Amber Bell’s ‘Discovering Dynamics GP Features that Add Value Now’ Presentation

Decisions 2010, an excellent presentation by Amber Bell. Covered a lot in quick time -

• GP 10 List Feature
• Excel Export Solutions in SmartList – Pretty cool ! One of the lesser used features of Dynamics GP.
• Read more about it on Mark Polino’s Blog and Steve Chapman’s Blog
• SmartList Builder and Excel Report Builder
• Reviewing Live GP Data in Excel – Data Links. Can be setup from Setup > System > Reporting Tools Setup 
• Letter Writing Assistant in GP 10

Amber pointed to the GP Tips and Tricks articles on her website at – http://www.calszone.com/client-resources/gp-tips-tricks/

Presentation should be available online tomorrow evening at http://decisions.msdynamicsworld.com/

Mariano Gomez’s Dynamics GP Security Administration

Just attended Mariano’s excellent Decisions 2010 Presentation. Mariano spoke about the Support Debugging Tool

• Gave a background and history of the tool.
• Explained the standard and advanced mode features
• Recommended Configuration
• Security Profiler in Support Debugging Tool
• Executing Dexterity commands
• XML Table export/import for transferring security records (Useful for transferring from Test to Production)
• Gave an overview of other Support Debugging Tool features

I was hoping there would be a video demonstration at some point, and I think his slides planned for it, but might have been a technical difficultly.

I believe this would be available on Demand soon. Do check it out!

Review more information about the Support Debugging tool here http://blogs.msdn.com/developingfordynamicsgp/pages/support-debugging-tool.aspx

Decisions 2010 – Booths and Dynamics GP Sessions

The booths are pretty cool, as good as it gets close to the real thing. You can talk to the people involved, there are further resources to check out the products, and prizes and contests thrown in as well.

Dynamics GP Sessions at Decisions 2010

 

Details with Time here - http://decisions.msdynamicsworld.com/product/gp/sessions

Microsoft Dynamics GP Security Administration
Mariano Gomez (60 min)

Using What You've Got: Discovering the Dynamics GP Features That Add Value Now
Amber Bell (30 min)

Using What You've Got: Discovering the Dynamics GP Features That Add Value Now
Amber Bell (30 min)

Are You Ready for Your Next Audit with Microsoft Dynamics GP?
Jeff McDowell (30 min)

Fast Close for Dynamics GP
Mark Polino (60 min)

Sharpen the Axe—Enhance Your Dynamics GP Skills and Get Noticed
Frank Hamelly (30 min)

 

The Networking Lounge

 

Decisions 2010 is Underway

Pretty cool concept.

See Mark Polino and Mariano Gomez highlighted below :)

Dynamics GP Professional Tools Security

GP Professional Tools Library requires the user to be logged in as ‘sa’.

The tools that specifically require this are -

• Toolkit
• Database Disabler
• Customer Modifier
• Customer Combiner
• Customer Name Modifier
• Item Number Modifier
• Item Number Combiner
• Vendor Modifier
• Vendor Combiner
• Vendor Name Modifier
• Login/User Generator
• Account Modifier/Combiner
• Salesperson Modifier
• Territory Modifier
• Territory Combiner

This is often a problem with customers as administrators don’t like giving out the sa password to end users, who could be running a tool like say Customer Combiner.  Right now, Administrators have the option to go up to the users and log them in every time they want to use these tools, or give them the sa password.

In Microsoft’s SQL Server Security Best Practices, Microsoft recommends -

· Do not manage SQL Server by using the sa login account; assign sysadmin privilege to a knows user or group.

· Rename the sa account to a different account name to prevent attacks on the sa account by name.

As of now, if you are using the Professional Tools Library, you have to use the sa login. You cannot use DYNSA, or any other user with sysadmin rights.

You would simply get the message - “You must be logged in as ‘sa’ to utilize this Utility”

Or maybe, I am missing something here …

Vote for this feature to be implemented,  fliehigh had put this as a product suggestion in May 2008 - https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamics/feedback/details/347992/gp-professional-service-tools-security

SQL Server 2008 R2 (Code name Kilimanjaro) with GP 10

An Important note if you are planning to setup GP 10 with the recently released SQL Server 2008 R2 - Service Pack 5 for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 required. Service Pack 5 is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2010.

You would get the error - “your current SQL Server is not a supported version” if you try to install GP 10 with SQL 2008 R2. 

 

GP 2010 is supported out of the box - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition

SQL Server 2008 has better support and integration for the PowerPivot feature in Office 2010 among many other things. People have reporting using PowerPivot with large amount of data. Microsoft says that with enough memory, 100 million rows can be imported.

Some other really cools things about SQL Server 2008 R2

1. SQL Server 2008 R2 can now scale with Windows Server 2008 R2 up to 256 logical processors.

2. Utility Control Point, which enables a centralized view of SQL Server instances and database applications and their utilization across the designated managed server group

3. Utility Explorer that provides a tree view of the servers, and a dashboard with summary information on the servers.

4. A new Unicode compression scheme, USC-2, can save up to 50% of storage requirements with Unicode data.

Check out the SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack here

Video

Microsoft seems to be producing nice videos about everything – See R2 Videos here -  http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/tour/en/videos.aspx

Office 2010 and Dynamics GP

With Office 2010 going to retain stores this week, a lot of questions are coming up about upgrading to Office 2010 from Dynamics GP Users.  Office 2010 has already been released to partners and via Technet, and is getting good reviews.

Preston Gralla from PC World writes -

“I review plenty of software packages throughout the course of a year, and it's rare that I come across one that I believe will truly make a difference in the way that I work or use my computer. This is one of those times.”

I recommend you check out the review, highlights the outstanding features of Office 2010, especially Outlook.

Pam at the Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP has highlighted the new features of Excel which would be useful to Dynamics GP Users. PowerPivot and Slices do look wonderful!

“Microsoft Excel 2010 has a number of new features that make information more visual, helping to interpret data easier to avoid overload.  When connected to Dynamics GP, Excel empowers people by delivering new insight into business information making it easier to share and act.  New Excel 2010 features such as Slicers and Sparklines bring numbers to life

PowerPivot  for Excel 2010 is super cool and has a huge value to Dynamics GP customers.  Mash data together from Dynamics GP, Dynamics CRM, and other data sources and create graphs and charts against your key business metrics in one place.  This is a must do.  Check it out.”

Dynamics GP 2010 and Office 2010 (Supported)

As per the GP 2010 System Requirements the supported version of Office with GP 2010 are -

Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2010

Note –

1. Based on the feedback from users and a Microsoft tech looks like the Email Functionality in GP 2010 is not compatible with Office 64 bit at this point. It does work seamlessly with the Office 32 bit version.

2. If you want to use Word templates with Office 2007, you need to install the GP 2010 work add-0n

Dynamics GP 10 and Office 2010 (Not supported)

As per the GP 10 System Requirements the supported versions of Office are -

Microsoft Office XP
Microsoft Office 2003
Microsoft Office 2007

Although based on Mariano’s testing last year with the Office 2010 beta, he didn’t run into any problems .

I am currently running Microsoft Dynamics GP v10 Service Pack 4 on Windows 7 Enterprise. Upon launching Dynamics GP I thought I would encounter my first issue with the Home Page perhaps not being able to address the new version of Microsoft Outlook 2010 components.
However, it seems that Microsoft Office development team made a conscious effort to preserve the COM automation interfaces for compatibility with other applications that have come to rely on these objects. Next step involved testing SmartList exports to Microsoft Excel 2010 and Microsoft Word 2010. I went ahead and selected the Account Summary SmartList and click the Export to Excel button. The test completed successfully …

We’ve just setup Office 2010 on a couple of workstations and haven’t  run into any problem with Smartlist exports either. I will post my notes of more testing later.

However, if you want to go the correct  route and get Office 2010, you should start planning your GP 2010 upgrade. Most people already are.

Video

The Next Wave of Business Productivity: Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Dynamics