GPUG Summit 2013

Its that time of the year – start planning for GPUG Summit 2013. Everything GPUG is great value if you work with Dynamics GP, and the summit is the pinnacle of all the good work they do through out the year.

• More than 150 interactive breakout sessions, most led by fellow Dynamics GP users, which provide many opportunities for group discussion… Arrive with questions and leave with answers and solutions!
• Distinct learning tracks—ranging from Financial and HR/Payroll to Strategic and New to Dynamics GP—so you can focus on what’s most important to you.
• Plentiful opportunities to network, interact with and learn from others who, like you, use Dynamics GP every day.
• Stirring keynote presentations that will inspire you to accomplish great things.
• Optional activities, such as pre-conference training through GPUG Academy, to get the most from your GPUG Summit experience.

GPUG Pre-Game General Session

The GPUG Pre-Game general session came in with some nice announcements – most importantly – Dynamics GP 2013 SP1 will be available mid April.

Jesse Byam, Etelligent Solutions, Inc set things off. Canadian guy in shorts, in freezing weather, certain thing - nobody got bored.

 

Jay Manley – took over with the important announcements.

Kim Peterson- came in to start the MVP session

 

The MVPs tacking the questions

• Belinda Allen
• Frank Hamelly
• Mark Polino
• Mariano Gomez
• Leslie Vail

 

 

I was thrilled to be in such fantastic company, and we took upon interesting questions ranging from – “What keeps you up at night” to “Impact of new limited users”.

Also announced was the shiny new GPUG Community site - http://community.gpug.com

RapidStart for Dynamics GP–A must see set of tools

Imagine configuring new companies in Dynamics GP in minutes rather than hours or days. In the Rapid Implementation session at (GPUG Pre-Game) – Jay, Gloria and Scott showed how they have done this in the past few months. Dynamics GP has great new tools for speeding up configurations, migrations for new implementations – RapidStart. Microsoft is going to start marketing this tool heavily, so make sure you are up to speed with the tool!

This session had the following stalwarts -

• Jay Manley (Sr. Product Manager – Microsoft)
• Gloria J. Braunschweig, (CMA President)
• Scott Dimmick (Practice Manager – Tribridge)

 

Naturally, the seasoned Dynamics GP consultants would go – well that would only work in some cases. And, you would be absolutely right! What I loved in Rapid start was the ability to create templates that you could reuse across industries.

RapidStart comes with inbuilt integrations for Quickbooks, Peachtree and excel templates that can be used with other software.

 

However, this being the first version there are some caveats -

• Not all modules are supported (project accounting / canadian payroll, australian GST to name a few )
• The tool does a complete sync of all setups supported (not a partial sync)

Still it would be a great starting point, and all GP Partners should be looking at this. Get the tool for FREE at 

RapidStart Download Page
https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/deployment/resources/migrationtools/MSDGP2013RapidStart

For more information about the Rapid Implementation Tools, please visit
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4071

Gloria has written a book on Rapid Implementation – check it out at http://rapidimplementation.com/

ERP Software Blog has a video at

 

RapidStart for GP 2013