (143 Sub-Items)

Some sample posts -

• Here you will see Posts on Excel Report Builder by Devon Southhall, and Janakiram MP.
• There are posts on Dynamics GP 2010 - Word Templates by Vaidy Mohan under the Word Templates category .
• Want your GL Trial Balance in Excel? by Belinda Allen
• Post about OLE Attachments and GP by Andy Nifong

5. DEVELOPMENT (470 Sub-Items)

• Visual Basic for Applications workshop by Mariano Gomez in the VBA category
• Developer Articles & Links by David Musgrave
• Information about VS Tools for GP by Patrick Roth from Microsoft.
• A note about Deploying Chunk Files by CVAKumar under DEVELOPMENT: Dexterity 
• Great Plains Developer Resource List by David Patrick

6. GP USER INFO (190 Sub-Items)

• Here you will find the Month End and Year-End procedures with posts like Don't you go closing my year... by Christina Phillips and Partial Month End Module Closing by Mark Polino.
• All the details about Moving from Work to Open to History by Leslie Vail.
• Other articles about Printing/Printers (Printing Multiple Documents Easily by Frank Hamelly and lots of other tips), Posting(How to automatically send all posting reports to screen in Microsoft Dynamics GP by Mariano Gomez, Transaction vs. Batch Posting by Mark Polino)
• Articles about Reconcile (How do I reconcile a cash account with no transactions for the period – by Frank Hamelly), Checklinks (“How does Check Links work?” by Mariano Gomez)
• and Taxes (Posts on Sales Tax by Frank Hamelly, Use Tax by Mark Polino among others )

7. GP TECH INFO (249 Sub-Items)

This category would be useful for people who support or implement Dynamics GP. It has information about

• GP on Citrix/Terminal Server – with articles like Steve Endow’s Making the Dynamics GP User ID field blank on Terminal Servers
• Support LifeCycle for GP – The useful When does my GP product’s support end? page by Victoria Yudin
• System Requirements for GP 10,  GP 2010 and more
• Posts and resources on Dynamics GP Scalability

8. DOWNLOADS (30 Sub-Items)

Hopefully this section will save everybody a lot of time. Here you will find the latest links for Dynamics GP Release Downloads, FRx Downloads,  GP Service Pack Downloads, IM Downloads and Management Reporter Download

My favorite link here is the Dynamics GP Product Downloads and Service Pack Links maintained and kept current by David Musgrave

9. MANAGEMENT/CONSULTING

Here you will find Consultants Sell article by Martin from eOne Solutions, and lots of excellent articles by Dwight Specht like “I did my job” – “Yeah, but we suck” , Managing in a Downturn, Bad Client! Bad, Bad Client!,  Evaluation of Consulting Staff and many others.

10. GP 3RD PARTY SOLUTIONS / ISVs (188 Sub-Items)

Here you will find some product information including information about Free Dynamics GP Addon’s by Matt Landis and company.

11. SQL SCRIPTS (217 Sub-Items)

Here you will find the Useful SQL Scripts Series by David Musgrave and other scripts by Mariano, Mark, Victoria, M Daoud and Ron Wilson at Real Life Dynamics User Blog. You can find more than 200 scripts under various modules.

12. SECURITY IN GP (121 Sub-Item) 

• Here you will find the Why does Microsoft Dynamics GP encrypt passwords? and the excellent Microsoft Dynamics GP Application Level Security Series by David Musgrave along with other articles on security. 
• Going into specifics under Field Level Security (6 Sub-Items) you will find a post on Simple Field Level Security by Steve Chapman.
• There’s also a great post on Audit Trail codes – different prefix’s in different companies Microsoft Dynamics GP by Ian Stewart.

More

This site is all Dynamics GP, so you would see a category for Dex.ini Settings (with excellent posts from Leslie Vail, Mariano and Mark ) and one for Reports.dic under SUPPORT (TECHNICAL) (438 Sub-Items) .

N0tes -

1. There are over 200 categories so I highly recommend using “CTRL + F” to look for a category.
2. There are over 6000 articles, the articles above are just a small selection from each category. I was also trying to keep a healthy mix of articles from all GP Experts. Please dig into a category to find out more articles. Over the next few months I will try and detail out the most popular articles in each category.

Thank you notes !

Thanks to David Musgrave for noticing and promoting the Custom GP Blog Search, which lead to GPWindow.com, and for his excellent review. Thanks to Vaidy for taking out time to review the website in detail, and staying up late to give his feedback in a busy week. Thanks to Mariano Gomez, the GP expert with the big heart, for passing on good words about GPWindow. Thanks to Mark Polino and M Daoud for their feedback.

Thanks to my good friend Evgeny for his techie magic. Thanks to Rubal, the idea-machine, for suggesting a URL and the directory, she already has ideas about the next version. Thanks to Kuldeep for telling me every Monday morning- “You know, I’ll tell you the truth - the website looked pretty average last week, but now it ROCKS! It looks very useful now!”, and after reading this post telling me “You know I like the site, and I like your post about it, but the Thank you notes are a little cheesy!” He said it was perfect, when I told him, the only name I could take out was his name.

Thanks to Chetna for volunteering to spend time in reviewing the website and checking meticulously if there was any missing data, to Tina for her keen eye pointing out all the things that didn’t work, to Richard and Belinda for their encouragement and humor!

Feedback and Next Steps -

1. Use the website, Search or Directory, whatever you prefer. If you have trouble finding a download link, try looking it up in the Downloads category, if you are searching for a SQL Script, try using the search. If GPWindow helps, let me know or spread the word.
2. If you go into a category and notice an old article missing, please shoot me a line. Because of the sheer volume of the articles there could be some articles missing from their appropriate categories. 
3. Do see any categories missing ? or any categories that are difficult to find ?
4. Any other feedback your might have – add it as a comment to this blog or shoot an email.

Hopefully GPWindow will help you find the extremely valuable articles created by people in the GP community ! Good Luck!

Dynamics GP Whitepapers

Mariano Gomez has pointed out that the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Architecture Whitepaper is now available for download from Microsoft Download Center. Check out the document topics and download link at  - http://dynamicsgpblogster.blogspot.com/2010/07/microsoft-dynamics-gp-2010-architecture.html

David Musgrave has also referred to this and added links for other useful whitepapers -

• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 White Paper: Choosing a Development Tool
• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 White Paper: Using a .NET Assembly from a Dexterity-based Application
• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 White Paper: Accessibility for People with Disabilities
• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 White Paper: Recording Test Cases with the Macro System

See details at - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/developingfordynamicsgp/archive/2010/07/26/microsoft-dynamics-gp-2010-white-papers.aspx

I looked over to the GP Whitepapers section at GPWindow and found some other useful whitepapers.

http://www.gpwindow.com/GP_PRODUCT_INFO/Whitepapers/

Christina Phillips at Dynamics GP Land has posted links to a lot of white-papers that she uses with a brief description.

• Microsoft Dynamics GP and SQL Server 2008
• Planning for Security in GP 10
• Deploying Microsoft Dynamics GP 10 in a Multinational Environment
• Strategies for Multi-Entity Environments in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10
• Achieving Compliance Objectives in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10

Check them out at http://dynamicsgpland.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-papers-aplenty.html

Waqas Butt has also linked to a few of these whitepapers with their links, which has been highlighted by M. Daoud. Others include GP VAT 2010 White Paper via Dynamics GP UK Blog and an Extender Whitepaper.

More White Papers

As Christina points out -

You can find many more white papers through Deployment>>White Papers on PartnerSource, or through Documentation>>White Papers on CustomerSource

There are about 50 Dynamics GP Whitepapers including a new whitepaper on “Rapid Implementation Tools v2.0 for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010” available. Some others that stood out  -

• 1,000 Concurrent User Scalability White Paper
• Integrated Innovation -- Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Office White Paper
• IAS Compliance White Paper Microsoft Dynamics GP
• Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0
• Implementing Business Portal in an Extranet Environment White Paper
• Building a Human Resources Portal using Business Portal White Paper
• Building a Sales Portal Using Business Portal White Paper

Some of these are available at MSDN Dynamics GP Development Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/gp/bb676877.aspx

Dynamics GP Videos

Martin at eOne Dynamics GP blog points to a new version of Andy and Errol’s presentation of Dynamics GP at WPC 2010. Martin is kind enough to tell everybody the best part is between 8 and 20 minutes!

Checks out lots more GP Videos at http://www.gpwindow.com/GP_MEDIA/GP_VIDEOS/

My favorites -

Dynamics GP Snacks  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/gp/archive/2010/07/02/all-snacks-now-available.aspx

Dynamics Sherpa Videos by Mark Polino http://dynamicsherpa.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc

Getting started with VST: "Hello World!" - The Video by Mariano Gomez http://dynamicsgpblogster.blogspot.com/2009/07/getting-started-with-vst-hello-world_24.html

Microsoft Dynamics GP Product Demos  http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/gp/product/demos.mspx

Dynamics GP Webcasts http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/community/ondemand_webcasts.mspx#EWC

Project Accounting Overview Videos http://www.rosebizinc.com/gpblog/2010/04/project-accounting-overview-videos.html 

Hopefully, these will keep you entertained over the weekend.

Microsoft has a record Quarter, 4% increase in Dynamics Revenue

About 175 million licenses of Window 7 have been sold since the product was released last year, making it the fastest selling version of Windows.

Microsoft’s revenue total of $16.04 billion surpassed the $15.27 billion predicted by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters and arrived on 22 percent sales growth.

In addition, Microsoft posted a 48 percent rise in net income to $4.52 billion, or 51 cents a share, from the $3.05 billion, or 34 cents a share in the comparable period last year. Analysts had expected earnings of 46 cents a share.

See Microsoft's official statement here.

For the three months ended June 30, 2010, Business revenue increased $326 million or 8%, primarily reflecting licensing of the 2010 Microsoft Office system to transactional business customers, growth in multi-year licensing revenue and a 4% increase in Microsoft Dynamics revenue.

News Coverage :

Windows Upgrade Helps Microsoft to a Record Quarter : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/technology/23soft.html?_r=1&src=busln

Microsoft profits hit $4.5bn on Windows 7 sales : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10733851