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Friday, July 30, 2010

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.

 

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

 

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Set that up

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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.

 

 

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

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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.

 

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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

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

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 -

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

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

4.  OFFICE INTEGRATION (143 Sub-Items)

Some sample posts -

5. DEVELOPMENT (470 Sub-Items)

6. GP USER INFO (190 Sub-Items)

7. GP TECH INFO (249 Sub-Items)

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

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 DownloadsGP 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) 

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!

Monday, July 26, 2010

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 -

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

Friday, July 23, 2010

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!

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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

Monday, July 19, 2010

Business Portal Installation Problem ? Is your server named “BP” ?

A couple of people have posted in the newsgroups about installation problems with Business Portal when their server was named “BP”

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.greatplains&tid=a188f752-12c4-41ca-aeb6-9a04a2de95ab&cat=&lang=&cr=&sloc=&p=1

Renaming the server, reinstalling MOSS fixes the problem. As Tom points out, and I did a quick check – there isn’t really anything in the documentation warning against naming the server “BP”.

I guess things can’t really go right for you, if you are named BP nowadays. :)

Friday, July 16, 2010

Analytical Accounting Alias Feature

Aliases for Dimension codes was a cool new feature that was added in GP 10 Feature pack. (You can create a grouping of Analytical Accounting Transaction Dimension codes as defaults when entering analytical information on a transaction similar to the account alias in General Ledger. A default combination of transaction dimension codes will help increase speed and accuracy for data entry and enable users to create more than a single set of defaults for the transaction dimensions.)

The world Before AA Alias – You had to manually select the dimension codes.

In some cases you could set Dimension codes as  defaults, but that had a very limited use.

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Enter AA Alias

Open the window from Cards >> Financial >> Analytical Accounting >> Alias

Set the defaults.

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The Magical World with AA Alias!

When you open the AA Window, the cursor is already placed on the Alias field. All you have to do is enter the Alias, and it would fill all the dimension codes for you. Excuse my dramatization, but I am sure anybody who has spent more than an hour entering transactions with AA codes would share my enthusiasm!

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While writing this post I searched the custom GP Blog Search Engine at www.gpwindow.com and found another great post about this feature by CVAKumar. So I saved some time I would have spent in discussing how -“You can import alias from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that has been set up in the required format.” Check out his post !

Note – You need to be on GP 10 SP2 or higher to use this feature.

Related :

See articles about GL Alias Feature below

Weekly Review: Account Alias : http://msdynamicsgp.blogspot.com/2010/04/weekly-review-account-alias.html

Account Alias-Speed up your GL Transaction Entry http://sandipdjadhav.blogspot.com/2010/01/account-alias-speed-up-your-gl.html

Chills

Posts from Steve Chapman are getting some people very excited. Steve posts some of the feedback/spam he has been getting

“I hope that a lot more people read this and get what I got from it: chills.”

No Steve, its not Spam – who wouldn't feel that way about Field Level Security and Word Templates ? :)

Steve, thanks for sharing this and the laughs !

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Forecaster Report does not show the correct data

One of the first things I do when somebody says that their report is not showing the correct data is to run the Restate Process. That solves 99%  of the problems.

The Restate process re-summarizes all accounts in the Rollup hierarchy to reflect your reorganizations. (With the Rollups feature in Forecaster, reorganizing your company's chart of accounts is easy. Rollups are parent-child relationships that control how your posting data summarizes.  You can create Rollups for Accounts, Cost Centers -- or whatever accounting entities you choose to use in your application)

You do not have to run a Restate immediately after changing a Rollup, although it is good practice to do so. However, you must run a Restate to apply any changes you have made to your Rollups as well as to keep your summary data intact.

To Run a Restate

  1. Select Data | Restate from the Program Menu. The Restate dialog box will appear.
  2. Click OK to start the Restate. When Restate is complete, a Restate Summary will appear, displaying the total elapsed time for the Restate.

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If the Restate Process takes too long to finish, you can increase the Optimization Factor to improve the performance.

Log on as an administrator.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
  2. Click the System Settings tab.
  3. Increase the Optimization Factor, and then click OK.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Dynamics GP 9, GP 10, GP 2010 System Requirements, Product Downloads, Service Packs and more

David Musgrave has been maintaining a monster resource at Developing for Dynamics GP, which has

1. System Requirements

2. Product Downloads

3. Upgrade Documentation

4. SDK Links

5. GP Service Pack Links

and more …. for GP 9.0, GP 10.0 and GP 2010 all in one page.

I looked at the page before regarding the Developer KB articles, but just found out that David has been storing all the other valuable information as well. Should definitely save time for that rare occasion when you just cant seem to find the download link you are looking for.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/developingfordynamicsgp/archive/2008/07/15/developer-articles.aspx

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Copying an Integration in Integration Manager

Mariano on his blog points out that the Save As feature in IM has been taken away and the reason.

If you are looking to copy an Integration – you should refer to Mark’s blog entry -

Weekly Dynamic: Copy an Integration with a New Source

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

New Dynamics GP Book

MVP Mark Polino has just announced that his Dynamics GP Book, is available from Amazon - Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Cookbook.

Mark has been the pioneer of the Dynamics GP Community online for many years. It takes a lot to be a Dynamics GP Consultant – keeping track of various customers, their implementations,  requirements, and often some travelling. Mark has been managing that and also contributing to the GP Community, and been recognized by Microsoft as a Most Valuable Professional for his contributions.

Now to top all that, Mark has managed to write a book, reviewed with high praise by fellow Microsoft MVPs. How does one guy do all that ?

I think there are three Mark Polino’s -

1. One of them works as a GP consultant, goes home and takes his kids out to beaches and games. He mentors them to go and do charity in Africa.

2. The second one is a blogger who has published over 2000 posts with Dynamics GP news, tips and tricks in the last couple of years. He publishes a GP Podcast(GPRocks) and maintains a GP Youtube channel(DynamicsSherpa). This Mark Polino is also famous for the most popular 50 tips session at convergence.

3. The third one has been working on a book with over 400 pages of Dynamics GP tips and tricks, covering the latest GP release GP 2010 launched earlier this year.

Yes, there are 3 Mark Polino’s, that is the only explanation that makes sense to me.