Tips, Tricks & Thoughts on Microsoft Dynamics GP
eConnect error “configured identity is incorrect”
Thursday, May 16, 2013 Integrations, Troubleshooting
A client recently had an issue with their nightly eConnect integrations, getting an error about the username and password.
This integration had been live for nearly 2 years, running every night, and running without issue - or at least without this kind of issue. In other words, fairly stable. They also never touch the service accounts, so the thought that the password might have been changed was nearly impossible.
The Error
The text of the error was:
Error type: Unknown
Code: 1000
Location: e-Connect
User Message: The server process could not be started because the configured identity is incorrect. Check the username and password. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000401A)
Description: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x8000401A): The server process could not be started because the configured identity is incorrect. Check the username and password. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000401A)
The client is using Dynamics GP2010 and the accompanying eConnect version for their integrations.
Troubleshooting
I researched the error the normal way, using "Dr Google" as one of my clients calls it. (My bad, I guess I should say "using Bing!", but alas, old habits die hard). We got many hits on this error but everyone's experience was one of two things:
- You need to use a domain account for the identity (this client already was using a domain account)
- The password must have been changed by someone (this was verified as not the case)
So, we were a little stumped until someone thought to check the Event Viewer on the server. In my role at this client I don't have access to the server on which this integration runs (it doesn't run on the actual GP sql server), so thankfully, one of the clients thought to look there to see if by chance there was more information. Sure enough, the event viewer log was much more specific!
The description in the error was "Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer". In short, the Active Directory account didn't have permission to log onto that server any more - nothing to do with the username or password configuration being incorrect.
At that point we went back to the IT team, and sure enough, they were doing some network and permission clean up in the recent days and inadvertantly removed some groups' "log on as a service" permissions.
The moral of this story? If you get an error, check the event viewer too, to see if there is more specific information there about the error. In this case, it was obvious what the issue was but since no one checked there initially, we wasted a couple of days trying different things first.
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Full vs Light User licenses
Friday, April 5, 2013 Off Topic Articles
This is short and sweet - as I don't usually post "sales" types of things and don't intend to start now!
It's somewhat of a tale of two client scenarios, and advice to those who hear certain things from their clients, and are in a position to recommend license options.
I've got two clients right now both of whom have expressed a need for additional user licenses in the near future. Both of them have decent user bases right now (12 and 16 user licenses respectively). Both of them are running into issues with the maximum number of concurrent users being logged in, at various times of the day or week or month.
Client #1
Client number 1 has been a Dynamics GP client for 10 years, and their accounting department has grown probably double in size since they first implemented GP. They keep hiring and have more and more users using GP every year. Right now they have approximately 25-30 actual GP users set up in the system, and at least half of them are daily, transactional users which need GP open all day long to do their jobs. The other half range from people that do a lot of analysis and reporting, to people who perform tasks more at certain times of the month - monthly expense report entry, for instance. So far a 16 user base has been ok, but over the last few months, as they've hired one or two or three more bodies, they are using all 16 licenses nearly every hour of every day.
With this client, there is very little that can entirely offset the use of Dynamics GP outside of the application via reporting tools, as most of the users in the "non-day-to-day" camp still need in GP to do lots of inquiries, not all of which are easily replaced outside of GP. This client is a perfect example of when they simply need to consider purchasing additional full user licenses to relieve some of the pressure - as well as the inevitable "Can someone log out of GP for a minute please?" cries around the office!
Client #2
Client number 2 has also been a GP client for a number of years. Their 12 user license has served them well for many years but over the years, they added more and more users to GP to allow more non-accounting staff to run their own reports and do their own inquiries. This seemed innocent enough at the time, but now as their overall staff level has grown, they too are running into issues where there aren't enough licenses for the users to log in when needed. In this case, they often also have a couple of users who do tons of reporting and analysis opening both of their primary entities (companies) at the same time so they can easily flip back and forth at will, without stopping something they are doing in one company. That right there is 4 licenses taken up by 2 users most days of the week.
In contrast to the first client, they have a small accounting department and only about 30-35% of the user activity in GP is from users who I would define as "needing to be in GP". The vast majority of their user base do things that can easily be transitioned to other external methods - excel reports, sharepoint, SSRS reports etc. Some need in only to look up the next PO number to use; some only need to check inventory quantities on hand; some only run project accounting reports to check the status of their projects.
With this client, when they first asked me about an estimate to add new users, I immediately thought that in this case, it's a complete waste of money for them. They originally purchased users for something they never ended up implementing, leaving them also with 50+ light user licenses, which to me means they shouldn't spend a dime on licenses right now. I'll be working with them over the coming weeks to make a plan to transition as many of these users out of GP as possible, to external reporting and inquiry options.
The difference between Full & Light
Before I get into details, both of these clients are GP2010 users, not GP2013. Both of them are also on Business Ready Licensing so that is what I am really talking about in this post. This information is also intentionally generic and general - specific questions on all the purposes and usages of each license should be a question for your partner if you are unsure.
In these examples, a full user is a license to log into GP itself; a light user is a license that allows you to access GP data externally to GP - Excel Reports, SSRS, Sharepoint etc. all come to mind as ways to access data and use its information.
Pricing varies depending on market and other factors, plus there are price breaks once you buy 11 or more users etc. For simplicity, let's just say the cost of a full user is $5,350 + enhancement. The cost of a light user is around $175 + enhancement. That's a huge difference!
In my examples, client #2 was considering purchasing at least a couple more licenses which means an expenditure of over $10,000. What I explained to them was for the same money, and likely for a lot less than that, it would be better for them in the long term to spend that money on the services to identify the reporting needs, utilize the out of the box report options already there in Excel Reports and SSRS, and if needed write a handful of specific reports to cover gaps that aren't addressed. They have more than enough Light User licenses to cover their needs, and if they need more in the future, a couple hundred bucks is a no brainer.
If you are a consultant, and you notice your clients often at or near their maximum user capacity, look around at what users are keeping GP "full" and whether there are external solutions for them that have the option to provide more service to them and more inexpensively purchase licenses.
If you are a client and you're in a situation like I have described above, take a look at what the users in GP are doing and identify any that don't 'really' need GP to do what they are doing. Talk to your partner about options, and extend the reach of the information in GP to other users in your organization!
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Update on Account Number error in Canadian Payroll
Friday, March 29, 2013 Canadian Payroll, Troubleshooting
A couple of years ago around this time of year, I got a call from a client of mine with a strange error in Canadian Payroll. At the time, I ran into other significant issues in trying to help with said error, and at the time, I blogged/ranted about it here.
Fast forward to last month, when I received an email from another customer who was asking me "did you ever find out what the issue was with that error? We are having the same problem now!". We exchanged emails and I researched what notes I had taken at the time, and in the end, she confirmed for me that what worked for my client also worked for her.
So, this post is just an update on the issue and at least one resolution, in case it helps someone else out there. Some of this is a repeat of the rant blog, without the rant!
The Issue
The client's error message was "Account Number does not exist". This occurred when they were creating the poster file in Canadian Payroll, after running their payroll successfully that week. They'd been live for several years so the fact that now of all times a new random error came up was a little odd.
The Resolution
The accounting in Canadian Payroll is fairly straight forward: each paycode has an account number and in the main Setup window, you can identify if you want to "mask" the account number, say, to go to an employee's department segment in the GL. The biggest complication is usually forgetting to set the masked value in the department setup or the combination of the paycode's account and the masked value doesn't exist. Those are pretty easy to spot.
The other most common source of Account Missing types of errors usually you figure out immediately upon running your first payroll tests after configuration: some default account in a setup window wasn't populated with the default GL account.
This error was strange and random. The good news: both my client and the person who contacted me through the blog comments found the same common issue, and it resolved this error:
So, sounds simple but annoyingly random! Hopefully if anyone else finds the same error, this may help them resolve it too.
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Canadian Payroll 2012 T4 issue (updated)
Sunday, January 13, 2013 Canadian Payroll, News
(Updated Feb 2013)
There was an issue identified last week with the 2012 year end tax update that affects T4s. This issue is being worked on and a hotfix should be available soon.
The specific issue is this:
These amounts will appear in the T4 edit (or RL-1 Edit) windows after running the Create T4 (RL-1) process. There are scripts you can download to fix this issue, or you can wait until the hotfix is released.
Here are the Customersource links: GP2010 and GP10.
NOTE: if you create your T4s or RL-1s and then run the scripts - and THEN run Recreate T4s (or RL-1s) it wipes out the script update. Keep this in mind and keep the scripts handy if you are creating and recreating the forms, until the hotfix is ready.
UPDATE:
The hotfixes were released in the end of January, and for the record, here they are:
GP2010 link (version after update: 11.0.2164)
GP2013 link (version after update: 12.0.1343)
This is a regular hotfix, so you will notice in the details on the downloads page or documentation, there are other bug fixes included with this. The hotfix includes the following (for Cdn Payroll):
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New Year’s Resolutions 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012 Off Topic Articles
It's that time of year again - time for a review of 2012 and noting what to resolve to do in 2013.
I say this every year - time flew by! As my dad just told me, it seems to fly by faster the older you get. It certainly does! Today is December 31st and my sister & I are visiting my dad and his wife, and loving the few relaxing days away from home. Along with relaxing with family, this is my favourite, if not humbling, part of the new year process: reviewing what I said I would do this year!
What happened in 2012?
Well, I started the year resolving to make more reasonable goals... what a cop out eh? I also thought I'd do monthly resolutions, in an effort to keep them manageable. I'm embarrassed to admit that I forgot about that by mid-February!
Here's the quick tally of what I wanted to accomplish and how I fared (hint: not very well!):
So, what did I accomplish this year?
Under the category of "the 99% complete project": Hey! I actually finished my Report Writer series! Now THAT's an accomplishment... I'd left it dormant for a few months and was happy to finally dust it off and finish it.
In the "is it me or is the rest of the herd insane?" category: I found a few interesting bugs, here, here and here. It sounds crazy but part of the fun of being a consultant is troubleshooting issues, and with that, there is just something about the moment when you find you've actually discovered a bug and aren't going crazy! (Not that bugs are a good thing, but when you don't get the expected results and are trying to prove that you're not causing the problem, the validation that it is a bug is kind of nice!)
On the social and learning side of things, I returned to Fargo for my second time, to the Technical Airlift. I met a bunch more of our fantastic GP community members and had a great time learning about GP2013. I love putting names to faces, that's always the best part to me.
Saving the best for last: The best part of 2012 for us in the GP world arguably was the release of GP2013 in December 2012... this was a highly anticipated release with the first web client being introduced. I'm looking forward to upgrading my environments to play with the new features.
What's in store for 2013?
As I sit here, I'm not entirely sure what 2013 will look like for me. The last half of 2012 included some "life changes" and the early part of 2013 will most definitely include continued personal distractions. One thing is for sure, in 2013 I'll be moving somewhere, to a location yet to be determined! I've got a house to sell first, which is on the market but not moving as quickly as I would like.
Other than that, this year's resolutions will be more along the lines of things I'd like to keep doing!
That's it... kind of a "low-hanging fruit" list of resolutions but hey, at least they are achievable!
Here's hoping everyone has a happy new year and a fantastic 2013!
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Bizarro world: Integration Mgr “use input” doesn’t work
Thursday, December 27, 2012 Integrations, Troubleshooting
This is a short post... a bizarre issue that I can't find an answer to.
A client has a bunch of inactive GL accounts and for a project, wants to re-active them to do some re-allocations and then inactive them again. Simple right?
I set up a simple Integration Manager integration for them, and set the "Inactive" field to "Use Input". In other words, let the user decide if they are inactivating or re-activating the accounts. Better than changing the integration, right?
Seemed like a good idea at the time. So we set the field to Use Input and then they ran it, it gives them a drop down list, and they chose False, as in "re-activate". They run the integration and start getting a bunch of errors "This account has a current balance". Hmmm. That should not matter if you are "activating" so I didn't understand the message.
They spot checked the GL accounts on the error log + the accounts not on the error log. Everything is still inactive, except the ones on the error log, because they were never inactive as they had a current balance.
OK. Well, against all logic, I suggested running it again but choosing TRUE instead of FALSE. The field is Inactive so TRUE should 'inactivate' it, but stranger things have happened, and it's worth trying. I thought there is a chance that it is working backwards for some reason.
Same issue. Huh.
Well... let's get rid of the Use Input and put it back to Use Constant and set it to False. Run the integration, it works like a charm.
So, in this bizarro world, Use Input apparently ignores whatever the user selects in the drop down list and runs the integration as "Inactive = True". Using a constant works.
Go figure! Just when you think you've seen everything, something new and strange pops up!
(for reference, the client is using GP2010, and Integration Manager 11).
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Fun with Windows 8
Monday, December 24, 2012 How To & Tips, Off Topic Articles
I've been using Windows 8 now on my new laptop for about a couple of weeks. I *love* it! What baffles me is the sheer volume of blogs and articles I run into that are crapping all over this new operating system... it's hilarious really. "How to make windows 8 look like windows 7"?? Are you serious? Why bother upgrading if you're going to do that?
Enough of that. Part of the learning curve has fortunately been handled by reading other users' experiences and searching out tips and tricks to understand how to get things to work for you. None of what I'm putting in here is new or revolutionary, but hopefully it helps someone out!
Key note for all of these tips: I am not using a touch device so these tips are 100% for keyboard and mouse users... some might work for touch too, I have no idea!
What I love about Windows 8
I really love the overall look and feel, the UI itself. Others hate the metro tile home screen but that is the single biggest thing I love. My home page has been turned into my start menu. Remove some app tiles, add some new app tiles, move the things I use most frequently to the far left side, and voilà!
Playing with Tiles
The first thing I did, after doing a clean install of Windows 8 (to remove the typical new computer bloatware), was to customize the tiles & my home page.
Windows 8 puts a lot of default apps on there that I have no interest in. I tried some of the default apps like Windows Mail, found them too limiting, so I uninstalled them. Others I simply removed from "Start" (unpin them).
Adding new tiles
To see the list of all of the apps installed on your computer, you can right click on an empty portion of the home page and select All Apps. This shows tiny tiles of all of your apps. Then right click on what you want, and select Pin To Start to create a tile/shortcut for it. This is the equivalent of modifying or editing your old start menu.
Things like the specific items in your control panel are also right clickable - there is a shortcut on the context menu to Pin To Start. Personally I like to have a shortcut on my desktop for Windows Update so in this case, I put a shortcut on my home page for it. I also put a shortcut to the Control Panel since I tend to use that a lot.
I have not yet figured out if you can put a tile shortcut to a specific document on the start menu; I'm sure there is a way but I haven't looked into that yet.
Handy Shortcuts
There are tons of articles on shortcuts for Windows 8... simply google (or bing!) Windows 8 shortcuts and you'll get tons of hits. Here are the things I use a lot, and a few new ones I just started to use.
Some Search tips
I'm quite sure there are tons more handy tips and tricks... my favourites? X for the admin menu & Windows key simply to get back to the home page and facilitate easy search.
I think this is a fantastic step forward in Windows operating systems and I encourage new users to try the play with the new tools instead of instantly looking to make it look like Windows 7 or earlier! Have fun with it...
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Canadian Payroll Year End 2012 Tax Update
Thursday, December 20, 2012 Canadian Payroll, Installation, News
Welcome to my annual "hey the tax tables are out" blog post! Like clockwork - or like death and taxes - yet another certainty is each year end there are tax table updates to apply! Here are the details for those Canadian Payroll users of Microsoft Dynamics GP! Special note to you GP2013 users as well...
First - an important note although I doubt this will affect anyone already: Dynamics GP 2013 RTM did not release with the 2013 tax rates! So in the unlikely event that you are considering upgrading to GP2013 immediately (since it's launch yesterday!), I would recommend holding off until the first hot fix is released. The hotfix is expected the week of January 21, 2013. New clients - same goes for you... the RTM build has the 2012 tax rates and thus any payrolls run in it, will not reflect the new tax rates yet.
Now on to the details of the tax update: (PDF file with the year end update details)
These links will be live on Friday December 21st, 2012 (just in time for the end of the world! (couldn't resist a little Mayan calendar joke...))
GP10 (build number expected to be 10.0.1868 & Canadian Payroll version 10.0.1880)
GP2010 (build number expected to be 11.0.2121 & Canadian Payroll version 11.0.2128)
GP2013 (will update this when the hotfix is out...)
I'll be doing my first update for a client this weekend... if any issues arise or anything interesting comes up, I will post an update or new article!
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It’s a big day!
Thursday, December 20, 2012 General Stuff, News
It's a big day ... and I'm a day late!
Microsoft Dynamics GP2013 has launched! Yay!
Here is a link to the launch portal on Customersource: click here
There is a ton of information out there already on the Microsoft sites and in the Microsoft Dynamics community so I won't get into repeating a lot of what's already been blogged about. Suffice to say: it's a big day with the introduction of the first web client, some very cool new features and tons of excitement in the community about this release. Check it out!
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Windows 8 install tips and tricks
Tuesday, December 11, 2012 How To & Tips, Installation, Off Topic Articles
Time has flown by, as it does tend to do when you are not paying attention! One minute I'm in Fargo at the Technical Airlift, dropping a perfectly functioning laptop on a hard tile floor (yes, boy, that was fun!), and the next, it's nearly Christmas and I'm loading Windows 8 on a even more perfectly functioning new laptop. It's wrapped in bubble wrap to protect it from myself, just so ya know... ; )
When the Windows 8 previews and betas came out, I fully intended to install them on a virtual image or something, and get to know the new features. So much for that! The, ahem, fortunate timing of dropping a laptop and having my other functional Dell brick fail to boot led me to a just-in-time-for-Christmas new shiny laptop. While my American friends were eating Thanksgiving turkey, I was doing some timely Black Friday shopping. It seems Canadian retailers have adopted the sale weekend much to our price advantage!
I ordered another trusty Lenovo, my third one. Even though my first one died, I got a ton out of it and took it everywhere. My last one - which I dropped - actually still kind of worked even after dropping it on a tile floor. Dented, yes, but busted, no! I think I dented some internal things though as there were several issues with all the ports on one side not working all the time etc., and Black Friday came calling to rescue me from frustration.
This is an off-topic post - nothing to do with Dynamics GP this time around. I'm behind in my blogging (again) and will get back to that shortly. For now, I wanted to document some Windows 8 installation related things that may help someone. I needed to search long and hard for some things and I'd like to save someone the trouble when they go to do what I've done.
The background
As I mention above, I bought a Lenovo, an X230 model specifically. I bought it with a mid-range configuration but didn't order it with a Solid State drive (SSD), as I planned on getting one far cheaper after the fact. Every time I buy a new computer, the first thing I do is wipe it clean and do a clean O/S install. This time, I was doing a clean install as well as swapping out the hard drive for an SSD.
I also bought it pre-loaded with Windows 8 Professional. Everything here is related to the Pro version, so YMMV if you are not on Pro (although I think the steps below are generic enough to work for any edition).
These notes are not in any particular order, it's not meant as a "how to" but rather a compilation of things that helped me.
My end goal was the following:
Lastly, I'm not a hardware person, so I may use the most technologically correct terminology in places... apologies for that!
Windows 8 product key
If Windows 8 is installed already by the OEM vendor, the product key should be embedded in the BIOS. I didn't need to worry about finding my key, getting the key, hacking a registry to get the key etc. In previous iterations of Windows, there are usually some steps that require finding out the key for what is installed so you can use it again. No need this time. In fact, I still have no idea what my product key is, and the O/S is so new, Lenovo hasn't gotten around to putting the stickers on the bottom of the laptops yet to show you the key. I've installed Windows 8 twice now (I'll explain why!), and it recognized that I had an OEM key in the BIOS and installed without any issue whatsoever.
Windows 8 drivers
This was the biggest and most pleasant surprise for me. The first time I did a clean install was with my old Lenovo x61s and Windows XP. Wow, the clean install instructions were convoluted. There were at least 17 steps to install, 99% of it was the exact order and method to install the drivers you need. Pain in the ___. I don't remember how it worked with Windows 7, it certainly was simpler, but with Windows 8, nearly everything worked right off the bat. I haven't installed a single Lenovo driver, and have 3 devices that are "unknown" - but using my laptop I haven't yet found what isn't working and I've used everything I would use on a regular basis. It might be a while before I find what those 3 devices are!
Now, this being said, not all of the Microsoft drivers are the best ones out there for your devices and hardware. I found one instance where I will have to find the Lenovo driver and it isn't even for my laptop but for the docking station. Audio doesn't play when my X230 is docked, but it is a simple fix, according to many sources online.
Swapping hard drive for an SSD
There are several blogs and several forum posts about doing Windows 8 clean installs, and several about swapping an SSD for a regular hard drive. I didn't seem to find many articles or blogs that did both, they all seemed to do one thing or another or didn't addres the difficulties I had run into. Also, many of them were using a clone approach which doesn't seem to be recommended from what I have read, because of differences in the hardware types. It sounds like you don't want to clone a regular hard drive to copy that to an SSD as it won't be installed optimized for an SSD.
Fortunately I didn't find any issue or difficulty in doing this. I did a full recovery backup of the factory install in case I needed to revert back to Win8 "original" - that's always a safe recommendation. After that, I literally took out the old hard drive *, installed the SSD, and with the next steps on the specifics to boot into Windows 8, that was it. Not a single issue was SSD/hard drive change related.
* To be clear, there is a proper way to remove the hard drive which is basically:
Windows 8 media
This was the part that I found a challenge, specifically getting the media in the right format for UEFI. First things first: apparently you can use any media including Windows 8 Upgrade media to do a clean install. From everything I've read, you do not need a "full" copy for a clean install. (Assuming you are eligible for the upgrade version). If you have MSDN or TechNet subscriptions, you should be able to find what you need. Since I wanted to upgrade my home computer too and I don't currently have an MSDN subscription, so I took advantage of the upgrade offer for Windows 8 - $40.
Using the ugprade media method, here is the rough steps (because initially I was expecting that it was as simple as buy it and download it).. It seems at first like you can't just download the media but rest assured, you do in the end. The website for the upgrade offer starts with having an upgrade advisor download.
UEFI & BIOS settings
This specifically was the part where I got a little messed up and ended up installing twice, because I didn't understand the whole UEFI thing initially. (Not that I'm an expert now...). Initially I created a DVD ISO image using the download and then attempted to just hook up my DVD to my laptop and reboot. WIth legacy boot, depending on your BIOS settings, this usually would recognize the DVD and prompt you to "press any key to boot from CD/DVD" or something like that. This didn't, it just kept stopped at a boot menu. It recognized a DVD was attached with an ISO image, but the BIOS was set to UEFI secure boot and it's incompatible with the DVD ISO method. I changed my BIOS to "both" (Legacy/UEFI) and then it recognized the DVD and booted into Windows 8 setup and I was set.
However, when it was done, and I went into my BIOS to set it back to UEFI only, it would no longer boot because it was installed in Legacy mode. So back to the drawing board. To make a long story a little shorter, here is what worked and what didn't for me:
After installing, I re-enabled the Secure Boot option and I'm back in business.
I may have missed some small nuances here and there, but hopefully this covers the majority of it... going in circles around the UEFI thing took the most time. For a day or so it felt like all I kept doing was burning DVDS (thinking they didn't burn properly), or copying files to/from Flash Drives to get this to work. That was annoying so hopefully this helps someone just cut to the chase and quickly do a clean install.
The best part about going through all of this is you learn a little more and that's never a bad thing.
Going the route of using an SSD is amazing.. it boots in 5 seconds or so, it's unreal. The "windows experience" disk data transfer rate went from a score of 5.9 to 8.1 or something like that... just no comparison to how fast an SSD runs vs. a regular hard drive.
I've had fun playing with windows 8 so far and hope to post again about a few tips and tricks I found as I've been working through things.
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Website move
Saturday, November 24, 2012 Off Topic Articles
This is a quick test post to confirm the move of my website to a new host!
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Catching up after a web hosting issue
Thursday, October 25, 2012 General Stuff, Off Topic Articles
Those of you that follow my blog via RSS, you've just received 5 duplicate articles, re-posted today, with the original content and dates.
Earlier this week I was notified that my web hosting account had been hacked. Of course I had a backup but it turns out it wasn't as recent as I thought. I couldn't find my most recent one and only could find one from June.
So... thanks to syndication, I was able to view the last 5 articles I posted during the summer since my backup had been taken, and was able to re-create them and get back to where I am today.
Excuse the duplication, and hopefully I will get back to regular blogging soon!
Now if you excuse me, I'm off to do a backup ; )
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Dynamics GP Technical Airlift 2012 - Web Client part 2
Friday, September 14, 2012 General Stuff, Installation, News
A continuation of the first part of my articles on the GP2013 Web Client, this goes through some of the other training things that were covered that are installation related. Some of the things in this article are:
As I mentioned in the first article, this is not an exhaustive resource for installing the web client. To be quite honest, there are several areas which are pretty new to me so there may be instances where I don't have the terminology described quite correctly... drop me a line via the comments if there are any glaring errors!
Certificates
First, a certificate must be requested and it can be one of three types: Self-Signed, Internal or External (3rd Party). Some notes:
Training covered creating an internal certificate only. High level, this is done via ADCS, on the domain controller, using MMC snap-ins. First you create a Certificate Template, one that is exportable. Then you use the Certification Authority snap-in to administer a certification authority (CA) based on the template you created. Last you go to the Certificates snap-in, and create a new certificate, set the properties (the DNS names of the server machines) and enroll.
After this you will also export the certificate, save the pfx file on the web server (or a place that you can access from the web server), and on the web server import that certificate and enroll it on that machine.
During installation, only websites with valid certifications and SSL will be in the drop down list of sites to install the GP web client to. There are four places during the installation where the certificate name comes into place:
SSL
The website must have SSL binding before you start the installation of the GP2013 web client. After you import the certificate above, in IIS, on the default web site (or whichever website you create for the GP web client), you click on Bindings under the Actions pane and add the HTTPS SSL binding with the certificate.
To test that this portion worked, you can click on the Browse https link to open the website. Because it opens with "localhost" you will see a certificate error. The certificate has specific DNS names, not localhost, so this is expected. However if you change the website from localhost to your actual website name, assuming this name matches what you put in the certificate properties in the first place, the certificate error should go away. This type of error would specifically tell you it's a name mismatch (as opposed to "no certificate installed" types of errors).
Firewalls
Firewall settings come into play when we are dealing with both intranet and extranet or DMZ traffic. Some firewall setup is already a part of a standard Dynamics GP installation when it comes to the proper settings to allow SQL server port traffic through. Typically you have to set a couple of rules on port TCP1433 and UDP1434 inbound rule on the SQL server to allow traffic through, such as the web server trying to communicate with the SQL server.
I won't get into details here except to say there are firewall implications to consider depending on your deployment choice.
Domain Users & Groups
Before beginning the installation you will want to ensure you have created both one or more service accounts for the services and groups for the users. The recommendation for our demo installation was this:
Deployment Strategies
This topic can't be covered in a single blog but to give you an idea of some of the planning elements that must be taken into consideration, these are the types of deployments we did talk about.
They are developing a Web Client Deployment Tool which will help with providing a specific task list for deployment based on the inputs you provide. This will be ready for RTM release, not Beta. The deployment can be exported and imported in case of changes so you don't have to run through the wizard over and over again. The end result is something that walks you through the settings you'll need.
Final Thoughts
A few random final thoughts around the web client. Initially the phase 1 Web Client will be limited to Financials and Distribution modules. The phased approach will follow this release plan approximately, with the exact timing unknown:
What this specifically means is clients using those applications will be using "rich client" only, no web client. They will be able to use web client for the portions of their business that they can if they choose.
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Dynamics GP Technical Airlift 2012 - Web Client part 1
Thursday, September 13, 2012 General Stuff, Installation, News
Tuesday was the unofficial first day of the conference for me with the agenda being one of two things for those who chose to come a day early. There was a sales presentation for those on the business development side and there was technical training on the web client for the rest of us.
Generally you have to pay for training but due to the importance of this product release and the new content, Microsoft put this training on for free - which was awesome. They really want to make sure the Partner channel is informed and ready for the web client specifically, and understand the "stack" dependencies to be able to troubleshoot it when it does release.
The training ended up filling up very quickly and they even had a waitlist. So many people signed up that they had to pair people up to share virtual machines to do the hands on lab portion. They had 40 VM environments and over 90 people registered. Fortunately, I was one of the "leads" which meant I got to have my hands on the keybaord for the hands on portion. Everyone learns differently and I definitely learn by doing, and/or writing things down, so I was happy not to be just a spectator.
Here in no particular order are some of the key takeaways I got out of the day. These are my observations and notes, so please take them with a grain of salt if you plan on relying them as the complete facts!
Overview
I'm not a network guru by any stretch but if you are going to get into GP2013 and web client, you will want to make sure your technical consultants are well versed in network setup, troubleshooting network issues, SSL, certificates, firewalls etc. Gone are the days where the technical "expert" simply needed to click setup.exe and go next-next-next through a GUI installation wizard.
The web client can be a standalone installation, in the sense of using one server with all of the components. That will be common in demo environments with partners putting it all on a laptop for presentations. However I imagine the most common deployment will be some splitting of the components on their own servers. This is a brief explanation of the components. Sometimes I describe the components as if they will be on their own servers; ignore that if you intend to install everything on one and keep all of the requirements in mind for that environment.
1. Web Server
2. Member Servers aka Session Hosts
3. SQL Server
4. Client
Web Server
This server must be running Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit for the operating system. There are components that are in R2 that are required so this is the minimum standard. One web server is required; you can load balance if you wish. A good note on this item, the web server really doesn't have much of a function in the end once the silverlight app is running so from the sounds of it, most clients should not require multiple web servers in their deployment.
Two websites get installed on this server: the GP web client website and a GP web client management website for managing the sessions and tenants.
One major service runs on the web server: the Session Central Service. This is the traffic cop of sorts that directs traffic to one or more Session Hosts as new users connect.
Session Host
The session host also must be running Windows Server 2008 R2, for the same reasons as above.
The session host is the server (or servers) where the Dynamics GP client is installed and where all the instances of Dynamics GP run.
This server is the workhorse of the web client environment so it sounds like in most environments, most clients may ultimately use multiple session hosts to manage the web client users' workload, if there are lots of web client users.
When a user goes to the web client URL (i.e. https://ourwebserver/gp), they log in with an Active Directory account and the web server authenticates that. If validated, a runtime instance of Dynamics GP starts on the Session Host. The Session Central Service (the traffic cop) determines which Session Host is least busy and ready to accept a connection. The runtime instance of dynamics.exe starts sends information back to the silverlight application so they now have a "link" to communicate back and forth. At this point the web server is out of the picture, hence my comment in that section about it not necessarily being a key component.
One note to avoid confusion, Active Directory is used to log into the web client URL to authenticate as a valid GP user. The silverlight web client application still requires the user to log in to GP with a valid GP user ID and password.
SQL Server
This server really doesn't change. There is no special O/S requirement, it continues to be the same as it always has been with the web client because how GP connects to SQL doesn't change.
Client
The client side requirements are pretty simple, however for some the operating system requirement will be problematic if they are still using XP or Vista.
Operating System requirement is Windows 7 or higher, or Windows Server 2008 R2 (if using a terminal server) or higher.
Browser wise, Internet Explorer 8 or higher will be required.
Silverlight 5 is the required version but the first time the web client is launched it will apparently prompt you to install the right Silverlight version if you don't have it already.
Services Overview
The key services are as follows and what they do:
1. Session Central windows service
As mentioned above, it's essentially a traffic cop and this runs on the web server only. It tracks the current runtime processes running on every session host and determines session host availability for load balancing (without requiring any special configuration for that function).
2. Session Host windows service
This service runs on each session host, one service per host. It's purpose is to authorize web client users against Active Directory.
3. Runtime Service (WCF service)
This runs on the session host, per instance of GP with a unique WCF endpoint for each GP process. It handles the interaction between the GP silverlight application and the underlying physical GP client process running on the session host.
4. Tenant Management Service
5. Tenant Discovery Service
These two services I didn't get enough details on, they refer specifically and only to multi-tenancy situations.
I'll stop this part for now here... and continue with some more details on what we covered in the "Jump Start" training. So much to share, so little time : )
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Dynamics GP Technical Airlift 2012 - Pre-Conference
Wednesday, September 12, 2012 General Stuff
It's that time again, the time to trek to Fargo and be immersed in all things Microsoft Dynamics GP! The last technical conference was a blast and this proves to be no different.
The content this time around is, of course, Microsoft Dynamics GP2013 and all of it's new features including a ton of content around the new web client. Stayed tuned this week for bits of news as I have time to blog. Check out twitter if you want live action tweeting from myself and others - hashtags most commonly used are #airlift12 and #GP2013.
Getting Here
My travel started on Monday, leaving home around noon for a 3pm flight. I live about an hour outside of Toronto and I planned on having lunch before heading to check-in. The trip was not as uneventful as I had hoped! Within eyesight of the airport, on the lovely Highway 427, someone managed in the middle of a perfectly clear dry day to do a complete 360 degree spin in their Mazda 3 about 20 yards in front of me. Fortunately I was in the curb lane and had lots of shoulder to pull over and make sure I avoided it all. Scary... fortunately the driver managed to "only" graze another car and neither appeared to have major damage. Unbelievable.
The rest of my trip WAS uneventful, with a flight from Toronto to Minneapolis and then another flight from Minneapolis to Fargo. I ran into Mariano Gomez on the flight and we got a brief chance to catch up a little while we waited for shuttle vans outside of the Fargo airport.
Pre-Conference Jump Start Training
There was a day of training for partners the day before the conference began. The agenda was purely technical - how to install the web client and getting an understanding of the stack that supports it. It was a great day of information, even though it was quite overwhelming just with the volume of new info. They called it the "firehose" effect - and that's pretty accurate!
There is a lot of info to pass along and you will find other bloggers also covering the details. Later this week I hope to get more blogs posted with the specifics - right now it's all a big blur! :)
Until next post...
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Canadian Payroll & US Payroll in the same environment
Monday, August 6, 2012 Canadian Payroll
I was asked this question from someone a few days ago and I have a little bit of information about this. At some point I will expand on this article but for now, it's a short one!
This article is simply about using Cdn Payroll and US Payroll together, as in "can you use them together"?
The short version is the supported method is not to have both in the same environment, i.e. same SQL instance. There is a KB article that spells out all of the "how to", and describes two installs, two instances, one US English, one Canadian. That KB article is here.
There are clients who do run this in the same environment, different companies but the catch is, you can't install Canadian Payroll on a US installation (the "Canadian" GP code is the only one with Canadian Payroll - under Additional Products). So, for clients in the US, who simply want to add a Canadian operation after the fact, this won't work for them but the KB article outlines how to install it.
The one thing I find interesting - step 8 says you must use the same Account Framework setup for both installations. I understand that most times you would, but *requiring* it seems odd since they are describing two basically stand-alone installations and two separate client installs... I could be missing something but I don't see why the framework matters.
The most challenging aspect of this approach is for the users who need to access both US payroll and Canadian payroll, therefore having two client installs on their workstation. The KB article references this briefly, after step 17. "A US Payroll client must never be connected to the Canadian Payroll instance of SQL server and vice versa". Most users don't change the ODBC connection at runtime but if the users are like most users I've seen in the past, if they ever launch GP and see a "GPUS" and "GPCDN" option the drop down list, they will try it! Not good...
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Cdn Payroll Mid-Year Tax Update (July 2012)
Wednesday, July 4, 2012 Canadian Payroll, News
... Otherwise known as OMG it's already July???? I talked to two clients today and yesterday about this and both of them forgot too... so apparently I'm not the only one not paying attention to time these days!
Yes, I, too, fell into the trap this year of letting time merrily fly by without realizing I didn't blog about the Cdn Payroll tax updates for mid year.
So, now to the not-so-new-news! Yes there is mid-year 2012 tax update as there is every year, and this year the provinces affected are: Ontario and Nova Scotia.
There is only one bug fix in this update which is for Quebec employees, QPIP exceeding the maximum limit based on rounding in certain situations. I don't know much about that one, that's just what's in the notification email I got when the update was published.
Where to get the update
For Dynamics GP 2010: it's here
For Dynamics GP 10: it's here
Notice to users of GP9 or GP10
If you use Canadian Payroll and you're still on version 9.0, I hope you are in the midst of upgrading! GP10 users please note, your support ends October 2012 but Microsoft WILL give you the 2012 year end update for Canadian Payroll... keep in mind though, if there are subsequent changes, say a "round 2" tax update, you will not likely get that for GP10 as we found out when GP9 was released. That year, there was some functionality that only affected the new payroll year and GP9 users did not get it until they upgraded to GP10 or GP2010. Don't fall into that trap - talk to your VAR about upgrading sooner rather than at the last minute!
Service Pack 3 is also out now
In a relatively rare situation, the tax updates were released in early June (May 31st actually) and the next big service pack, SP3, was just recently released as well. What this means for some users is you may have the ability to install SP3 directly if the timing works out and you're not waiting for third party product patches. They are separate releases, so if you have third party products and are not sure if they are compatible with SP3, you may have to install just the tax updates and wait for all of your products to have patches released to install SP3.
I know one of my clients has a third party payroll app that isn't yet compatible with SP3 and they run weekly payroll; unfortunately they have to install the tax update before SP3 and wait for the third party ISV to be compatible with SP3.... if you're unsure, speak to your VAR.
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Project Accounting: Misc Log eConnect import issue
Friday, June 8, 2012 General Stuff, Project Accounting, Troubleshooting
My last post about the good and the ugly of the Update Budget Lines feature had a continuing theme to it. I was telling the story of the client who mass updated 650+ projects with a new cost category only to find the budget sources set to Specific didn't get populated with the default "specific" GL account.
What I didn't get into was HOW they found the problem. I built some integrations for them for Misc Logs, which they've been using for a while now and having no issues with. It's been a huge timesaver for them, and they love it. Great! So, fast forward to how they found out they had an issue was during the Misc Log import and posting. The problem was, eConnect didn't fail and alert them of the problem with the missing accounts, it allowed the creation of the transaction without GL distributions and they posted it without thinking to check! Uh oh x2!
This article is explaining the issue, another possible bug, in Project Accounting Misc Log Entry eConnect node (not a problem with Misc Logs themselves).
The Issue
Normally, if you are typing in a transaction like a Misc Log entry, it's validating what you are selecting and it won't let you proceed with a Project and Cost Category combination if the budget line is in estimate or doesn't exist or has an account missing, etc.
The issue here is, eConnect (I think) should do the same validation on import. It validates other things just fine, but in this particular case, it just creates the transaction without any notice of error to the user. Because it is missing an account, instead of creating a partial distribution which then would not post (due to being unbalanced), it simply doesn't create any! Excellent... that's fantastic! (slight sarcasm intended).
There are some situations where no distributions would exist for a transaction, they are rare but they can happen; because of this Project Accounting doesn't care if the distributions are empty, therefore it allowed the users to post the batches like normal. They do so many of these that they didn't bother to look at the edit list, they just posted. (note to readers: you don't have to physically print the edit list to view it and see if there are any glaring issues... better to take a couple minutes before, than several minutes or hours later fixing a problem).
So, when they went into to look at the results in the G/L, they were, of course, shocked to find no journal entry for a handful ot transactions. They called me, I looked at it, and putting two and two together I realized we had two separate issues going on - Update Budget Lines didn't work as expected and no validation of the missing account occurred on the integration. Double whammy.
Here is what happens if they were to type this entry in:
In theory eConnect should return an error when it tries to create this line with an equivalent error message but it did not.
This too appears to be a bug, and I'm investigating it also. What I haven't determined is if this is unique to this transaction type (most likely) or all Project eConnect transactions.
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Project Accounting: Update Budget Lines - the good and the ugly
Wednesday, June 6, 2012 General Stuff, Project Accounting, Troubleshooting
The other day a client asked me if there was a way to mass-add a new cost category to all projects at once. I actually didn't know there was a new function to do this starting with GP10, but a quick google search resulted in a post from Mark Polino describing this exact thing.
Wow. That doesn't happen every day... I was thinking of the alternatives I would explain the client, but was really happy to see this added functionality.
Until... today, after the client used the new window, and rolled down a new cost category to every project they have, they found a problem. Uh oh!
This particular article relates to the Project Accounting module in Dynamics GP, and the Update Budget Lines window under the Routines menu.
What's great about this feature
There are a number of things that are great about this, and for most clients, it will work exactly as expected. Keep reading for the situation my client found, before you attempt using it in case this affects you as well.
What's not so great about this feature
The reason my client can't use it anymore - or not without my help to run some scripts in SQL afterwards - is they have at least one default account type Source on every transaction type set up as "Specific" with a default account that should roll down to every and any project they create. When using this tool, for any account sources that are set to specific, the related cost categories get added to the project but the default account does not. Here is a screen shot of the Project Setup default posting account sources window: (notice one type on Misc Logs is set to Specific, and a default of 999-9999-99).
Here is a screen shot of one of the projects I updated to write this article: (specific is there, but no default account). This window by the way, is all the way buried in the Budget, Budget Detail Entry, Accounts.
What does that mean? Well, it means you need to get a script to insert some records into SQL directly (never recommended) or you have to go to each project manually to update the account. Aaaaaand, this is far more work than going to each project manually to just add the cost category in the first place because that, at least, is less clicks to perform the task.
End Result
I believe this is a bug and am trying to determine that with Microsoft right now. In the meantime, I wrote a script to add the records to the PA43001 table which stores the accounts for sources that are "specific". The tables are not very easy to navigate due to the complexity of scenarios that Project Accounting can handle. Trust me when I say, I wouldn't want to have to do that very often. I'm not a fan of inserting records into tables via script, but in this case there were over 650 projects to update and they simply did not have the time to do this manually.
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Report Writer Series: The End!
Sunday, May 27, 2012 How To & Tips, Report Writer
Well, it's been fun but it's time to focus on more interesting areas of Microsoft Dynamics GP. This is the last official article in the Report Writer series of posts I've written, although I'm sure there may be the odd article pop up that has some Report Writer content.
Summary
Here is a brief summary of what I've covered and where to find it:
1. Background information on report dictionaries, launch files and other boring stuff! : )
2. Access to report writer, security, and a bit about types of reports that you can create
3. Formatting and working with text fields
4. Changing a report from text to graphical - Part 1 and Part 2
5. Playing in the (sand) Toolbox
6. Drawing Options window
7. Understanding Sections on reports
8. Custom Reports in report writer
9. Catch-all with tips on Keys, Restrictions, Sorting & Grids
Resources
If you are looking for other information on report writer, the community of bloggers is a great place to start. As I've mentioned a few times, I haven't exhausted the topics here, nor do I know everything there is to know about Report Writer! Here in no particular order are some other resources that I often turn to for help.
1. Microsoft Dynamics GP community
2. Mariano Gomez, MVP aka the Dynamics GP Blogster
3. David Musgrave & the Developing for Dynamics GP team
4. Mark Polino with posts and links to others' posts about Report Writer
5. Steve Endow and Christina Phillips aka Dynamics GP Land
I'll stop there but there are tons more out there, a good place to start is following Mark Polino's blog since he posts links to tons of other great articles out in the community that you may have time or energy to follow individually!
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Report Writer Series: Keys, Restrictions, Sorting, Grids
Friday, May 25, 2012 How To & Tips, Report Writer
Here, at long last, is my next-to-last blog post in the Report Writer series. It's not that I've covered everything you could possibly know about Report Writer, not by a long shot, but what I've found is some of the basic information I've shared thus far wasn't as easy to find as the more advanced stuff was. Do you want to know about using VBA with Report Writer? Editing package files? Adding Extender fields to a Report Writer report? There are many things like these that are already covered by the Dynamics GP community. In my last article I will summarize my series and include a few links to other Report Writer resources if you haven't found them already!
Now onto this article... This one is a bit of a hodge-podge of things, there is no particular reason why these are all lumped together in one! The items here probably deserve more in-depth discussion but for the purposes of this blog I just wanted to highlight a few key things about them rather than dig deep into their usefulness.
Keys
All tables have keys which are fields in which the data is primarily linked by, sorted by, filtered by etc. The key fields are usually obvious - Customer Number in a customer table, Voucher or Transaction Number in a transaction table etc. In Report Writer there are a lot of different key combinations other than what you might expect if you were merely determining the primary keys on which to link a table by. For example, I'll use the PA Project Master table, from my earlier Custom Reports blog article. Key 1 happens to simply be Project Number. That's great for a number of reports, but what if I wanted to create a report or customize an existing report to add a new section? Here is the sections window for my custom report I wrote last week, where I kept Key 1 as my Key:
Notice that the PA Project Master File only gives me one option for creating a section on my report: Project Number. What if I want to create a report for each department, listing their projects and statuses? Looking at the different keys available for this table, Key 8 is Project Number and Department. If I select that key on my Report Definition, this is what I see for section options:
Where do I find key information? Look under Tables, find your table name, and browse through the keys to see what fields are combined.
Sorting Options
First, a word of warning. Be very careful changing Sort options on existing reports. You can REALLY mess up the output of your report if you are not aware of the implications of the change. Here is how I look at it, when deciding if I can modify the sort options:
My example for sorting deals with a commonly requested modification and the problem of having multiple sections in a report: "Can I sort my A/P Cheque remittance stub by date instead of document number?". I've seen a few people try this and fail only because there are multiple sections and the sorting needs to occur in the right order. So, using the "Check with Stub on Top and Bottom - Graphical" as my example, here is how you could change the sort so it sorts by Date on the remittance stub instead of by Document Number.
First, look at the sections on the report to see how the report is grouped. In this case, the grouping is by cheque number or Document Number, in the PM Payment Work table. So if I want to change the sort, I still need to make sure my first sort is by Document Number of the PM Payment Work table (sort by cheque number first, then sort by date on the remittance stub). This is the part people often miss. What happens if you just put a sort in by Date? It literally sorts your cheques by the date of the remittance on the cheque stub so if you have a batch of 3 cheques, each paying various documents, instead of 3 "pages" (one per cheque), you may get as many as 3 times "x" pages (depending on the number and dates of the documents you are paying that would appear on each vendor's cheque).
Here's how to do it:
Here is what it would look like for this example:
Restrictions
Instead of repeating the same warning from the above Sorting section, I will simply say please be careful with inserting restrictions in a report. For all of the same reasons, restricting data by hard-coding something doesn't make sense many times as the users are often given the option to insert their own. So, creating one at the report writer level can be dangerous and frustrating to a user who doesn't know why some data does not appear on their report.
That being said, creating a restriction is a lot like creating a calculated field. Here is a very simplistic example: hiding inactive GL accounts from a report. The key to restrictions is you are putting a formula in of what you are restricting, not what you want to show.
In this example, I'm restricting "Active" = 1 (inactive).
Grid & Align to Grid
This one is a simple one... under the Layout menu (within the Layout of a report), there are a few options around Grids. First is simply "Grid" meaning: is the grid turned on or off. A grid is a matrix of virtual lines in the background to help you keep things lined up on the same "line" so to speak. The grid size is pre-defined, unlike other tools where you have options for how large a space between grid lines is. You can see the grid by selecting Show Grid.
So, if you have a checkmark beside the Grid option, it's turned on. What you'll find is moving text or fields around, they "snap" to the pre-defined grid pattern. I usually keep the grid on except for very minor section adjustments because it's easier to keep it on than to constantly use the alignment tools for very simple tasks.
Align to Grid is an interesting one. Say you've had the grid turned off and just randomly put a bunch of text fields on a report (for headings perhaps), and they are not aligned. You can use the Arrange tool in the toolbox to align the fields to the same bottom point. You can also select them all and then select Align to Grid from the Layout menu, and watch them snap into place to the nearest grid point. What's the diff? Well, simply put, the most common font sizes on most reports align nicely within the pre-defined grid so sometimes I simply align the fields to the grid so they snap to a gridline, then move them from there.
How to move a field between grid lines? This is called Nudging and you simply use your arrow keys up, down, left or right to nudge the field(s) you have selected a little bit at a time. Often nudging is enough to move things just a little bit off the grid or to create a small visual space between items. Often this is easier than turning the grid off, since you can manage the number of spaces/nudges that your fields move easier than with a mouse free-hand.
When do I remove the grid? When I want to adjust a section size, if there is text or fields in the way, I cannot move it by an entire grid increment so I will turn the grid off and use my mouse to adjust the size of the section.
Next post I'll do a wrap up of what I've covered and where to look for additional sources of good information!
(Edited May 27th - typos and grammar!)
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Report Writer Series: Custom Reports
Monday, May 21, 2012 How To & Tips, Report Writer
The next in my series of blog posts about Report Writer is a brief article on Custom reports.
Why would you create a custom report in Report Writer? (really... why?) I've done it a handful of times, and don't particularly recommend it (with all due respect to David Musgrave :) ) but there are a couple simple reasons why it makes sense sometimes. The types of reports you would create with it would need to be extremely simple due to the fact there is no end user option for sorting or filtering results and no parameter input.
One: Data Validation. It can be useful to put together a report to quickly view some records that are otherwise not available on a regular out of the box report. This is usually why I use it, and the reports are generally discarded after we've validated and printed what we need. This is my last resort, as Smartlist Builder is my tool of choice for this. However, if the customer does not own SLB, sometimes this is the next best option.
Two: Time. Sometimes the alternative is another reporting tool, which needs to be purchased, licensed, installed and/or configured; not to mention the matter of distributing the report to the necessary users. Sometimes, if the report is possible using Report Writer, it's quicker and simpler to do it this way. There are so many tools out there, most of the time the best option for the long term is another reporting tool (Crystal Reports, SQL Reporting Services, Smartlist Builder, etc.). There simply is not enough flexibility with Report Writer to do all the things many people want to do with reports but the one thing it has going for it is it's always there ready to go when you need it.
How to create a custom report
I'm not going into as much depth on this article simply because I don't expect many people to actively use Custom Reports... it's a high level overview of the steps and my previous articles can help with some of the nuts and bolts of the details.
1. Launch Report Writer & select your dictionary
Open the Reports window if it's not already opened and click New to get started. You'll need to give your report a name, and select a Series for the report. The Series will affect a couple of things, most notably where the report appears under security when setting security for this and where the users find it in the Custom Reports window. Keep it simple: put it in the series to which is most closely fits!
2. Select a Main Table & Keys
The main table is the one where your primary source of information is located. I've selected "PA Project Master File" since my example will be a simple project listing. Most tables have multiple key options, and your choice may be different depending on what you are linking to, how you want your report to sort and what sections you want on your report. In my case, I am not sorting or grouping by many fields so the first key - Project Number - is fine.
3. Add other tables as needed
Add whatever other tables you want to link to this report. If necessary, create a new relationship between two tables. For this example,I'm simply linking to the RM Customer MSTR table to get the full customer name on my report.
4. Add sorting and/or restrictions if needed
My next blog article will talk about both Sorting and Restrictions as well as Keys. For my example, I've left both sorting and restrictions blank. Here is what my Report Definition looks like:
5. Create your report layout
You're starting with a blank slate here, and you can create whatever sections you need, decide what page headers and footers you want etc. In my case, I've decided to add both a header and footer section for the Customer. My report is going to be a list of projects grouped by customer, so my header and footer are breaking on changes in Customer Number. Here is what my simple report looks like in Report Layout:
6. Test your report
With a custom report, you are able to run it right from within Report Writer which helps a great deal in checking the data and layout quickly. This is what my simple report looks like:
7. Set security.
Security on these types of Report Writer reports is not through the Alternate/Modified area like you would use to grant security on a modified report. This time, it's in the tasks. Edit or create new tasks where you want the report visible to certain users. Select the product under which you created the report, the type is "Custom Reports" and the series is whatever series you selected.
8. Print the report
Lastly, custom reports all appear under one window under the Reports menu, Customized and you select your Product and Series to display and print them.
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Canadian Payroll - Transmission Header Incorrect Length error
Thursday, May 17, 2012 Canadian Payroll, Troubleshooting
This is a repeat of an article I wrote in November 2011 with updated information.
Issue #2 in that blog was regarding permissions during the Generate Cheques routine and the message "There is an error in the Transmission Header - Incorrect Length".
At that time, the fix seemed pretty obvious and it worked during testing on Windows 7 machines. I wrote about it, forgot about it, and moved on. Months later I learned the client doesn't use Windows 7 on the machines that they use payroll for (those machines happen to be older Windows XP machines) so the error never came up again and I had completely forgotten about it.
Fast forward to last month and another client of mine upgraded all of their workstations to Windows 7 and the error re-surfaced. It is a Canadian Payroll error that only occurs if you use Canada Savings Bonds - when the CSB file is saved, it defaults to the GP2010 application directory without any option to change that destination.
The Issue
Windows or Dynamics GP (I'm not sure which) seemed to be using the LEAST amount of permissions for a given user to assess if it could save a file in the GP2010 application directory. Their IT department had added the users affected and given them full control to no avail. They figured that the only solution was to "Run As" Administrator (launch Dynamics GP as Administrator did fix the problem but as a general rule that is a horrible workaround!).
The Resolution
This time I have a confirmed resolution for this: and yes, it is permissions related. After playing with various changes to permissions and confirming the issue STILL occurs for a Domain Administrator (yes!), I came to the conclusion about the "least permissions" angle. So I looked at the least permissions the user had and they were part of the general "Users" group and in that group, the permissions were the default read-only permissions. Changing that to allow "Write" solved the issue. In this client's case we actually changed "Users" to "Modify" and "Write" just in case modifying an existing file someday comes up.
I can't confirm this from a "windows User Account Control" perspective since that is not my area of expertise (the "least permissions" thing) but it definitely seems to be on the right track. At the very least, the customer is happy once again because removing UAC or launching Dynamics GP "as administrator" is not a long term solution!
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Report Writing Series: Sections
Sunday, May 13, 2012 How To & Tips, Report Writer
I'm continuing the Report Writer series with a brief article on Sections in Report Writer. Every once in a while I see a question on a forum "my field didn't print and I don't know why!". Hopefully this will help answer that kind of question!
Generally speaking a report will have at least 5 sections to it, in this order:
Page Header & Footer
First, let's start with the Report Definition window, specifically the Printing Options section. This will help you determine when your Page Header (PH) and Page Footer (PF) sections will print.
In my screen shot, this particular report will NOT print a "first page" Page Header but will print a "last page" Page Footer. Looking at the layout of this report, here is a description of what will and won't print on the first page.
At the very top is the PH (Page Header). In my case, this will not print on the first page, but it will print on Page 2 to the last page of the report. You'll notice part of it is exactly the same as the RH (Report Header) section. On this report, the Report Header (first page) shows the legend of what the report options were, which only need to print on the first page. I could change this - and print the same thing on every page by moving those sections to the PH section and hiding the RH section.
Similarly to the PF and RF sections (Page Header and Report Header respectively), on this report the PF was already hidden and I needed to go into the Section Options to unhide it for this pic. It is completely empty because this particular report doesn't need two footer sections or a footer on each page.
When might you want a PF section? Perhaps you have a report where you want a subtotal of the report data on the bottom of each page - that's a good time to have a page footer.
What does this mean when you're editing or creating a report?
This impacts where you put things as well as where you need to edit or move titles. One very common mistake I see is someone edits a report but uses sample data that is only one page long. They never test what Page 2 beyond looks like. Then Page 2 prints and lo and behold, the titles don't line up. Why? They didn't make the same changes in the PH section that they did in the RH section.
Similarly, I've seen people make a ton of changes to the PH section only to ask why their new changes didn't show up. If you print a one page sample, and didn't make the same changes in the RH section, your changes won't print (assuming you have the same Report Definition settings of no first page header).
So, test with a multi-page report if you can and make sure you keep your PH and RH sections in sync, if they are intended to be similar like they are for many reports.
Other sections
There are tons of other sections on most reports in Dynamics GP, which are all sections of things where reports are grouped or sorted. Below is what the section options window looks like. You can open this window by going to the Tools menu in Report Writer.
First, this shows you what sections are visible in your Report Writer layout window. This is the part of Report Writer where you become a bit of a detective sometimes to figure out what the default sections are, if they are not obvious. In my report, a Payables Historial Aged Trial Balance, there are 2 extra header sections and one extra Footer section. To view more about the extra sections, click on one, then click on Open to view the settings. That is what tells you what the section is for.
In this particular case, the section is a grouping by Vendor ID. The sections are "Print when this field changes" meaning, for each vendor ID change, print this section. If you look back at the layout window screen shot above, you will see this section called H1 (note: it's listed first, therefore it's the first header, the numbering is in sequence from top to bottom). The H1 section contains only Vendor information, no transactional information, because that wouldn't print properly up here... it also contains some headings, so that within a report for this vendor (aging detail in this case), the headings print before that vendor's transactions to make it easier to read.
Here is where you have some options. Some people prefer the headings to print once per page, not once per section. In that case, I would move the headings (the Aging Bucket fields, etc.) up to the RH section AND to the PH section. Remember, this report prints the RH for page 1 and the PH for page 2 onwards. So, I need it on both headers so it prints at the top of each page.
Here is what the report looks like before the change:
I've modified this report a bit already to highlight each new vendor section and the total due - but I left the headings at the "per vendor" section. Each vendor has the same headings. Here is what it looks like moved to a different section:
Now the headers are at the top of the page, and there is no additional info between the vendors. Personally, I find this harder to read but it does save space and make the report look a little less cluttered.
When it gets a little more complicated!
One last example of where being a detective comes in handy. Project Accounting is one reporting dictionary where so many things are configurable in the product itself, that the Report Writer side seems entirely generic and a giant mystery! Here's a screen shot of a Project Accounting invoice and it's a bit scary looking at first!
Every section is generically named - Group 1 Break, huh? Then you go into a section, and the "Print when field changes" doesn't exactly help. One key field that may help is "Suppress When Field is Empty" - this is a calculated field, that defines when this section prints or doesn't print. Sometimes I will look at the calculated field to see if I can figure out what the break or related data is.
Unfortunately in this case, the calculated field simply refers to the same field name above, a generic "group 2 break" field. So, that doesn't help me here.
Next, I will look at the fields that are in that section. Most times this is where I start to figure out the sections. For example, this section only has one field which is a calculated field. Here is what it says:
From this point on, I should point out, if you don't have an understanding of the underlying structure of the module you are creating a report for, that is the best place to start... someone who doesn't know anything about Project Accounting would be hard-pressed to figure out the sections by looking at the report. For me, having used PA for years and years, this is where it starts to make sense. This section I now know is a heading that simply describes the content to follow - either Billings or Fees.
What if that doesn't help?
I'd be lying if I said I could figure it all out just by doing this. Sometimes I don't want to spent the time looking at this level of detail so I will take another approach: put a unique piece of text in each section I need to know more about and then print the report - or print several of the reports with different options enabled. Looking at the raw output tells me what prints where and hopefully that will help me figure out if it's a section I could hide or need to keep.
In Summary
The biggest caveat I can give you for sections - particularly around whether you can delete or hide sections - is to go slowly and try things out, continually printing test reports to see the effect. Test with lots of data, especially in a report with multiple sections. The sections are usually grouping and totalling things and a major change in a section will result in incorrect data.
TIP: know your test data. Create your test data before you start modifying too much, so you have a baseline report that has correct groups, subtotals and totals before you make major changes. As you make changes, specifically hiding or removing sections, check all of the subtotals and totals. Removing a group that matters, will make a subtotal or total incorrect in a hurry and should stand out.
Hopefully this gives you a bit of headway into what the various sections mean and how to navigate them.
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Report Writer Series: Drawing Options Tips
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 How To & Tips, Report Writer
Way back in February 2011 (yikes!), I wrote about some Report Writer toolbox items, and focussed on the Arrange tab of tools. Today, at long last, I am concluding that article with some notes and tips on the drawing options (most font options), hopefully clearing up some mysteries.
What are Drawing Options?
These are the options you get when either double-clicking on a text field or graphic field like a line or a box, or using CTRL+D on a data field. There are several pieces to it and options that you have. Here I will describe how they work and how to use them effectively.
If you haven't yet ready my article on formatting text, that may be a good place to start which gives some info I will not be covering today.
When you open the Drawing Options window, what you see differs depending on whether you opened this window from a text field, a data field or a graphic (line, box etc.) field. This screen shot is from a graphical report that I’ve been modifying in this series. If you are in a Text report, every Drawing option is greyed out.
One tip before I start, if you are making the same change to a bunch of fields, you can select multiple fields at the same time and then change the drawing options at once. That speeds things up when you are doing a bunch of similar changes. Use the Lasso or Ctrl-Click methods I mentioned in my earlier post about formatting text.
The Font section
The top left corner lists all of the fonts available to you on this computer. It’s barely visible in this picture, but the font I’m using happens to be Calibri, which is highlighted. The symbol beside the font just tells you what kind of font it is – TT meaning True Type. The standard text formatting options are available under Font Style of Bold, Italic and Underline. Font size, you’ll notice, is a drop down list. TIP: you can also type in a font size. From time to time I have had to drop to a font size smaller than the smallest available and simply clicking in the box to type in the value you want works.
A few words of caution when selecting fonts and styles:
Colours & Patterns sections (revised!)
I've re-written this section of the article, after a conversation with a reader of the blog and some more testing to clarify a few things. Now I can really say colour is more interesting! (And yes, I will insist on spelling it "Colour" since I am proudly Canadian!).
My light bulb moment: something I didn't really clue into before I did some more testing, you can select ONE pattern in the upper right hand corner. It's not one pattern per colour choice, it's not solid for fonts, shading for background and then a pattern. Uh uh. One. Pattern. Period. Here is how your choice of Pattern (upper right) affects what your options are in the Colour (bottom left) section are:
1. Clear
2. Solid
3. Shading "Pattern" (25%, 50%, 75%)
4. The other patterns
Back to my regularly scheduled article!
Here is the rest of my article, with the now-redundant pieces removed!
Starting simply with the colour options, you can select a default colour from the list. The Sample box shows you visually what it might look like. Often I’ll increase the font size just to get a larger sample preview when playing with colour options. You can click on the More Colors button to get a broader palette to choose from and to go even further you can define custom colours. If you want to use your corporate colours for some titles, you simply need to know the equivalent HSL or RGB values of that colour. To save the colours you want, click on Add to Custom Colours and they appear in the bottom of the More Colors list.
TIP: Typically corporate colours are most commonly one of two types of values – a Pantone colour reference (PMS 109) or if it’s from a website, a Hex value like FF6633 (a beautiful colour of orange!). Use your favourite search engine to look up “Pantone to RGB” or “Hex to RGB” and you’ll find a bunch of websites that help you find the right values.
Now that you know the colours, the trick is you select the radio button of the thing you want to change first. It defaults to Font (or Line), so if you haven’t picked anything and changed the colour, you just changed the colour of the line or text. The background option is the background of that specific object, not the page background.
Here is an example of an object with a red background and a blue Up Diagonal pattern – the diagonals lines are blue since the Pattern colour is the foreground colour.
Alignment
The last of the sections is the Alignment section. If you have used this before, you will know that the alignment doesn’t affect all types of fields. Also, data fields visually in Report Writer do not change when you change this setting, you have to run the report to see the change. Often data fields have their own alignment in the formatting section of the Report Field Options window which will override what the Drawing Options setting is. For text fields and some data fields, simply choose Left, Center or Right justified.
Line Sizes & Colours
The one option that is greyed out when you are looking at Text drawing options is Line size. Once you select a Line, Box, Circle or similar graphic, the Line section is enabled. There are four thicknesses of lines available. You can also select colours for lines but Background and Patterns are greyed out.
General Notes on Layers, Boxes & Backgrounds
Design-wise I tend to avoid using backgrounds on text and insert background boxes if I would like a shaded background. This allows me to size the background as appropriate without also altering the dimensions of the text field(s). One tip if you are going to do this, remember your layers! Under the Layout menu, there is a Send to Back and Send to Front command. This works well to hide or unhide things as you can easily put in a box, "send to back" so it's behind the text you have. If you do this, use a "clear" background on your text not a solid colour.
Below is a quick example of the output of a few changes (most of which will be changed back to normal when I'm done!). I've got the "approval" section in colour, to highlight it easily for readers. The Batch ID and Batch Comment both have a background colour of Black 25% shading. For comparison, the Batch Total and Trx Total section I put a box behind those two fields with the same colour. Personally, that looks better to me than the background colour on a text field.
Next time?
I hesitate to promise more in the Report Writer series but in re-reading my series of articles, I do see some more topics that I can cover... hopefully those won't take another year to complete!
Until next time...
(Edited May 10, 2012 - Update to the Colour & Patterns section)
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Free Stuff for GP!
Friday, March 23, 2012 General Stuff, News
(updated with more information Sun March 25, 2012)
You read that correctly! Microsoft has decided to change the way they work with some of their utilities and tools. Previously there were charges to get access to tools or utilities like Customer Modifier and Customer Combiner (and Vendor, Account, Item etc.). On the partner side, we had to purchase those outside of the normal ordering processes (they weren't "modules" like ordering something like Integration Manager was). They want to streamline that to eliminate some of their Direct Billing policies and that means Dynamics GP customers win!
What's Free?
Well here is a list of what I know of, and it's effective March 1, 2012. Keep in mind this has only recently been announced so don't be surprised if your partner doesn't know all of the details about it yet - the information is just trickling out now and not everything on Partnersource is yet updated for us.
Professional Services Tools Library
All of it, some of the tools were already free, now all of the tools will be free. There are so many tools in this library, it's impossible to explain them all here! Here is a quick list of the ones that in my opinion are AWESOME to have available for free. More information on all of the tools and what they do is here (this is the general GP2010 installation guide download page - look in the list for ProfServicesToolsLibrary.pdf).
AutoDim
Utility allows you to launch Great Plains and run one or more integrations or integration groups and have Great Plains exit upon completion of the integrations. This product also supports integrating into several different companies.
AutoPost
A COM dll that can be called from IM or an outside application to post some types of Dynamics Batches. Currently the application supports posting of SOP, GL Trx Entry, IV Trx Entry and RM Cash Receipts batches. NOTE: Because this application uses the Continuum API, the Great Plains client must be running and a user logged into a company for this application to work. The posting process would then use that user & company to post the desired batch.
NoteFix
A utility to help identify cross-linked notes (two records assigned the same Note Index).
Payroll Detailed Activity Tracking
The Payroll Detailed Activity Tracker will track changes made to employee records (US Payroll only). This tool is available for SQL users. This was essentially a tool that was available prior to introducing the Audit Trails product. It creates triggers to track changes to payroll records in various US Payroll tables.
PO Returns
When invoicing a receipt in POP, this customization will check the previous quantity invoiced and the quantity returned for the line item. The maximum quantity allowed to be invoiced is based the following formula: Quantity Shipped minus (Previous Quantity Invoiced plus Quantity Returned). This customization will not allow invoicing of more than this amount.
POP Over Receipt Tolerance
Utility that allows a receipt tolerance percentage for quantities. A setup window allows the user to enter a tolerance percentage, that percentage is then used when a Purchase Order is received. The highest quantity that can be received is the original quantity ordered plus the percentage amount. For example, a Purchase Order is entered for a quantity of 10. A tolerance percentage of 20% is entered. The highest quantity allowed to be received would be 12.
RM Auto Apply Utility
This application will allow the user to Mass Apply posted RM Credit Documents to posted RM Debit Documents. The user can select a range of Customer, Debit Document Dates, Credit Document Dates, and a Credit Document Type restriction if desired. The credit documents will apply to the debit documents in the order specified in Receivables Management Setup window which is the same order that Dynamics Apply Sales Documents Auto Apply button uses.
Shipment Notification
Will allow drop ship sales orders to be transferred to invoice prior to invoicing the purchase order.
SOP Default Site per Line
This customization changes the site that is defaulted on line items. Instead of pulling the site from the Default Site on the SOP Entry window, if there is a default site assigned to the item in Cards>Inventory>Qtys/Sites, then that site will default for that line item If there is no default site id for the item, then the customization will default the first site that is assigned to the item.
SOP Sort Line Items
This utility allows the user to define custom sorting options to display line items in Sales Order Processing. For example, a sort could be defined by Item Number and then the currently selected SOP Document would display the line items in Item Number order instead of the standard by order entered. This utility does not physically reorder the records in the underlying tables; it only displays them differently in the Sales Order Processing window. This application also does not affect the way that sales documents print. (SQL database only)
SOP to POP Line Reordering Utility
This utility will reorder the line items of Purchase Orders generated by the SOP to POP transfer process to be in the same order as they originally were on the Sales Order document(s). The preview report will still show an alphabetical list, but on the actual Purchase Order document the line items will maintain their correct sequence. This is critical for companies who rely on matching up PO printouts to Packing Lists or Picking Tickets in SOP.
SOP Tax Schedule Roll down
This appears to be an old utility relating to a change in functionality from verison 6.0 to 7.0. This KB article explains some of it, I'm unsure at this point if there is more to this utility!
How do I get these tools?
If you are an existing Dynamics GP customer, ask your partner. They are available via partners only at the moment, that may change. Partners, the PSTL keys will need to be on a request basis until Partnersource is updated with a master key for free use for anyone. The information I have is to contact ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com to obtain a key in the interim.
In the next release of GP, Dynamics GP2013, the PSTL will be on the CD as well.
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eConnect, GL Transactions & Multicurrency
Monday, February 20, 2012 General Ledger, Troubleshooting
What I'm posting today is hopefully of use to someone out there who runs into this same problem. Admittedly it's rare but it took me a while to find the answer.
In this case, "I" didn't find the answer, I found it buried in a community forums post from Sivakumar, one of the Microsoft Dynamics GP MVPs.
The Issue
I was attempting to import General Ledger transactions using eConnect via SmartConnect. My client had multicurrency enabled and there was a default currency in place already (CAD). When you manually keyed in a journal entry, the currency ID defaults to CAD (in this customer's case), you don't have to select a currency.
When I was running the integration, the transactions were successfully created but the Currency ID field was blank. Since it's a required field, that meant manually updating them each time - not a long term solution.
The Resolution
Thanks to Sivakumar, for the resolution. It turns out that eConnect for whatever reason cannot check to see if Multicurrency is enabled, therefore it checks the CM00100 (Chequebook Master) table instead, to see if MC is enabled. Strange but true. What that meant was in order for it to determine what it needs to, at least one chequebook must be configured.
In this client's case, we were importing transactions for a holding company where they don't use A/P or A/R at all, so they had never set up a chequebook for it. In the past, pre-SmartConnect, Integration Manager had imported things just fine but it was slow and time for something more robust - eConnect and SmartConnect was the answer.
So we simply configured a dummy chequebook for this holding company, and from then on, the transactions imported with a proper default currency ID!
The alternative would have been to hard-code the currency ID but in this case, it was nice to find the actual cause and fix it, instead of hard-coding a value that could change.
(Update: include link to Sivakumar's blog)
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Some Canadian Payroll & Project Accounting gotchas!
Thursday, February 16, 2012 Canadian Payroll, Project Accounting, Troubleshooting
Recently a client of mine has experienced a couple of weird things when we started to configure another Dynamics GP company for them with Canadian Payroll and Project Accounting in action. One of them is definitely something to look out for if you use the Canadian Payroll import processes; the second is more of a head-scratcher type of error where you don't know what the real problem is.
I call these things "gotchas" - I'm not sure that translates into all languages but generally means to me at least, something that "GOT" me, that I wasn't expecting or didn't think to look out for.
Batch errors that don't tell you anything
I love this one: "Batch level errors exist" type of error when posting a project accounting Timesheet transaction batch. Most times the batches will tell you what the exact error is. However, in this case the client was getting a mysterious error but only when posting the batch. If they printed the edit list, there were no errors.
The end result: the error was a Canadian Payroll issue. When you post a Timesheet batch with integration to Payroll (Canadian Payroll at least), you select the batch in Payroll to post the timesheets into. In this case, the payroll batch had mistakenly been set up with a different Pay Period Type compared to what the employees are set up as. I.E. the employees were set up as being paid 52/53 pay periods, and the batch was set up as 26/27 pay periods. The pay periods didn't match, therefore the timesheets didn't post. Since it was not a Project Accounting issue, all it knew to tell the client was "batch level errors exist"!
So if you run into something like this, do a quick check on the payroll batch setup as well as the employees (randomly check some of the employees in your batch for what they are set up for).
Canadian Payroll import does not appear to populate Project Accounting tables
This one was strange. I don't recall us having this issue originally at the client during our initial configuration. That was years ago and I may have forgotten that we fixed something at that time. Anyway, this time, we were creating a new company and configuring everything, naturally using the CanPay import utilities to import our employees and paycode information. Normally that is very easy - the spreadsheets and format is a little time consuming to get right, but it's quick and generally works fine. However, in this case, it did not populate the PA Employee Options table (PA00601), and even more importantly, it left the Employed By field empty. Normally this field defaults to "Company". This was in GP2010 R2 - I haven't pursued it any further to see if this applies to other versions.
When the field is anything other than Employed By Company, the timesheets you enter in Project Accounting do not post to Payroll! So when they initially went to test their payroll configuration, they created some timesheets and posted them only to find a handful of employees only made it through to the Canadian Payroll side in Quick Transaction Entry. When they noticed that the people that made it to payroll were relatively new employees, we then looked at the tables and sure enough, the employees that were missing were from the original import and the Employed By field was blank. We changed it to Company and all was good again.
Lessons Learned
I see too many clients NOT go through thorough testing, especially when they are used to the system and perhaps adding some new module or configuration, or in this case, creating a new company. Had my client not tested this thoroughly, they would have been surprised on "day 1" to find a bunch of issues. The first issue has nothing to do with testing of course but the second one is a good reminder that nothing replaces proper testing. The first glance at employee records looked fine and they were focussing on the day to day stuff - did the rates and paycodes come in ok, etc. The smaller stuff like Project Options seem so trivial in comparison that they get overlooked, until you run a payroll and test it all the way through the cycle.
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Why does the JE description say “Receivings Transaction Entry”?
Sunday, January 22, 2012 General Ledger, How To & Tips, Purchase Order Processing
This question came up in a forum recently - not in this exact form - but essentially the question was "where can you change the description of a transaction from a Dynamics GP Receivings Shipment or Shipment/Invoice"?
The short answer is, it's very well hidden but it is there, and most users don't see it and generally it stays at the default value which is "Receivings Transaction Entry". That means if you print transaction descriptions on a Accounts Payable cheque or EFT remittance, that's what you see.
Here is a view of a posted journal entry reference field, the source you can see is RECVG, and the default description which appears if the user does not change it during entry:
Here is where the field comes from, in Receivings Transaction Entry:
And here is what shows when posted:
Hopefully this helps some of you out there who have been looking for where to change this description!
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Quick Tip: Smartlist Builder & Account Numbers
Monday, January 16, 2012 Smartlist Builder, How To & Tips
This is a very short tip for those who use Smartlist Builder. I must say I see this ALL THE TIME. I hope to expand on little nuggets inside Smartlist Builder in the coming months because there are numerous time savers in there, that people have gone to great lengths to work around manually & unnecessarily!
The Issue
Someone creates a smartlist that has GL account numbers in it, perhaps it's a smartlist of a setup window, or of transaction distributions - whatever the case, they find the table and find Account Index fields, not Account Number fields. They don't know what to do, so they link in the Account Master table and/or the Account Index Master table to get the full account number in string format.
Linking to get the account description? That's normal. Linking to get the account number? THAT'S not needed... and I'll show you how.
How to display the Account Number instead of the Account Index
Here's a screen shot of a new Smartlist Builder window. Notice I have removed the Account Index Master link? I've linked the Account Master table still, because I wanted to get the Account Description field. In this screen shot, I've selected a field that is an Account Index field, meaning by default it will show a numeric value which is the primary key for that Account Number in every table in Dynamics GP. However Smartlist Builder has options, click on the Blue Arrow which is crudely shown in this picture.
Behind the blue arrow are several options. In this case, the one we want is circled: telling Smartlist Builder that this field is an account index and to show the Account Number instead.
The End Result
Using the field options, you can set all the account index fields to show the Account Number automatically, and if you don't need an account description for your particular smartlist, you just saved yourself from having to link unnecessary tables all the time!
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New Year’s Resolutions 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012 Off Topic Articles
Happy new year everyone! It's January 1st, 2012 and it's time again to review last year and make some resolutions for this year.
The Year 2011 in Review
Last year I started the year with a blog article about my resolutions, business wise. How did I fare? Well... some good and some not so good answers on that!
What's in the plan for 2012?
This year I have resolved to make some more reasonable goals! I also read an interesting article about making monthly, not yearly, resolutions. So, for some of my personal resolutions, I plan to do just that - set a goal for a month and see how I do, adjust if necessary, and continue in subsequent months. Here are some of my goals for this coming year:
That's a good start... and lots of things to achieve!
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Canadian Payroll Year End 2011 Update
Wednesday, December 21, 2011 Canadian Payroll
The folks in Fargo are thrilled to say they have no snow yet as of today - December 21, 2011. And even better news! The Canadian Payroll 2011 year end updates are out! Wheeee... let the fun begin!
Reminder for those of you (hopefully none of you) who are running GP9 or earlier - there are no tax updates for your version anymore... hopefully you're in the midst of an upgrade to GP10 or GP2010.
On to the real content now... here are the details for the tax updates.
Release 10.0:
Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
Release 2010:
Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
What's Changed
No table changes! Woohoo!
There are the usual tax rate changes for 2012 and a handful of changes specifically relating to year end:
Here is some information on the Volunteer Firefighters pieces. It would require table changes and they HAVE NOT made the necessary table changes to accomodate this. (I won't say "yet" because there is no plan at the moment to make the table change - clearly that means there aren't enough customers affected to push this through development).
The workaround if you need these features (tax credit and exempt amount)
Hopefully this is an uneventful year... the last few years we've dealt with table changes of varying degrees!
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Canadian Payroll issues and fixes
Saturday, November 19, 2011 Canadian Payroll, Troubleshooting
Third time's the charm... :) Gotta love computers, I've written this twice already and lost it completely, the draft didn't even save. Argh!
Today I have 2 issues to write about relating specifically to Canadian Payroll in Dynamics GP; things that a couple of my clients have recently run into that are fairly common and easy fixes.
Issue #1 is regarding stuck batches and the message "The batch is currently in use - Please wait until the other user is finished".
Issue #2 is regarding permissions during the Generate Cheques routine and the message "There is an error in the Transmission Header - Incorrect Length".
Issue 1: Stuck Batches
This first issue is incredibly easy to resolve yet one of those things that consultants are not looking for something this simple; the solution is different than for nearly every other module which requires a SQL script to be run.
The issue is trying to do something to a batch in Canadian Payroll and receiving the following message: "The batch is currently in use - Please wait until the other user is finished".
The solution is to open the Payroll Batch Setup window, select your batch and click the Reset Button. This resets the batch's status from In Process to Available, freeing it up for the user to proceed with it. When you click Reset, you will get a message to confirm that says something like "are you sure you want to perform a general cleanup of the batch file?" and the answer is Yes.
Issue 2: Permissions
This second error, which occurs during the Generate Cheques process, is permissions related. Of course you wouldn't know that by the error message though! We really should help those developers with improving the text on error messages some day!
The error is: "There is an error in the Transmission Header - Incorrect Length". Meaningful isn't it? Well, when this first happened, it was with a client who had just upgraded from GP9 to GP2010 and this was on processing their first payroll. They didn't get the error during their test upgrade so it was a little surprising.
The solution ended up being that the user - now that GP2010 was installed on her own workstation with her normal permissions - didn't have "write" permissions on the application directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics\GP2010). During the Generate Cheques routine, for most Canadian Payroll users, there are two files being generated - a direct deposit file which you sent to the bank, and a Canada Savings Bond file which you send to the bank or manually transmit in other ways.
Years ago, both files defaulted to the application directory without giving the user the option where to save it; nor was there an option to configure a default location like most other file-based things in other modules. After many complaints and suggestions, Microsoft finally fixed the issue on the Direct Deposit file, which now prompts the user for a location to save the output file. Unfortunately they didn't do the same for the CSB file and it continues to default to the application directory.
At this client, they switched to Windows 7 with the upgrade so the workstations were using default User Account Control settings. A simple switch to give the users permission to create a file in that directory solved the problem.
Hopefully this helps someone out there when they get one or more of these error messages!
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How secure are your passwords?
Saturday, October 29, 2011 General Stuff, Security, Troubleshooting
It seems I am starting every post recently with "it's been a while since I last posted"! I have probably reached the point that it goes without saying... lol
A recent scenario at a client got me to thinking about security - or lack thereof - that exists at some clients for various reasons as well as the flipside of ridiculous security that was going too far the other way.
The Background
I've been documenting the configuration of a third party reporting & budgeting tool one of my clients uses, since no one, including myself, knows any of the inner workings.
It's an odd situation really, no one knows much about this application and the person who was all gung ho about it to buy it and get it installed is no longer with the company. Having spoken to this person before they left, they didn't know either. Swell!
I started down this road because they are in the middle of an upgrade and they are interested in scaling back on the use of 'sa' internally after the upgrade is complete. The question came up: does XYZ product use 'sa' anywhere that we need to know about? Great question! It was bought and installed long before I was involved so I have no idea, and the VAR didn't do the install so they have no idea either. To compound it, the IT person who was working with the software vendor is no longer here, didn't document anything and no one knows who did the original install. It really sounds too goofy to be true but I'm quite sure this happens more often than people realize.
First lesson to share: SOMEONE write down the key ingredients to a new product install - that includes admin accounts, service accounts, etc. Ideally your VAR is installing new products for or with you and they really should be responsible for documenting some of this for you - and yes, you have to pay for this to be done! If you don't want to pay for this kind of documentation, then someone needs to pay attention, ask questions and write things down.
Let the hacking begin
"Hacking" may be a bit extreme but what I had to do was go into any and all applications and configuration areas this suite of products had to determine what some of these settings were. The documentation I had from the software vendor was sadly lacking; but of course they are not typically documenting the configuration settings of an install, at least not for an end user. Those kinds of instructions the VARs may get or they may learn them via training on installation of the product.
In this case there were two separate products, one was a data warehouse kind of tool with a front end administration console and the second was a reporting tool. Both have client pieces as well. Fortunately one of the users knew one of the admin passwords - which was the software company's name (that's original!). The documentation from the software vendor did mention the default password for one of the admin tools was "admin" and turns out, that still worked. Yikes... no mention of how to change this either.
There was a third admin user that no one seemed to know the password to, so a-hacking I went trying to guess. It didn't take long, I tried all of the common passwords people use, like password, access, no password etc.. No rocket scientist needed here.
Now that I was able to access some of the admin sides of these apps, I did find that "sa" was being used as a service account of sorts for the connection to the server and the other app used it's own service account, and they used the 'sa' password for that service account. Of course that wasn't documented anywhere but through trial and error I tried the same password as the 'sa' account and sure enough that was it. At least that was a smart idea.
My reaction
It really bugs me when people - VARs, Consultants, Software Providers, Clients - use such weak passwords for admin functions. Sometimes it's the clients' request - they don't want it too complicated. Sometimes it's the installers though - they just merrily install with the weak passwords without consulting the client on what to use. In my opinion it's our job as a consultant/VAR to recommend - if the client chooses not to follow our recommendations, that's their option.
I could go on and perhaps will in a future post. Personally I am a believer that very few people should use the 'sa' account: nearly everything can be done with granting the necessary SQL permissions to DYNSA or a GP user account. Installation routines are probably the one thing where 'sa' is still sometimes hard-coded into installation routines, even if DYNSA is granted the sysadmin SQL role, for instance. Day to day admin that requires elevated SQL permissions? I always recommend elevating DYNSA's permissions and using that for the usual user setup, user access types of things and in some cases elevate specific GP user ID permissions in SQL as well where named users makes more sense.
The risk of going too far overboard is the opposite effect. I had a client once where their audit recommendations were the use of 14-character passwords for everyone in the organization. Yikes! I'm ok with the recommendation I suppose, but the client does have a choice between ridiculous requirements and reasonable requirements. In this case the client chose to follow the recommendations. Guess what, EVERY user has their password written on a post-it note on their desk because 14 characters is too long to remember. How secure is that?
Well the good news is now that we found the configuration areas we were able to secure things better and have a nice starting point for the IT department on the inner workings of this third party tool.
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A new season begins…
Sunday, October 2, 2011 News, Off Topic Articles
Yesterday I went golfing, and it was the first day that really had that "autumn turning to winter" feel about it. It was about 8 degrees Celcius when I teed off, and yes, I froze my backside off in the process. But the sun came out and gradually I only needed 3 layers to keep warm. ; ) (Such is life in Canada when you want to golf in October!)
October 1st also is a new season business-wise: the new Microsoft partner requirements officially begin. For my firm, that means I officially do not meet the requirements to be a reseller anymore. This isn't new, it hasn't "crept up" or caught me off-guard... no, partners have been well aware of the changes for many months now.
Am I disappointed? Yes and no. When I started, I was really proud to be a full Microsoft Dynamics GP reselling partner... I had customers who wanted to work with me, and only me, and they switched VARs to demonstrate their committment to my business as I had to theirs over the years. Little did I know when I started, how difficult it is to be a small fish in a big pond. Systems are heavily geared towards larger partners, particularly on the business transaction side of things. I've grown to realize that doing business with firms where I'm such a blip on the radar is not fun, and it's not easy. If you don't have a partner service plan or credit terms, it just takes a lot of back and forth to get business transactions done unfortunately.
Overall it's been interesting, from a business perspective, dealing with Microsoft and a few third party ISV vendors. I don't regret my decision to become a reselling partner in the first place... it's had its share of hassles but I've learned a few things.
Focussing on the future...
I've been living and breathing Microsoft Dynamics GP, Great Plains, eEnterprise, whatever you call it, for over 12 years now and losing my "reseller" partner status is not going to affect that. I've spent FAR too much time with this product to change careers. For all of my venting at Microsoft or others in terms of doing business with them, their products are great, they are well positioned in the marketplace, and they have a tremedous team of people behind the product many of whom I've met over the years and I know they really care about making GP better.
I'll still be a "consulting" partner which gives me access to everything I've really needed. Heck, software was 4.6% of my revenue last year - mostly enhancement revenue at that... hardly worth fighting over. I'm working with a great small GP reseller who is small enough to be a good partner for my firm to work with on the software side of things and large enough that they don't have to constantly worry about meeting new partner requirements. That will allow me to give my clients a quality combination of two solid firms with years of experience to support them in both software and services over the years. I'll give up a little on the software revenue side of things but in the end, the winner will be my clients... and at the end of the day, that's the only thing that matters!
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Quick Comparison Report Testing Tip
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 General Stuff, How To & Tips
I am working on an upgrade right now with a client and have a quick tip to share, that may save a little bit of time in your testing, depending on how many company databases you have.
Common Time Wasters
One very common problem with upgrades that I've seen is specific to people who, shall we say, are less than organized. Before you know it, you've printed off reams of paper and reports to compare data or whatever the reason, and they all look the same! Yes, you suddenly can't remember which report is from GP2010 and which report is from GP10, or whatever the situation.
Quick Tip
Before you start printing anything, rename your company, temporarily, to include a tag line - version, environment, whatever will help you in testing. For me, I renamed mine when I was printing data validation reports so the company name, when printing on the report headers, said "GP10 Pre-Upgrade Test Company" for instance, as shown below.
Now, instead of hand-writing a notation on every report you print of what you just printed from - or worse, printing a pile of reports and forgetting - it's pre-printed on the report. Circle or highlight it and move on to other testing.
I hope this helps someone out there... it's a simple tip, but one that saves some time during testing.
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Bug month! Issues with Project Accounting employee vendors & EFT
Monday, August 29, 2011 Canadian Payroll, Payables Management, Project Accounting
It must be bug month for me, as I have another issue. One is reported as a bug - kind of - and the other, reading between the lines, will not be considered a bug when all is said and done.
The Issue
There are 2 actual problems but both are caused by the same thing as it turns out. The client told me initially about one issue which was when they started paying employee expenses (Project Accounting) via EFT, the EFT Payment Register didn't show the employee "vendors" on the list (but the report total was correct). A while later, while I was still troubleshooting this, they added that when they use the new email vendor remittance option, the employee vendors are not getting their remittance emails.
This case was odd, in that is didn't affect all vendors, nor did it affect everything in EFT. The EFT Payment Register is one of the posting journals that comes up, and it clearly was missing these employees' payments. The EFT file itself was fine, and generated a complete EFT payment file for all vendors in the batch, employee or not. Additionally the Marked EFTs report, one of the reports available during EFT file generation, also showed everyone as you would expect. So, it was a little odd to say the least.
The Cause
The short story is when the Remit To address is blank on the vendor card, this causes the EFT Payment Register to ignore it (except in the footer, where the totals were correct), and it uses that same field to find the vendor's email address to email a vendor remittance form.
On to the best part, which is, what causes the Remit To address to be blank? This is my bone of contention with Microsoft if they end up declaring this is not a bug to be fixed. When you create a vendor manually, there are a couple of fields that you would complete information on, and this triggers other fields to be filled in auto-magically, as they say. One is the Name field (auto-fills in Short Name and Cheque Name). The other is the default Address ID field (auto-fills in Purchase, Remit To and Ship From addresses in the bottom left hand corner). Guess what happens if you use Project Accounting, and let it create vendors for your employees automatically? This is what the vendor card looks like, when PA creates it:
The highlighted areas are the fields that Project Accounting does not complete for you. However, most clients I've seen don't go to the vendor card to update these or other settings very often, or they merely update the Class ID to roll down some default settings.
How Project Accounting creates Vendors
If you are not too familiar with Project Accounting, here is the background to the story. On the employee card, there is a place under the Project button to identify if an employee files employee expenses or not. If this is enabled, when you save the employee card, a vendor is created, as above, using the Employee ID as Vendor ID, and Address ID from the card. Screen shots below show the Employee Maintenance window (US Payroll), and the PA Employee Options window. NOTE this PA options window is also available from the Canadian Payroll employee card, with a different name (same fields).
The Resolution
Short term the resolution was to update every employee's vendor card to populate the fields that were blank in the Address ID section. That was simple to correct the previous employees; however the next time a new employee is created, they may forget, and this will happen again. Fortunately for the client, since they are using EFT for the vendors, they have to go to the vendor card anyway to add EFT payment information and the Email remittance address - so it's not exactly a huge time-waster to fill in a couple of extra fields.
Long term, I am lobbying gently for Microsoft to fix this. Project Accounting should create a vendor that looks exactly like a vendor keyed in manually - with the fields it is aware of. That means, fill in all name fields, and all Address ID fields.
An even better suggestion would be to add new functionality to the Project setup. It would be great to see "Default Vendor Class ID" for employee vendors, on one of the setup windows, and then the vendor, when created, would be populated with that default vendor class, and the corresponding settings. Why have half-baked functionality? It's no use to customers to "kind of" create the vendor and then have to complete some basic steps. I understand that EFT and other unique items require manual setup as they should, but Names, Address IDs and Class IDs could easily be incorporated to save clients some manual workaround effort.
I am smiling as I finish this post, because literally my client just emailed me this, word for word: "We just did an EFT (which included an employee) and it WORKS! YES!!". I love to solve problems, it's a big part of my job, but I also love to find ways to improve the product and in this case, it's minor but could be a great improvement! (PS I will be putting in an enhancement request on Microsoft Connect for this one).
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Canadian Payroll - some ROE fields demystified
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 Canadian Payroll
A client of mine had a great question for me last week on the ROE (Record of Employment) form that I couldn't answer off the top of my head. I took the opportunity to research and test to answer the question and figured it is not an uncommon question, so I may as well share the info.
Before I begin, I am not a payroll guru, I simply understand how the payroll modules work in Dynamics GP. This is not meant to be a "how to complete your ROE" form article. I worked for a few years with an actual payroll guru, who in her own words, could make Canadian Payroll sing! (RW, you know who you are!)
The Question
Why is the insurable earnings listed in the pay period boxes (section 15C) not the same as the Total Insurable Earnings in box 15C? And why does 15C not tie in to the T4 insurable earnings on the employee card?
The Short Answer
For the most part, the short answer is there are timing differences (ROE's usually will span more than one calendar year and T4s are calendar year only). The interesting thing which I didn't know is the specific rules around how 15A, 15B and 15C sections are calculated.
Quick ROE rules
Full rules are available here in this PDF guide or if the link to the PDF file ever changes, this is Service Canada's website and all of this information and much more is under the links to Employer information. My examples are based on a weekly pay period, which was this particular client's pay cycle.
Box 15A Total Insurable Hours
Box 15B Total Insurable Earnings
Box 15C Insurable Earnings by Pay Periods
The Long Answer with an example
The example the client provided me with is for an employee on weekly payroll who started in early December 2010, and finished her employment in July 2011.
The ROE (partially shown):
The T4 window on the Canadian Payroll employee card (year to date T4 values, not the actual T4 creation window).
On the ROE, 15A shows total insurable hours of 1027.50 which is EI insurable hours from, in this case, the employee's start date of Dec 8, 2010 to last date worked of July 24, 2011. Had she been working for a longer period, it would be the last 53 weeks of EI insurable hours.
Field 15B shows total insurable dollars of $12,948.68 yet box 24 on the T4 shows EI insurable earnings of $14,067.17 - why? Well, further to my explanation above, the T4 window is showing year to date (as in CALENDAR year to date - the basis for T4 records) so it is covering pay dates January 1, 2011 to July 24, 2011 (employee's end date). Box 15B only is showing the last 27 pay periods for a weekly payroll, which means it is only showing earnings from approximately mid January 2011, not all 2011 pay dates.
Field 15C is the list of the last 53 pay periods, so the sum of those fields also does not match 15B, by design. 15C is in reverse order so to tie the numbers back together, you simply have to add the first 27 pay periods to get to the number in box 15B, and add in the remaining 2011 pay periods to match the T4 window value.
In Summary
Only in select cases will the T4 window and the ROE every "align" - it would have to be for employees with short employment durations, like summer students perhaps, and within the same calendar year. In fact, this client does not have a lot of turnover and most of their ROEs are for summer students so in the past, nearly every ROE matched to the T4 window. They assumed it would always match and started "reconciling" using that window's data, until this particular time when they didn't align (and for good reason).
Hopefully that helps clear up a bit of confusion on the ROE forms for someone out there!
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Excel Report Builder - bug in SQL views created
Monday, August 15, 2011 Troubleshooting
I'm not sure why, but I always seem to find the really obscure bugs in GP, the ones that really don't affect many others. I guess it's called a gift. :)
Today, I found another one that affects GP10 (although apparently has been resolved - I can't verify that yet) and a slight variation of the same for GP2010.
The Issue
When creating an Excel Report Builder report and publishing it for multiple companies at once, the SQL views are not pointing at the correct database (or in some cases are only partially correct).
To reproduce this issue
In the enviroment I am testing, the client has GP10 but hasen't put in SP5 or anything newer so admittedly this is an out of date environment at the moment. Microsoft confirmed it's a known issue that is resolved in SP5 (10.00.1701 or later). I just don't have that handy to test. For fun, I also tested this in GP2010, with SP2 (11.00.1752).
Now, take a look at the SQL view it creates, which will be prefixed, if you didn't change it, with "erb". I use the right click Script View As context menu to display it in a query editor window in SQL Mgmt Studio. Look for the "FROM" clause(s).
The results
On GP10: the company I am logged into, it's SQL views were correct; however the SQL views on the other databases I published to are selecting "from" the same logged-into company database. Everything else appears as normal but of course when the user runs the Excel Report, it will be pulling data from a different company than they want.
On GP2010: the only part that is wrong is the select script that is to obtain the account number for a given account index. Look for 2 (or more depending on what you have created) "select" scripts. One of them is "select top 1 ACTNUMST from [XXXX]..GL00105 where ACTINDEX = T1.[ACTINDX]". The XXXX in this case is pointing at the wrong company database. So, once again, the users would be pulling a report, and it would be displaying Account Numbers from another company's database (or erroring I suppose if the account index does not exist in the other company db).
Quick Fix
The quick fix is to alter the SQL view directly by changing the referenced database to the correct one. I haven't tested any further so beware if you make the change, and then republish the report for some reason - I don't know if it "re-creates" the SQL view at that time or not.
What's next
I've submitted both of these to Microsoft. The GP10 one they can't reproduce on SP5 so that is likely resolved. The GP2010 variation they haven't responded to me yet, they are still testing it. I'll try to post updates as I get them on this!
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Kudos to all the regular bloggers out there!
Thursday, August 4, 2011 Off Topic Articles
A very short off-topic article. When I first started blogging, I thought weekly posts was a good goal, and it seemed pretty easy to keep up with. I had a long list of things I wanted to talk about at some point, no shortage of ideas! I was set!
All was good until I went to the Tech Conference in Fargo in March... then I started writing a blog each day about my experiences. So much information to talk about, so little time! Upon returning home I had so many ideas I didn't know where to start, and didn't write much at all. And then time has quietly slipped by...
I've managed a blog or two a month at most since March, I keep meaning to dig back into the regular articles but one thing or another distracts me! Ahhh, such is life... my long list of topics is still nearby but lately I just can't seem to find the time to write.
I was already very impressed by the seemingly endless list of Dynamics GP blogs out there and how they all are likely super busy and still finding time to share thoughts and tips. Now that I am one of those, I am even more impressed by the ones in particular who regularly post articles, seemingly without issue!
So, today I just wanted to say "wow"... I'm not sure how you do it, year 'round, month in, month out, but it's impressive to keep up with the flow of information and blog about it, not to mention keeping up with client needs!
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Client Updates & Archiving old service packs
Thursday, August 4, 2011 Installation, Troubleshooting
What usually is a typical service pack install client visit started off on the wrong foot. I am installing SP2 for GP2010 plus related hotfixes for a client, and the last time I was here was in January for the year end tax updates. While I was doing my usual preparation, before I even started the process of installing anything, users started reporting warning messages keeping them out of GP.
The Message
Users started getting a message when logging into any company in Dynamics GP:
"An available update may be required for your computer, but the update process couldn't verify information. Contact your system administrator for additional information"
At the time all I was doing was downloading the service packs I needed from Partnersource and third party websites.
The Cause
I had moved previous service pack files into an "archives" folder, to keep the downloads clean and easy to identify, a process I have always followed without issue. What I forgot was in January I had attempted to use the Client Updates feature in GP - and at the time it didn't work, and we didn't waste time troubleshooting it. However, we didn't remove the entry in the client updates window - which was pointing to the service packs I had just moved to another location.
The Takeaway
If you use the Client Updates feature, and typically manage your download or install folders by archiving old files you don't need any longer, do this:
The same thing would apply if you want to rename your folder structure - the client updates will not find the previous path.
Additional Information
At least one other blogger has written about this in the past and has some additional information and options if you don't want to undo your archiving just to remove a reference in Client Updates. See Mohammad Daoud's post here.
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Updating my blogs for new search feature
Sunday, July 10, 2011 Off Topic Articles
I've been doing some updates to my site recently and one of the most recent is implementing a new "search" feature.
In doing so, unfortunately I have had to update some blogs where I didn't include "excerpts" which may re-send through RSS feed/readers again after all this time. So, sorry in advance if you follow my blog and your RSS reader starts showing you random old blog articles of mine! It appears there are only 3 or 4 that I didn't do this on at the time, so it should be relatively painless!
Thanks,
Jen
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Fun with changing a server name!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 How To & Tips, Installation, Troubleshooting
I write this with a little embarrassment at the solution to a problem I had. Earlier this week I renamed a server I'm using for GP2010 to prepare for a new network and improve my network naming conventions. I've changed server names before at clients and the steps and places you need to make updates are pretty straight forward, at least for vanilla GP. There are other complications when you get into web services and other things where the configuration is not strictly within the application.
The Issue
I changed the server name and updated the obvious things but was still unable to log in to GP. I could log into SQL Server Management Studio just fine but couldn't log into GP, even as 'sa'.
The Solution
For reference, here are what I call the obvious things to check and rename if necessary. I'm not including updating FRx or web products, just plain ol' GP. If you use IP addresses to reference pathnames then often you are ok unless the IP address has changed. In my case I use UNC pathnames and had several places to update.
I changed all of the above, and continually banged my head against the wall trying to sort out why I still was unable to log in.
The "DOH" Moment!
I'm running a 64-bit operating system (Windows 7 in this particular machine's case). I completely forgot that the ODBC shortcut you get to via Administrative Tools is 64-bit only. What confused me was there was a "Dynamics GP 2010" DSN already listed so naturally, I updated it, but still couldn't log in.
GP requires a 32-bit ODBC DSN, and I had to open the 32-bit version of the ODBC setup window. If you're reading this far and looking for this as well, on Windows 7 you can find it here:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and it's called odbcad32.exe.
Thank me later!
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Canadian Payroll mid-year tax update
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 Canadian Payroll, News
The mid year tax update is posted for GP10 and
coming soonfor GP2010. Changes are only (so far) for Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.New this time around: this is only the Canadian changes. At the end of June there will be a hotfix which will contain US tax changes and other bug fixes. You only have to install the tax update if you are in the jurisdictions involved - the hot fix in June will be cumulative and will contain the tax updates PLUS the regular bug fixes that normally would be in one service pack.
Here is the download link for GP10.
Here is the download link for GP2010.
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Edited: June 9th - added download link for GP2010.
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I’m back with a bug!
Monday, May 9, 2011 News, Troubleshooting
At long last I'm back, and aim to get back to regular weekly (if not more frequent) blogging!
First topic, last week I installed GP2010 SP2 (aka R2) at a client site and all was fine. That is, until I was doing some unrelated work in Report Writer, and was getting an error message when coming back into Dynamics GP.
I had some trouble finding this specific error but did find a post on the partner technical forums with the same problem, from a couple of months ago, that had gone dormant. I updated the post with my information, adding to the original poster's info, and it turns out it is indeed a bug.
The scenarios
The errors are specific to the following situation, in GP2010 R2 (11.00.1752)
The errors
The first error is pictured below (top is the error, bottom is scrolling down to the rest of the text). It is an unhandled script exception error:
"Illegal Address for field '[Not Found]' in script 'Unregister_Triggers'." Scrolling down further is "EXCEPTION_CLASS_SCRIPT_ADDRESSING" and "SCRIPT_CMD_LOAD_ATSI7".
The second error occurs immediately after the first one AND when you exit Dynamics GP if you had been in RW or Modifier during your session. Another unhandled script exception.
"Object has no reference." Scrolling down further "EXCEPTION_CLASS_SCRIPT_BAD_PARAM" and "SCRIPT_CMD_DEREF_TABLE".
The impact
There appears to be no impact on the functioning of Extender or Dynamics GP. I didn't do a TON of testing but what I did test, nothing seemed impacted by the errors. The fact that there are no errors unless you go in and out of Report Writer or Modifier tell me they are not errors in functioning of the modules themselves but something else.
The resolution
Microsoft has written this up as a bug and hopefully it would get resolved in SP3 assuming they can determine the cause.
UPDATE: December 6, 2011 - this is resolved in KB2599505 (aka US Payroll 2011 Year End Update service pack)
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Short hiatus on blog posting
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Off Topic Articles
Anyone who is reading my blogs has likely noticed a slow decline in frequency! I apologize for that, and am posting an update that I do plan to get back to weekly (if not more frequent) blog articles soon.
I am currently under house renovation paralysis! Between decision making on all sorts of details, cleaning up the seemingly endless trail of dust and debris everywhere, and working on a large project, I have been swamped and blogging has been the last thing on my mind lately! However the end is in sight!
Only to make matters a little worse, my trusty Lenovo x61s laptop abruptly died last week leaving me without the one tool I do most of my work and blogging on, so I am not tied to my desk. Thankfully I had most things backed up... however the pain in the a** factor is alive and well! I have a desktop computer that acts as my server, which will be my primary machine for a little while until I source out another laptop to be truly portable again. I'm sitting in my office writing this and crammed in with me is all sorts of furniture from various other parts of the house, due to replacing floors, painting or simply renovating... but on the bright side, my office has a couple of nice reclining chairs should I want to sit comfortably, and a spare bedroom mattress should I need a nap! LOL... ah the joys of renovations.
Spring is here, more blogs are coming!
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Microsoft extends dates for new partner cert requirements
Monday, April 4, 2011 General Stuff, News
I noticed Microsoft posted a date extension on Partnersource to obtain the new certification requirements. It was posted on April 1st, so in light of that being April Fool's Day, I didn't want to get sucked into some bad prank and looked again today at the information.
Well, the joke's on me, it's real! The original deadlines were to be this coming May 1st, now it's been moved to October 1st. For me that is great news, the only thing better would be the elimination or reduction of some of the minimum requirements, like say SQL exams, multiple people or minimum revenues.
For customers (& sometimes for partners too), the changes are not always clearly communicated. Most customers have no idea of the changes and if they are affected.
What is changing?
The requirements for being a GP reseller were one or more people (employees or consultants) combined to hold GP Financials and GP Install/Config exam certifications. The requirements now, and being enforced as of this October, are:
After meeting these, there are also increasing revenue requirements which all but guarantee that small partners, even if they can obtain the certifications, may not be able to maintain the revenue requirements each year without adding new customers.
Once you get those requirements, you maintain eligibility to be a reseller, but still are not considered a Silver or Gold ERP Competency partner... the requirements there are even higher. I have no issue with the significant requirements for the ERP competency levels of Silver and Gold. The old Certified Partner and Gold Certified Partner requirements were too low a bar... everyone, unless you were small like myself, was Gold (it seemed), so there was no way to distinguish between partners that way IMHO.
I had achieved the old requirements and am currently a GP reseller. Under the new requirements though, different story, and the extra time will help me determine if this is the right focus for my business. The new minimums, when I factor in the revenue requirements, make it unlikely that I will be a reseller for long.
The impact of the changes
What is happening now is a lot of "partner aggregators" are popping up. These are nothing more than a bunch of small people like me, and other independent consultants who didn't have the certs to be a reseller by themselves, joining forces to be one larger partner. Combined all the people meet the certification requirements together, and all share access in Partnersource and have ability to sell to their clients. My concern with this is it's artificial: sure, on paper they meet the criteria as a reseller partner but in substance they don't go to market as a large entity or otherwise act like a large firm because by definition they are a bunch of individuals, not colleagues that work together in proven ways to deliver results to clients. However, it's a way around the system and if the MPN changes continue to move forward, this will be the new reality. I'm quite certain Microsoft wasn't intending this to be the outcome of their changes!
What I see happening for customers
I see more customers opting to take advantage of their ability to designate a "reseller" partner and a "consultant" partner. If the changes mean fewer larger partners for the software, and the customers are perhaps dissatisfied with the services or attention they get from the largers partners out there, they may look more towards independents like myself for their services even if they continue to keep their VAR reseller as just the software guy.
It's an interesting time for my customers... I have a handful of active clients, only one of which switched over to my firm as a GP client. The other clients are all "customers" of other VARs in the Greater Toronto or Southwestern Ontario area who have chosen to obtain services from me, due to dissatisfaction with the attention or service or skillset from their current VAR. All of them have had conversations with me about switching completely to me, GP wise, and I've been open with them about proceeding with caution while I am not yet meeting the new requirements. I don't want a client to switch to me only to find I can't resell the software to them in a few months - and I've been totally up front and honest with my clients about that. They are happy that I am open with them, and that I am not taking the chance to add to my customer list without them knowing these little details. The customer that did switch to me early on is well aware that I may end up helping them identify a new local VAR for reseller status only, at the point when I no longer meet the requirements... they went in with eyes open and fully aware that it may be temporary.
Know your rights
My last word on this subject is customers should know they do have choices and a little known fact is they have the ability to designate in essence two partner firms on their Dynamics account - a reseller and a consultant. Of course, it's no surprise that most people out there are unaware of this, why would a partner tell their customer this?
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Disenchanted with support? I understand your pain!
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 Canadian Payroll, Off Topic Articles
Is it me or is getting support sometimes like pulling teeth? I've had a couple of experiences lately which remind me of why I am in this business and why my clients are so appreciative of the way I deal with them and respond to their issues. The reminder for me is NEVER to let my clients experience this with my firm - no one deserves it and even more importantly no one deserves to pay for the privilege!
Yes, it's time for another small rant...
A client had a payroll issue two weeks ago - one that stumped me and I wanted to get some help with. Fortunately for me, I don't have to go through this pain very often as experience does wonders in helping you resolve a great many things without needing to get help from partners.
I have a few pet peeves when it comes to support.
The Issue
The client's issue was a simple-enough sounding message "Account Number does not exist". They can't post their payroll, Canadian Payroll would not create the poster file. The error occurred on one person only, on a vacation "taken" paycode, and other people with the same paycode in that payroll all were fine (it found the account).
The Troubleshooting
There are a few moving parts at work with Canadian Payroll in how it posts but relative to other modules, there are really only a handful of things to look at really. The account number is driving primarily from the paycodes themselves so we checked the Income Paycode and sure enough there was an account number there, and yes, it did exist in the GL. We checked the GL Account to make sure it wasn't inactive or anything special that would prevent posting to it. Hmm... the start of the head scratching!
Canadian Payroll also has a "masking" feature to distribute to departments - i.e. each department has a Salary Expense account and the company wants to post payroll to the dept the person worked in. Fairly standard stuff, that setup is in the Canadian Payroll Control window and this company does not use it anyway. Tick. Crossing off things on the mental checklist.
Now I'm losing hair I'm scratching my head so much! (LOL). The error seems so simple. I used the Support Debugging Tool to generate some scripts and logging of the error. It doesn't help but does lead me to look at a third party product, which was referenced with a "[Not Found]" error of its own.
Asking for Help
This was a payroll issue, fortunately it had no effect on payroll itself nor on getting the employees paid on time. However they run a weekly payroll and this payroll needs to be posted - Canadian Payroll needs the "Update Masters" procedure to be run or else the next week's pay run's Year To Dates may be incorrect. THAT would be bad.
First I was going to simply open a support case through my Partnersource account, sending them the documentation I've done on the issue to date and the SDT logs etc. and be on my merry way... not so fast! Here is the short timeline which 14 days later is yet to be resolved.
It is now 14 days since the original support case was submitted and I have heard nothing else, nor do I expect to. I don't know what department is supposed to resolve this, don't know how to get in touch and at this point, figure that by the time I need to do another it may be resolved.
If this was the experience a client received, I would be appalled...
Asking for Help - attempt #2
Avenue #2 was to look at this third party reference in the debugging tool scripts and sql logs. This particular tool has literally nothing to do with the GL accounts on payroll paycodes but since it was mentioned in the scripts and did only occur on this particular person's records, according to the script results. Perhaps there is something that is blocking this that they can resolve.
This particular third party firm I can't submit a support case online so I call them and speak to someone there who I explain the issue to. She patiently listens and asks me one or two questions and gets my contact information, and the details on the case. I get an email with a case link that I can now follow online - fabulous! Love the tools! I log in and dutifully update the case with the supporting documentation, screen shots, everything I can think of that would help them including the support files that show an error from their product.
After nearly 2 days I update the case with a request for an ETA on when I might be getting a response, not the answer, just a timeline on a possible answer.
7 days later, I get an update with - sorry - a really dumb answer, an "insult to my intelligence" answer that I hope to goodness I am not going to get charged for. Their response? "The ____ product does not affect the Canadian payroll distributions. We suggest to create the gl account the detail posting report is looking for and post the batch." Yikes! Are you kidding me? It's beyond stunning to me how a firm that offers support can think that is acceptable. "Create the account then post the batch". DUH... one of the first things we discussed was that the account does already exist.
C'mon man! *smacking my head in disbelief*
If I get a bill in the mail for this one, whoever answers my call then won't like me very much!
Asking for Help - attempt #3
In the meantime, clearly I continue to have a payroll issue to resolve and I went to the Partner Online Technical Communities to get some "free" help. It took 2-3 days for someone to respond to my post but when they did, they did help me sort through some other possible areas to check.
At the end of this all, I resolved it before getting any support from the 3 sources I tried - meaning I created a workaround to be able to post but we still have never resolved why it happened in the first place. My message to support teams out there: It's payroll people! That can't wait! The online tech communities helped me look at things to continue to find a solution but in the end, I was left unsupported by the businesses I am supposedly "partnered" with and that was very frustrating.
The Lesson Learned
Companies get away with providing bad to horrible support every day but in the long run they lose clients because of this. The unfortunate reality is for larger firms - and they tend to be the ones that offer lower quality support, at least until something is escalated until you get to someone who knows what they are talking about - new customers keep on coming in the door attracted to your shiny sales pitches and promises of grandeur. Look at our fancy support website! You can get support at all hours of the day! Yeah right... it seems more like "you'll have to wade through our junior support people who will give you bad information before you work your way up to someone who can really help".
I'm a small firm, every lost customer I could potentially have is a major deal. I treat the clients like that, and so do many other STELLAR small consulting firms out there. Small isn't always better, you miss out on the cumulative experience of a larger group but what you lose there, you gain in respect, hard work, and dealing with people who actually care about your issue and resolving it.
I do like running into situations like this every once in a while, because it is a reminder of what I strive to do differently in my business and always have in my years of consulting. Please don't misinterpret this to be anti-Microsoft, what I describe above you will find at EVERY other large firm out there doing ERP business or other things requiring software support. Unfortunately no one has this market covered when it comes to sub-standard support and there are diamonds in the rough out there in the large firms that do care - it's just hard to find them!
Update 1 (April 4, 2011)
I originally posted this on March 22nd, and I wanted to post an update in the interest of fairness...
Today I received a call from Microsoft - from Crystal, a support team manager who manages the payroll team, after she read this blog post. I discussed my concerns with her and she will be looking into where the VOICE/website issue is as well as why there hasn't been any communication to me yet on it being resolved (yes, it is still outstanding). It was fabulous to get a personal call, and I hope that it gets resolved shortly. I don't actually know if I am the only one affected but it's hard to tell. As for my client's issue, I haven't yet submitted a support case and explained why to Crystal on the phone... the workaround got the payroll posted and the issue hasn't recurred yet. The client will test further to reproduce the problem and then we will resume troubleshooting, this time with Microsoft's assistance.
Update 2 (April 19, 2011)
Two updates: .
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GP Tech Conference Day 3
Thursday, March 3, 2011 News
Today is day 3 in Fargo, and the majority of the day is wrap up and some chances for the vendor sponsors to present their wares. The room is emptying gradually as the day progresses as people are heading to the airport to catch their flights.
This is mostly some observations of the overall conference and a wrap up of my own.
Meeting people
I'm very much a "put a name to a face" kind of person. I'm fortunate to have a lot of contacts in the GP community both Microsoft and others but there are many whom I either have never met personally or just don't get a chance to see except at conferences like this.
This week I had a chance to catch up with some Microsoft folks who I have had contact with over the years - Terry Heley, an escalation engineer who I get a lot of payroll scoop from throughout the year, and Jodi Christianson, who is now in pre-sales but I've known her since she did a training course in Toronto many years ago for Project Accounting.
I met some fellow bloggers, including David Musgrave, Mariano Gomez, Leslie Vail and Steve Endow. There may even be others here that I haven't run into yet, but it's neat to get a chance to talk shop with others who also share their knowledge and in most cases have been pioneering the GP blogging LONG before I have been doing it.
How cool is it to be sitting here at a session, catching up on blog posts, reading Mariano and David's blogs and they are sitting right in front of me while I read them? Neat stuff... a bit surreal. As I write this, David is writing another blog, so I'm keeping my eyes on my blog links for when it's posted to read it.
Learning new stuff
I'm not sure if this is a Canadian thing but I'm reminded of the Mastercard "priceless" commercials. If you haven't seen them, they go something like this: Flight to Fargo: $435. GP Tech Conference: $500. Learning the upcoming GP features first: Priceless!
I love to learn. People who know me, know I can soak this stuff up all day every day. I think that is part of being a geek... it's not the pocket protectors and bad glasses, it's the sitting at a computer all day at work, being glued to your smartphone on your way home to stay in touch, and then spending all night on the computer or tablet or smartphone again, constantly learning, researching, and looking up new things. That's me in a nutshell!
Seeing new places
Part of going to conferences and things like this is seeing new places. Given how cold it was this week, and I'm still getting over a cough and cold, I didn't venture out too much. The furthest I went was to the Sandbag Central for the volunteering I did on Tuesday night. Otherwise I ventured to the West Acres mall across the street, it was the closest source of entertainment without getting into a cab! One of the neat things there was a small Roger Maris Museum which was more of an exhibit than a museum. There was a video room where you could watch a brief video and sit on actual Yankees stadium seats - cool! The glassed in area was tons of memorabilia and a fabulous walk through some baseball history. I love watching baseball and it was neat to dive into this exhibit to soak up some history and learn more about a great baseball player.
Day 3 Content & Wrap Up
Other than the sponsor sessions and presentations this morning, there was another presentation on GP12 and details on the UI changes. It was exciting to see the upcoming changes, although nowhere near final. We can't talk in depth about this stuff, you know, lawyers and things like that. What was cool is among the planned changes are introducing thin client functionality, and the screens they showed us were pretty cool looking. The UI redesign, whenever it happens, for the thin client will be a big improvement to GP!
The Q&A was mostly the usual questions except for a spectacular litany of questions and criticisims around the Partner Network changes, and other related things, from Mark Rockwell of Rockton Software. Kudos Mark for saying some of the things that have been on many of our minds before!
Time to head home
It's nearing the end of the conference and it's time to pack up, wrap up and head back home. For me, I leave Fargo later this aft, about 4:30pm and I will arrive in Toronto, after a stop in Chicago, after midnight tonight E.S.T. It will be a long day by the time I get home (another 45 minute drive from the airport to home). Friday is a rest day fortunately and I imagine I will be sleeping in a little bit!!!
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GP Tech Conference Day 2
Thursday, March 3, 2011 News
Day 2 at the Dynamics GP Technical Conference in Fargo: It was another long day, with a lot of information presented in the sessions. On the weather side of things, it was quite a bit warmer today vs day 1, which I have come to learn was unseasonably cold for this time of year. Great.... it reminds me of a trip I took to Sault Ste. Marie a few years ago in January where it was the coldest weather on record at the time (and still was the record low temps). I must be blessed! :)
I would say today there was not a lot of "new new" content provided, just more details on the same general functionality introduced in the prior day's sessions, where it related to the upcoming R2 release.
Customization Tools
The first session I sat through was presented by David Musgrave and Mariano Gomez on Customization Tools. It was a fabulous session looking at how to handle 3 similar customizations using three different tools. First they used purely Dexterity, second was purely Modifier with VBA, and third was a hybrid using Visual Studio Tools for GP, with a little Dex and a modified window with Modifier. It was a very neat way to remind us there are lots of options for customizations and no one tool is always the answer.
SRS Reporting
Another session I sat through was a deeper dive into SRS reporting for GP2010 R2. The session covered the possible* new features and changes, most notably some of the following items:
* the disclaimer is what we say is not final and the constant reminder to us all in attendance was until you see this in the final product, these features may change! :)
GP2010 R2 Overview
I sat through another session with more of a general overview of the upcoming R2 release, not just the BI tools. We got a chance to see in a little more detail how some of the following items are coming along (same disclaimer applies!):
Management Reporter
Last was a session relating to Management Reporter. I've seen it before but haven't gotten really hands-on very much yet. It was good to see the differences between MR and FRx, where the improvements are and what isn't changed. Here are the things I found interesting:
We got a little bit of insight into the Feature Pack 2 release which will be later this calendar year as well as the roadmap. More to come on those as we get closer.
The end of this session was an interesting discussion on domains being required to install Management Reporter. I had asked the question initially, if that was ever going to change. It turned into quite a hot topic and the end of the session morphed into discussions with the development team who were in the room. The beauty of being at this conference is getting a chance to talk directly to the development team and the product team, with the opportunity to explain a requirement to them directly.
The Night Life!
After yesterday's sessions, there was a reception and expo. It was a great chance to meet others in a more social setting, and talk to more Microsoft folks as well as vendors who were present in an expo setting.
Of course, the Tim Tam Slam was also a featured event at David Musgrave's table. I chickened out completely - wearing a white sweater and trying to suck hot chocolate through a Tim Tam cookie before it disintegrates just didn't seem like a good idea! Keep your eyes on David Musgrave's blog (link above at the top of this article) for more info on this. I was watching him start a blog post with content of one of the participants in the event so I'm sure it will be up and online soon to watch.
Some other Tim Tam Slam links of interest! David Musgrave's post of his own effort and Leslie Vail's post of what is involved.
EDITS: Updated confusing opening sentence to clarify this is about the second day; added links to other Tim Tam Slam posts.
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GP Tech Conference Day 1
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 News
Today was day 1 at the Dynamics GP Technical Conference in Fargo. It was a long day of sessions, lots of interesting information to be had. It was also bitterly cold outside, and it's safe to say not too many people ventured outside between sessions today!
These update posts won't have a TON of detail on the new stuff coming. I do hope to get a chance to talk more about the details another time...
The Weather
It's funny, you know? When I say I'm from Canada, the reaction is mostly the same. "Oh, you must be used to this weather!" Yeah, right! We get temps like this maybe once a year. The temperature right now is -2F with a windchill of -20F (that's -19C and -29C respectively). Brrrrrr.
Just for fun I looked at a map to see where I live in comparison to Fargo. I had no idea I was so much farther south than this in comparison. The city where I live is not on this map but Hamilton is our neighbour to the west and the closest thing to compare to.
The Content
Today was a long day with a lot of content to digest. First was the keynote, which was a combination of GP2010 "R2" release information and some sneak peaks at GP "12". It sounded like, in reading the R2 release news, that it was mostly a BI release but in reality there are quite a few gems in it, and BI is only a part.
Some sneak peaks of the GP2010 R2 coming soon:
GP12 previews looked pretty cool but I'll keep those under wraps for now... :)
The rest of the day was too much content to go over in any "brief" manner. Suffice to say a lot was covered in the areas of taking advantage of Light User licenses, the new Business Analyzer tool, Word Template changes, and my favourite of the day, the session on the Support Debugging Tool. That tool is not new of course but the session was super-informative and since it's out there right now, it's the only thing today I could put to good use immediately!
The Night Life!
If there is night life in Fargo, someone else can write about it! What I did after the sessions were over tonight was a little volunteer work. Every year there is a huge risk of flooding here in the spring, and I'm probably WAY understating that. I'm doing a little research to get the facts straight and this is where I'm getting the info from. Currently the Red River is just under 16 feet. Flood level is 18 feet, and in 2009 it reached a level of over 40 feet!
One of the preparatory emails we got before coming to Fargo talked about opportunities to volunteer at Sandbag Central! The goal this year is to have 3 million sandbags filled, the effort started two weeks ago and as of yesterday they have filled 1.4 million so far.
Tonight I went down to volunteer and am glad I did. It was a great experience and good to see the sense of community here. I did a 1.5 hour shift til closing this evening (8pm). At closing, they announced today was the best day so far, filling approximately 175,000 bags! That's impressive!
Here are a couple of photos of the area I was working in. First, the "spider" filling machine. I didn't get better pics unfortunately but there is a giant pile of sand to the left, that is being run up to the top of this spider machine and then one at a time being sent down the "legs" to the bagging machines with the right quantity of sand per bag. This pic is the group of folks I was teamed up with, all from the same softball team.
One person gets the bags ready, one holds the bag at the botttom of the spider leg for filling, then passes it to the next two people. The ones at the front of the picture, one spins the bag to get it as tightly closed as possible, then the other person uses a hand gun type of machine to strap the bags shut with a metal wire. Then there are two people putting the bags on the skids, that was where I spent my evening!
Here is a view of the skids, we had to pile the bags in a certain way, anywhere from 8 to 10 bags high (approx 85-100 bags). We filled about 7 skids while I was there.
It was a crazy place, you really had to watch where you walked with forklift operators constantly moving skids that are full before the next "leg" finished their skid. We often were piling on someone else's skid (and others on ours) as skids filled up quicker than the forklift operators could move them out.
All in all, it was a great first day here and now it's time to call it a night!
EDIT: Updated a typo
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On my way to Fargo!
Monday, February 28, 2011 Off Topic Articles
I'm sitting in Toronto's Pearson airport, waiting for my flight to Chicago, and then on to Fargo for the GP Technical Conference.
My trip is not as long as David Musgrave's (see his post here) but it does require customs and all of the fun that entails. THANK GOODNESS for the Nexus program! I was through security and customs in less than 10 minutes thanks to the retina scanner Nexus system. There's nothing like lining up like cattle going for feeding time, wandering through a long line for customs clearance, only to do the same a few minutes (or hours) later for security checkpoints!
My day did, however, start with a trip to the walk-in clinic. *Sigh* I had the flu about 4 weeks ago, and with it I developed a cough. The flu left quickly, thankfully, but the cough has remained with me ever since. Last week I started to get an itchy sore throat that also won't go away. Then to top it all off, this weekend while demolishing our kitchen (preparing for renos), I managed to get a lot of demo junk (insulation, sawdust, other things) in my eyes and for two days my eyes have been completely irritated and bloodshot. Long story short, I'm looking a little rough! So this morning I'd had it, and went to the clinic to see about all three, get some antibiotics to clear it all up and be on my merry way to the airport.
So, here I am, with a little penicillin, eye drops and trying not to make eye contact with very many people to scare them off! LOL...
Back to the task at hand: I'm on my way to Fargo for the Tech Conference. I've never been before, and this year I decided it was time to attend! I'm excited and can't wait to get there and enjoy the festivities. Of course I have been looking forward to getting a chance to meet others like David that I haven't met yet, and now I just hope my eyes clear up before I scare someone! :)
More details to come on the R2 release that is part of the content this week...
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Report Writer Series: Toolbox Tips
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 How To & Tips, Report Writer
I'm a bit behind in my blogging lately, time to catch up a little bit! Today I'm digging into some of the lesser-used items on the toolbox, and finishing this topic up next week. How can I tell these tools are not used much? The answer is simple: I've seen a lot of ugly reports - fields formatted poorly or not lined up with the header fields they match up to, etc.
I do cringe when I see simple things like a block of address fields (for instance) not aligned, when there are tools there for you to eliminate this issue forever.
So far, I've gone through a number of things relating to Report Writer, most of which are aimed at an audience of new Report Writer users. This is likely the last two posts of the "starter" topics that I plan to cover unless something interesting comes up! There are lots of blogs out there on FAR more advanced topics, which I will point people to shortly, instead of re-inventing the wheel and writing articles on topics already out there.
Today's Focus
Most of this article is focussed on two areas: the Arrange tab of the toolbox, and then next article will be some notes on Drawing Options.
The "Arrange" tools
There are a few tools on this tab. If you can't find it, it is the second tab on the toolbox when you are in the Layout view of Report Writer. CTRL+B opens the toolbox if you have closed it inadvertantly. By default you always see the Layout tab which contains the fields & tables, plus the most common toolbox items like shapes and text.
Aligning Fields
First, alignment... it's not an exaggeration to say I use these four tools ALL THE TIME. It is a rare day if I am modifying a report, that I don't have to use this to line something up to another field.
What is it for? Lining up two or more fields together along one of their "sides". There are four types, aligning left edges, right edges, top edges or bottom edges. Note: This does not affect the "alignment" of the text within a field, which is what I refer to as "justification". To alter that requires editing the properties of a text field itself in Drawing Options or applying a format in Report Field Options. More on this later...
How to use it? First, select two or more fields, using the CTRL key to select multiple text objects. Second, click on the Align field of choice, which will align all of the selected fields to the left/right/top/bottom-most object you selected. In other words, if I am trying to line up four fields that are the titles of some data, I might use the Top or Bottom align to ensure they are on the same horizontal plane. If I have moved some data fields, I might use the Left or Right align tools to line up the title fields to the data fields below. Since there are often title fields in the Page Header (PH) and Report Header (RH) this makes those little tweaks a little easier.
Unlike other report writing tools, the Align features are all based on the left/right/top/bottom-most field of your selection, and the order in which you select your fields does not matter. In some other tools, the Align is based on the first or last field you have selected, which does not apply here.
Re-sizing Fields
The Size tools are useful in a few circumstances. Typically I use these tools if there are fields where the default size is too big to fit on the report. Often currency fields are very wide, and may not need to be that big. Making them a little smaller width-wise, may allow you to fit more information on a page, or improve the readability of a report.
What is it for? Making two or more fields the same size, either by height or width, OR resetting a field to it's default size based on the font size it is.
How to use it? Similar to the above Align tools, the first step is select two or more fields. Then, click on whichever Size tool you wish to perform. If you hover your mouse over the buttons, a tool-tip will display to show you what each one means. Each tool will resize based on the size of the smallest/largest/tallest/shortest field you select. In other words, if you are resizing to make fields the same size width wise, first determine if you want them smaller to match the least-wide field you chose, or wider, to match the widest field you chose.
Similarly to the Align tools, it does not matter which order you select your fields in, as it re-sizes based on the smallest/largest/tallest/shortest field you select.
The "resize to default" option, the middle button of the Size tools, is useful if you have changed font sizes but the field did not automatically resize itself. In Drawing Options, when you change a font size or style, there is a tickbox called "Resize To Default". If that is unchecked, the field size itself says the same, and the text is resized. Why does this matter? Well, it doesn't really, depending on the change but a properly sized field to the text within it is easier to align with other fields. Sometimes if you increased the size of a font, and didn't allow Resize To Deafult, when you print the report you will see the text is cut off. So, this option is there to quickly and easily resize it without having to change the font size or style. Simply select a field, and click the middle button on the Size palette, and it will be resized.
Tiling Fields
This tools is the hardest to explain, and I haven't used it often. However there are times when it really is useful to quickly space items out, in a columnar type of report layout for instance.
What is it for? This is used to space fields out by a certain number of characters, either horizontally or vertically.
How to use it? Again, select two or more fields. Next, type in the amount of space between the fields you want to have, with zero being "no space between the fields". Then, click on the appropriate align button to space things out horizontally or vertically. For instance, let's say you have a report with five "columns" of information all dollar fields, all approximately similarly sized bits of data in them. They don't look right on the page right now and you want to try to space them out evenly. Select all of those fields, and play with the Space value to get them spaced out correctly. A tip: the fields say multi-selected when you use this tool, and often it is a guessing game to get the right spacing value. I'm often putting a number in, clicking on (in this example) Tile Horizontally, and seeing the results, changing the number, clicking it again, etc. until I find the right value for my spacing needs.
Hopefully that helps some users out there! Next report writer post will be about Drawing Options and wrapping up the series...
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Canadian Payroll Year End Tax Update - Round 2
Monday, February 7, 2011 Canadian Payroll, News
The Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll Round 2 tax updates for year end are now all released (this is old news now as the first one, for GP9, was released on January 20th).
There are downloads for release 9.0, 10.0 and 2010, however the new T4A functionlity is only included for GP10 and GP2010. The GP9 download is bug fixes and a Quebec RL-1 slip change only.
The installation guide had everything you want and need to know in terms of what is changed and what is included or not. That guide can be downloaded here: Canadian Payroll Round 2 tax update 2011 (on customersource).
Release 9.0:
Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
Dynamics 9.0.386
Canadian Payroll 9.0.387
Release 10.0:
https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/downloads/taxupdates/cagpye10.htm?printpage=false" target="_blank">Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
Dynamics 10.0.1701
Canadian Payroll 10.0.???? (to be determined)
Release 2010:
https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/downloads/taxupdates/cagptuye2010.htm?printpage=false" target="_blank">Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
Dynamics 11.0.1677
Canadian Payroll 11.0.1674
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Adopting new GP2010 features
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 General Stuff, Payables Management, Process Redesign
I'm behind on my blogging this week! Usually my weekends are my writing time, but instead of writing blogs, I was doing my own month-end and billings for January.
One of the clients I sent an invoice to emailed me today via the new GP2010 EFT Remittance email functionality with my remittance advice for their January invoice.
This client has been using GP's EFT for Payables for years but only with a handful of vendors each month, the majority of their payments were still via cheque. They had been paying me via EFT but without any remittances or notifications so far. They started asking me about EFT remittance/email functionality as they wanted to expand this to more vendors but needed to have a plan for the remittance advice.
Last year, I had gathered information for them on a few of the leading third party add-ons out there. However, once the beta of GP2010 was released and the new functionality was announced, I went back to the client and introduced the upcoming functionality to them. I could have easily sold them some third-party software add-on that would allow emailing of EFT remittances, they would have proceeded and been off to the races. However, being on GP9, with Canadian Payroll and a product lifecycle end in sight, I recommended they wait until they upgrade and evaluate the "free" functionality they would get before committing to a software purchase they may not ultimately require anymore.
So, last summer the "test" upgrade began and once the usual upgrade formalities were out of the way and the core project deliverables were met, I worked with them on testing the EFT functionality. It turns out they were happy with the functionality it provided. They did their own testing and documented the configuration they found worked best, to use in the live upgrade. We discussed the how this would change the existing A/P process, to re-design their existing process to incorporate this change.
Late last year, I completed their upgrade from GP9 to GP2010. After the year end tax updates were done and out of the way, based on the testing work we did during the sample upgrade, the client took their configuration notes, and set up the new functionality.
Being a little bit patient allowed them to take advantage of a new GP2010 feature - without purchasing additional software, and with relatively minimal additional consulting cost.
How cool is that?!
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Report Writer Series: Don’t settle for ugly reports! Part 2
Monday, January 24, 2011 How To & Tips, Report Writer
Picking up from Part 1, now we are getting into tips and tricks for modifying reports. I am walking through a specific example of taking a report that was in text format (General Posting Edit List), converting it to a graphical report, then modifying it to make it better looking!
The starting point
Here is where I left off last post, with the report layout simply with the Text Report checkbox unchecked. The fields that were on the right side of the layout before now appear off the page.
Altering fonts & moving fields
My first step was to select all (CTRL+A) and then go into Drawing Options (CTRL-D), to change the font from Courier 11pt to Calibri 9pt. I figured that 9pt gave me a reasonably-sized font for reading the report and fitting things into a portrait page layout.
Second, I dragged all of the fields that were "off the page" to within the page boundaries as well as making a few field size changes. Notice even though I've moved my fields, there are lots of fields that aren't in their final spot yet, such as Page Number and User ID fields in the headers.
Fine-tuning the layout
Next, I began to fine-tune things. I'm taking advantage of the Arrange tab on the Toolbox. I'll describe these tools in more detail in my next post. What I use all the time are the Align and Size tools. If you are editing reports in Report Writer and manually lining fields up, you are wasting your time... seriously! Keep reading and use the Align tools and Size tools to quickly and easily line things up and make field-size changes easier by matching other related field-sizes.
So, I started to fine-tune by re-arranging the fields to fit things into where I wanted them. I moved some of the "legend" fields in the headers to make room for the Page # and UserID. Using Align features, I lined up the fields with the other Date/Time stamp fields. I re-arranged the H1 fields (first header, below the page header) to present the information in more of a tabular format (headings above the data). I also made the titles of these fields Bold to make them visually different from the data. Re-arranging the data this way allowed me to save a bit of space and reduce the overall size of the H1 section. This doesn't make a huge difference but overall reduces paper in the long run, with more information fitting on the page.
I added a black thin line under the primary heading titles (Journal Entry #, Transaction Type, Date, etc.) to visually separate the body from the headers. I also added a medium grey colour thin line at the bottom of the F2 section, which is the end of one journal entry. This will visually separate the individual transactions without it seeming too much like a big grid of lines.
On the titles for the body data, the original report had two text fields for a two-row heading/title. I preferred to save space and came up with shorter titles and eliminated one row of unnecessary text fields.
Last, I changed the error message fields to italic - that way if and when they do appear they may stand out a little more than if they are the same font style as everything else.
Here is what the layout looked like after the fine-tuning:
A caution on removing fields and sections from a report
On many reports you may want to modify, often there may be LOTS of unnecessary fields for your business. The default reports have a lot of data on them, primarily because every business has slightly different needs. Since modification is fairly easy, it's up to the organizations to tweak reports as needed for their specific uses.
One thing to avoid is a wholesale deletion of fields you don't need. Why? Well, there are two reasons I can think of.
If you take a close look at a sample of reports, you will see a lot of already-invisible fields and some yellow invisible fields plus other legend-type fields that only appear when certain criteria are met. Often these are calculated fields. If there are fields that are purely data fields that you want to remove, first try to simply hide them by going into Field Options (CTRL+F) and making them invisible. Some fields are safe to remove, some are not and unfortunately it's something you get a feel for over time after modifying many reports. This is my simple guideline (not a hard-and-fast rule though!):
Now what do I do?
Start with making a field invisible and hiding it behind another field in the same section. Don't drag a seemingly-unnecessary field from one section to another section; if it's a meaningless field that won't matter but if that field is used for some reason, moving it to a different section of the report could alter how the report generates and cause other issues.
Sections work similarly, if there is a report that contains a lot of sections that you want to remove, make a backup of the report before taking a section out first so you can go back to a previous iteration if necessary. Many times the sections may not make sense to you, but they are grouping, totalling, or otherwise summarizing data at a certain level that you may need. Most data on reports falls into a "one-to-many" table relationship scenario so moving a field from one section to another may not result in the right result.
When removing a field or section you don't know about, try to back up your dictionary or export your report to a package file first, then delete the section you think you don't want, then test it. If all seems ok at that point, then proceed with your changes. If you delete a bunch of things then continue making other changes, and realize there is an issue later, it's harder to narrow down exactly which field removed caused the problem.
Ready for testing
Once I feel I am nearly done a report, it's time to test it out. I test at different times, depending on the kinds of changes I am making. On a report such as this where the majority of the changes are cosmetic, I will make the majority of changes first before switching back to GP to take a look. It's a different story if I am creating a lot of formulas, adding a lot of new fields or otherwise changing more than fonts and styles; in those cases, I don't wait too long before testing a formula out. I don't want to get too ahead of myself if something isn't working, the further ahead I go, sometimes the harder it is to determine what went wrong.
Testing highlights a lot of things that you can't see in the report writer interface, such as text field alignment. Here are some examples of what you may find if you are close to done. I've highlighted a few issues with field alignment, where it's hard to see what the field is for, it is so far removed from the title.
A quick note on security for testing
If you are following my recommendations so far, you have made backups AND are editing reports either without others in the system or on a copy of the live reports (with no one else accessing them). If you are re-modifying an existing report, there is less of an impact because security, in theory, has already been set up and the "production" dictionary already has "a" modified version of the report in it.
The challenge is when you are modifying a report for the first time, you need to be careful how you set security and test. In this scenario what I recommend is to grant security only to yourself on this newly modified report. Until a report modification is in the current, active production dictionary, don't give security to other users otherwise they may get errors if they try to run that report before you are done modifying it. If you forget to copy the report into production, and YOU get the error, you won't freak out because you will know what the issue is. The ultimate I believe is to give yourself access to this modified report only in a test company so that scenario doesn't come up. If you end up going back into a production company, you can do your regular work and not be impacted.
The report is complete!
After making some of the highlighted changes and a few other minor tweaks, my report modification was complete. The last step then is to arrange to bring it into my production reports dictionary and grant security to the appropriate users. All told, this was a simple report modification and it took probably an hour or so to complete the changes. Here is the final report output:
Next post I will dive more into some of the specific tools in Report Writer and continue to "demystify" Report Writer!
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What happens when you hit the max Journal Entry Number
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 General Stuff, General Ledger
This falls under the category of "who knew?"!
There is a long story to why I even tested this in the first place, but it's not very interesting so I will spare you the details! Suffice it to say I'm evaluating some requirements for a client who is planning to add a significant volume of transactions to Dynamics GP (potential volume in the millions of transactions per year).
The Question
In a discussion, someone asked me "how big is the Journal Entry number field?".
Great question! I can't say I ever really looked at it, it is sufficiently large I never have needed to look.
The Answer
The answer? It's an 8 digit field, and the highest allowed number is 99,999,998 (oddly enough, 99,999,999 is not allowed, go figure!).
So like any other geek out there, my mind wandered to "what happens if you get to that number?". I thought oh my, this conceivably could be an issue some day far down the road if this volume in fact translates to individual journal entries.
What Happens Next?
In almost any other area of GP, this usually means you may be, well, snookered. We're trained to leave leading zeros in front of all sorts of "next number" fields for future growth.
Well with the Journal Entry number, after you post/save the document with JE# 99,999,998, it automatically reverts back to 1 or the lowest unused journal entry number not used in an open year.
Huh?
That last "or" is an interesting one. If you test this in Fabrikam, assuming you haven't manually closed any years, you will find this out.
The JE# cycle will start again at 1, in most cases, assuming you are a normal operation and have closed your years and are not running this many transactions through in the course of an open business year.
However, with Fabrikam (and it could happen anywhere), it so happens that in my sample data JE#1 to 4 were posted but in an open year. For those that don't use Fabrikam much, it has a gazillion open fiscal years which usually people ignore (or fix) for their testing purposes.
So I closed the year 2014 and once JE#1 to 4 etc. was in history, I could use it again. Before closing the year it jumped to JE#5, and then after that to some number in the 60's, and it would keep jumping to the lowest JE# not already used in the YTD open table.
If you try to re-use a JE# in an open year, it says this JE# has already been used.
I love learning something new, no matter how trivial is may seem! I doubt I will use this morsel of information often in my consulting but you never know!
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Report Writer Series: Don’t settle for ugly reports! Part 1
Monday, January 17, 2011 How To & Tips, Report Writer
Now that most of the payroll year-end tax update season is behind us, it’s back to the Report Writer series of articles.
You’re not the only one who is sick of looking at ugly plain-text edit lists and searching for the information you want to review. Have no fear, more useful and attractive reports are a few mouse clicks away!
Lots of users have gone to other reporting tools to get better looking reports and I don’t blame them. Crystal and SQL Reporting Services give us a lot of great tools to improve reporting in terms of look and feel as well as flexibility of layout and many other benefits. As much as some of us would like Report Writer to die a slow death, the reality is for posting journals and edit lists and anything with temp tables, Report Writer is “it”.
So, you have two choices: you can put up with the out-of-the-box ugly reports or you can roll up your sleeves and make some reports more visually appealing, enhancing the fields which are of importance to you. The next 2-3 articles will be focussed around how to spruce up your reports, using an example of modifying the General Posting Edit List, converting it from text to graphical and cleaning it up.
First, if you are new to report writer, take a moment to review my background posts to get up to speed.
Begin with the end in mind
With a nod to Stephen Covey, who I believe coined this phrase, best practises dictate that you have a goal in mind when you start a project. If you don’t, one can argue, where exactly are you going? Well, with report writing, the same principle applies: don’t start until you know what you want to end up with. This usually means “mocking up” a report.
What are mock-ups?
By “mocking up”, I mean printing out a sample of a report you want to edit. It’s best to ensure your mock-up represents the typical information that is printed on the report. I.E. ensure you are printing samples where you are typing descriptions or filling in all of the fields you may use in the course of ordinary transactions. Also, don’t limit yourself to “one” of anything – try to have a large enough sample that your report is more than one page. Why? The Page Header often is not displayed on page 1 of a report and you don’t know what the report fully looks like until you print a two-page or more report.
Example of a mock-up
Pictured below is a mock-up of the report I plan to modify. I’m circling fields I want to move or edit in some way and drawing in new items that I want added. In this example I am not removing any fields however that is very common, and putting a big “X” through the fields and field titles you don’t want is an important part of the mock-up exercise. Usually the client or end-users are doing the mock-ups and you should ensure you clearly understand their scribbles and notations if anything needs further explanation.
Some people take this a step further and draw these mock-ups up a lot neater than mine, or even cut and paste the fields on a blank page the way they want them to appear. That’s ok too… the goal is to be clear on what the desired output looks like. Try to avoid the vague “can you just pretty this up for me” approach to report modification! What I find looks great, may be quite unreadable to someone else!
Here is my process when modifying a report, after I have a mock-up ready, and launching GP pointing to my own copies of the reports dictionaries.
Step 1: Check for previous customizations
This may sound obvious, but stranger things have happened. Do a quick check before starting a modification of a report by checking if that report already exists in your reports dictionary. A quick look at the Customization Maintenance window should tell you that, assuming you are in an environment where you can see everything that is currently modified.
If, by chance, you see the report you plan to modify is already listed, you may want to do a little digging to find out what the modified version looks like (if you are seeing the original) and who, if anyone, is using it (i.e. who has security access to the modified version).
Step 2: Modify the right report!
There is a saying, “Good Judgement comes from Experience. Experience comes from Bad Judgement.” I used to modify a report by going into Report Writer then finding the report I wanted and inserting it my reports list. That seemed to work just fine until one day I spent a great deal of time modifying a posting journal only to find out the client uses the multicurrency version of the posting journal – an entirely different report. I still remember the dull thud sound of my head hitting the desk. Ugh!
Learn from my “experience” and instead of that approach, find the report you want in GP and print it to screen, then click on Modify to get into Report Writer. Remember, this approach does not work if there are any reports that will print after the one you want to modify though, but at least in the title bar, it shows you the exact name of the report, to find it in Report Writer!
TIP: Don’t go by the name in the Report Destination window! (it's not the real name, and doesn't tell you if you are using a multicurrency version for instance!)
Use the name of the report in the Title Bar instead!
Step 3: Convert from text to graphical
The layout of a text report, for this report, looks like this:
To change it to graphical report, exit the Layout screen, and unmark the Text Report option on the Report Definition screen.
After doing that, the layout will initially look something like this:
Step 4: Start to make your changes!
The first thing I usually do is to mass-change the fonts on all of the fields. If you do this first, you can easily select all fields (CTRL+A) and then go into Drawing Options (CTRL+D) and change everything to a more suitable font than Courier 11pt. If you start adding graphical elements first, then when you "select all" you will be grabbing graphical items as well as text and the shortcut to mass-change fonts won't work.
I generally stick with plain fonts for readability – Arial, Helvetica, Calibri work for me. I also try to get away with small font sizes to make things fit better – 9 or 10pt for most text is often a nice size to work with as long as people can read it. This is purely preliminary - I mass-change to what I want the majority of the font sizes to be and as I get closer to the report being final, I spot-change titles or other fields to different sizes as required.
Next, start moving the fields into place. Moving from text to graphical throws the fields off the page so-to-speak. Consider changing the layout to landscape if your report has more information width-wise than length-wise. Use some of the techniques described in my previous posts about selecting multiple pieces of text to move things around. I usually focus first on getting things to the right general area before finalizing the exact location and aligning things precisely.
Next post, I will continue with this example and show tips on how to use the Toolbox to arrange fields and make your report a thing of beauty! Until then, here is a sneak peak at the end result.
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The end is near (or is it here?) for GP 9.0
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 General Stuff, News
It’s a sad day for all of you Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 users out there. Today is the official end date for mainstream support of that release. There is a small asterisk here: tax updates will continue until January 31, 2011.
For more information about the lifecycle of this and other products, here is the link.
To ensure you are on a supported version of Microsoft Dynamics GP, you will need to update to GP 10.0 or GP 2010.
What does “Supported” mean?
A supported version generally means feature requests are continuing to be reviewed and bug fixes are continuing to be fixed with service packs or hotfixes. Being supported also means being able to purchase new modules and/or user licences for GP. Being supported has nothing to do with being “current” on your annual enhancement plan.
Customersource will still have a wealth of knowledge for a recently discontinued product although over time you will find, as the knowledgebase grows, articles will be increasingly relevant only to the newer supported releases.
Partners generally continue to support the product as well as they have a wealth of knowledge themselves on all releases of a product for which they have been working with Dynamics GP. That being said, over time, as you get farther away from your product being supported, you may find it harder to obtain support for your release. Partners will not always keep a ready library of functioning test environments of old versions of a product should testing a scenario be needed to answer a question.
Upgrade Implications
While most clients do not upgrade every time a new release comes out, the vast majority of clients I see upgrade every other version, once mainstream support ends. Keep in mind when planning to upgrade, if you are on an older unsupported version, your cost to upgrade may increase as there is less likely to be a direct path of upgrade from your current version to the version you want to upgrade to. That means more time spent, more potential issues and added complexity to the project.
Overall Recommendation
You have made a significant investment in Dynamic GP and part of the cost of maintaining it and budgeting for it should include upgrading every couple of releases at least. This doesn’t mean it’s an annual cost, but more like an “every three year” scenario based on the current rate of new product releases. Being “supported” means you have more resources at your disposal – Partners, Microsoft, Customersource, Blogs etc. – all with information relevant to your investment. There is little worse than reading about some fabulous new features or functionality only to find out you can’t get it on your release!
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New Year’s Resolutions!
Saturday, January 1, 2011 Off Topic Articles
Happy new year everyone! It's January 1st, 2011 and, like many of you, I take some time around the new year to look back on my last year and look forward to the new. It's always fun to take a look at last year's resolutions to see how you fared a year later. I'm not sure if others do this too, but most of the time the resolutions I wrote the previous year, I don't look at again during the year! Ugh! No wonder resolutions are not very successful for me!
The year 2010 in review
Looking back on last year, I was only four months into my own consulting practice and the year ahead was a bit unknown. Last year at this time I was working on a contract and business development was not my immediate concern. My business resolutions for 2010 were marketing related for the most part:
I'm pleased that I have succeeded in both resolutions, at least having a starting point. I found a fantastic freelance web designer locally who has been a tremendous business partner this year, working with me to re-design my website which was phase 1 in the summer and in the fall add on the blog to the site. Thank you Rolf, it's been fantastic working with you and it was a fun project to see come to fruition!
On my second resolution, it's been a goal of mine to establish a presence in the GP community online. It's such a large, strong community with so many others willing to share their knowledge, I really wanted to be a part of it. I've followed many bloggers for years, and saw an opening for more Canadian content with few (any?) bloggers being really active in the community from Canada. I am very thankful that the community - as strong and knowledgeable as they are - are also open to welcoming newbies to the blog world like myself with open arms and helping shed some light in my little corner of the web world. I've been fortunate to have some of the biggest names in our community mention me, list my blog or otherwise bring some attention my way. Developing an online presence is not a one-time thing that just happens; I will have to work on it, and continue to contribute meaningful, useful articles for my resolution to take shape and I look forward to continuing that in 2011 and beyond!
What's in store for 2011
On to 2011 and here are some of the things I resolve to do this year, business or professionally related:
What can you, the GP user, do in 2011?
Here is my suggestion for you whether you are a GP user or a consultant.
Happy new year to everyone and cheers to resolutions!
Jen
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Happy New Year
Wednesday, December 29, 2010 General Stuff, Off Topic Articles
I'm taking a wee break over the holidays!
I wanted to wish everyone a safe New Year's Eve celebrating and success in 2011!
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Canadian Payroll Year End Update - issues for GP9?
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 Canadian Payroll, News
Hey Canadian Payroll fans out there... it's me again with some possible bad news. It seems there is an issue appearing that is pretty specific to a group of customers that fit a certain criteria, namely: customers on GP9 who had previously upgraded from something else to GP9.
The issue is with the table conversion on CPY10100, CP50100 where 4 columns in these two tables have incorrect lengths and the failed tables list is showing a status 135 meaning not having the correct structure prior to upgrading the database.
Updated Dec 23, 2010: the original download page now includes the file to correct issues with the incorrect column lengths. Look in the Overview section for the link to the file. Link is here.
The
badgood newsThere is no fix ready yet - Microsoft is working on a script and I'll update the status of this post as we get more details.Mid-way through writing this post I received another email with a resolution for this. A script has been created and will be posted to customersource on Thursday. I will update this post with the link once it's posted. (I have the script but don't feel it's wise to post it here, I'd prefer readers get the script via their partner or via their customersource account).
What to check
These scripts can be run at any time, ideally the earlier the better so that you can identify potential issues before you start your tax update. There is nothing worse than coming in over the holidays, possibly during a seasonal shut down period, to do an update and only then find you have an issue. Often times these year end updates are being run during times when partners and support-networks are on reduced hours due to holidays so preparing in advance and doing risk-assessment is very wise!
sp_help CPY10100
sp_help CPY50100
PAddress1 – column length should be 61, incorrect table structure may show 31
PAddress2 – column length should be 61, incorrect table structure may show 31
PCity – column length should be 35, incorrect table structure may show 30
Pcountry – column length should be 61, incorrect table structure may show 20
(Edited Dec 23, 2010 to re-post link to GP9 tax table download where the link to the script to resolve this issue is located.)
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Canadian Payroll Year End Update - posted
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Canadian Payroll
The Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll tax updates for year end are now released.
Release 9.0:
Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
Release 10.0:
Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
Release 2010:
Download Link (Customersource)
Versions after install:
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The cost of inefficient processes
Sunday, December 19, 2010 General Stuff, Process Redesign
Last week I sat with a user at a not-for-profit agency. This user is an older semi-retired gentleman who has a fairly strong accounting background, and is supposed to be working 3 days a week. They converted to Dynamics GP in October 2010 after using Simply Accounting for years.
The Executive Director called me to arrange for me to come in due to concerns that her financial co-ordinator had not, at that point, started entering any November activity. He had received what she deemed a lot of support from the folks who implemented them. They were rapidly approaching the end of a quarter (end of December) and she has only recently received October financials.
The Review
It didn't take long to see why the workload seemed insurmountable to the user. Here are some of the things I noticed that were delaying the co-ordinator's efforts.
Big Inefficiencies
It was clear to see that the training this user received perhaps wasn't well suited to him. The accompanying documentation was little more than screen shots with what the fields meant, hardly something a new user could use to understand where one thing fit into a larger process or cycle. This user is incredibly detailed, and, dare I be the pot calling the kettle black, is highly anal, wanting to know all the nitty gritty details right now!
The following is one of the observations of his A/P entry process, in this case, re-entering invoices that had already been paid out of Simply Accounting. Before beginning he has already spent time coding his invoices with GL accounts and verifying HST amounts.
In case this doesn't sound too bad to some of you, this is his process for one invoice! Yes, he was creating a batch, entering, posting, starting over each time. This process took him about 20 minutes. He had a pile of approximately 28 cheques to get through, some with multiple invoices. At this rate, barring any complications, he would be entering at a rate of 3 invoices / hour, and it would take him 10 hours to get through this pile. Wow.
The Analysis
Reviewing the steps, there are a lot of "why?" questions in my mind. Part of process redesign has to include reviewing the process and trying to understand the rationale for why certain things are done certain ways. There are lots of times when some wacky processes are in place for fairly legitimate reasons. Most times however, no one knows why something was done a certain way and they cannot think of a reason not to change x or y.
No one can make solid recommendations if you don't understand what they are trying to accomplish in the first place. Armed with that knowledge, you can then help tweak, rewrite, or otherwise alter a process to accommodate their needs with fewer steps or less cost or whatever the improvement results in.
We reviewed the hot spots of this process - what he was trying to accomplish, why he was doing things a certain way etc. It turns out for the most part, he wasn't confident that he was doing things right so he was going overboard documenting where things were posted to be able to find it after posting. He also had a mistaken impression that he had to post things individually but still had to use batches. He wanted to be able to attach the journal entry (GL Posting Journal) to every entry as backup.
The Recommendations
There were a lot of ways to improve his plight, and here are the high points we discussed. More things will be reviewed in a subsequent visit. With any changes, sometimes spacing out the changes and phasing things in over time helps with adoption, which is my plan with this client.
There are more things that can be addressed but this was a starting point and by the end of that first day, we managed to get through all of the outstanding invoices to catch up in that area at least.
The Cost of Inefficiency
For this organization, the cost of this user's inefficient methods were:
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Canadian Payroll Year End Update - a two part journey
Monday, December 13, 2010 Canadian Payroll, News
Hello Canadian Payroll fans... this is an update to my previous post last month, with some news from Microsoft. Reminder: this update contains table changes which often means longer updates and more possibility of complications - ensure your process includes backups as you proceed through the install!
GP9.0 users - please note a Round 2 update is coming this year which is NOT being made available for GP9. Please review the functionality that it contains if it affects the timing of your plans to upgrade!
Target Release Date
Friday, December 17th, 2010 is the aim for English with French to follow. The release will be available for 9.0, 10.0 and 2010.
New! Expect Round 2 in mid-January
Yes, you read that correctly! Some new functionality that is not in the year end update will be released in "Round 2" (E.T.A mid-January 2011). Very important for 9.0 customers who are delaying upgrading - you WILL NOT be getting the Round 2 update! This is only being released for GP10 and GP2010.
What does Round 2 have?
The Round 2 update will be supporting the new T4A boxes (Patronage allocation, registered pension, pension adjustment, RESP, Charitable donation, etc). For more information on the T4A re-design, see the Canada Revenue Agency's What's New link and New T4A codes for 2011.
What does the Year End Update have?
Apart from the normal tax rate changes and some bug fixes, here are changes specific to the year end update:
Which tables are affected?
The following tables will have fields added to them to support the new functionality.
General Info on What's New for 2011
The most significant changes are with the T4A and Retiring Allowances moving from the T4A to the T4 slip for 2011. See the Canada Revenue Agency's list of what's new for more details.
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The Support Debugging Tool is my new best friend
Monday, December 6, 2010 General Stuff, News, Troubleshooting
I have known about the Support Debugging Tool for a while but have never had an occasion to install and use it at a client location.
I took advantage of a recent client upgrade from GP9 to GP2010 to install it on all of the workstations while we rolled out GP2010. It has already paid dividends!
The Issue
One user was getting an error on posting "Not privileged to run this report" - when she posted Receivings Transaction Entry batches. That's a standard error, and typically I haven't found it tough to resolve. Since it was received on posting, I did what I normally do: I went into a test company and posted a batch with a POWERUSER user to see what posting reports were turned on. The result however was I received the same 3 posting journals that this user did, except I did not get an error message. Hmmm....
SDT to the rescue
I turned to the Support Debugging Tool's Security Profiler feature and it was a very easy and quick way to find the problem. The steps were as follows:
Feedback
There are a TON of things in this tool I don't know how to use effectively yet and will be looking at other features I can take advantage of.
One very cool thing is the colour customization of the GP windows which this client is using for test companies. They wanted to ensure the users don't accidentally forget they are in a test company and post something they want to be "live" data.
The second very cool thing is the option to rename the window titles when GP is minimized. In this case, the power users tend to have multiple instances of GP launched at once and with GP2010 having the user interface display all windows individually, their taskbar gets busy in a hurry. They loved this feature to quickly see which minimized windows are which user / company logged in.
If you haven't tried this, check out David Musgrave's site for the Support Debugging Tool Portal for more information and lots of articles and information.
If you are already using this, Build 14 was just released - check it out and update to the latest build!
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Remember me! New GP2010 feature
Monday, November 29, 2010 Security
In GP2010, a new feature was introduced to remember the user and company. I've seen a few blog posts about this, however I have also seen some incorrect information being posted about this topic which I hope to clear up.
What is it?
There are two parts to this:
Remember User (& Password) - automatically logs you in and bypasses the login window.
Remember Company - automatically chooses the company you "remembered" and bypasses the company selection window.
How to enable it
For administrators, the Remember User functionality is disabled by default. Use the System Preferences window (under System setup on the Administration home page) to enable this functionality if desired. If this feature is not enabled, the Remember Company feature still works (there is no enable/disable option for this). The remembered items are stored on the local workstation in the registry.
NOTE: enabling this is a system-wide setting, all companies, all users. See the Workarounds section for ideas on how to restrict certain users or workstations from using this feature.
For users, simply tick the "remember" box on the applicable window, assuming your administrator has enabled it on the Welcome to Microsoft Dynamics GP window. If the Remember User & Password is disabled, your administrator has not enabled it.
To change these settings, log in to Dynamics GP as normal, then click on either the Company Name or your UserID field on the home page to bring back the login and/or company selection windows. There you can de-select the option to remember or change the remember me setting for companies.
Is it safe?
Yes, it is safe, the login and password are encrypted in the windows registry on the workstation. For more detailed information, here is a blog post by Mariano Gomez, a Microsoft Dynamics GP MVP. Mariano is the well-known Dynamics GP Blogster.
Is it recommended?
In my opinion, the decision to use the Remember User & Password feature is highly dependent on the strength of your organization's other risk-related policies.
If you answered yes to the above questions, then enabling this feature shouldn't be too much of a risk. If you answered no, you are risking the possibility of unauthorized users looking at, or worse, altering, your accounting data by accessing an unattended workstation.
Generally the Remember Company feature is not quite as risky and unless there is critical information in one particular company vs others you may not need to limit its' use.
Workarounds
If you really would like to enable this functionality, then consider either policies to restrict access to the feature for certain users or possibly using VBA or Modifier to restrict access. I recommend that users who use 'sa' or DYNSA should not use the remember login/password feature. Other users who may be in the POWERUSER role or have access to critical data or setup windows should possibly also be restricted from auto-logging-in.
If you are going to use policy to restrict certain users from auto-logging-in, keep in mind you should be auditing it periodically: spot check the users' workstations who should not be using this feature to see if it's in use or not. A policy without follow up is worthless!
Recap
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Issues with GP2010 and uninstalling
Saturday, November 27, 2010 Installation, Troubleshooting
I ran into a difficult situation at a client where we were unable to edit (add new features) to GP2010, unable to uninstall or repair GP2010 and unable to launch GP2010 because of dictionary version mismatches. If you ever have issues finding the references in the registry to troubleshoot installations I hope this may help, that is where I ended up in my quest.
The issues were various but the short story is:
Uninstalling GP2010
First I found Mariano Gomez' post How to Uninstall GP10 for instances where add/remove programs does not work. Even though I was using GP2010, not GP10, the references were basically the same.
This gave me a lot of the information I have here and helped a ton.
A second completely non-Dynamics-related article here helped me find the other references in the registry including a tip in a user’s comment about 32bit apps on a 64bit machine.
In my specific issue I was getting errors trying to either Repair or Remove using the add/remove programs (or the appwiz.cpl shortcut). The error was "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". I was unable ultimately to even run through Mariano's steps as I received the same error when uninstalling the msi in the Installer folder(s).
To the registry!
I'm not a big fan of hacking into a registry - it's risky, there are lots of ways for this to go wrong, and in this case, I was also working remotely so I needed to be ultra careful, backing up anything and everything, documenting every step so I could go back if I needed to.
Remember: always export the keys before deleting anything...
My environment
The server is Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, 64bit. SQL version SQL2005. GP2010 SP1.
What worked for me
Take this for what it's worth - I tried a lot of things (removing entries in the registry) and to be perfectly honest, once I got to the “search” stage on the registry, I didn't know exactly which specific registry key was "the" one that freed me from my little black hole as I kept the search going to find as much as I could before trying to install again.
Also, in all of this, my DATA was fine - there were no issues from any other workstation, the data was fine, all products were at their proper upgraded version and the system was not down. It was the only client install on the server for me that was not working.
Registry references
The following were the areas I looked at in the registry (all tips from the two posts above):
Application Folders & References
Here was where I found references in windows explorer to GP2010, dexterity etc. or install files and removed what was no longer necessary.
While I was in the middle of my little black hole, I was searching for a lot of the error messages I was coming across but not having much luck. Hopefully this will help someone narrow down their problem and get them out of their black hole!
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Do you want my business?
Thursday, November 25, 2010 Off Topic Articles
After receiving some positive feedback on my recent customer service article, I thought I would continue with the odd off-topic article (defined as non-Dynamics-GP). I'm certainly finding recently a whole LOT of examples of shall we say "learning experiences" to draw from!
Having recently moved, we are undertaking some renovations to the house over the next little while - some relatively minor, some relatively major. It's been an eye opener so far in terms of how the various people we have been dealing with run their businesses. While I certainly am far from perfect, I would like to think that I would do things much better than some of these folks given the opportunity.
Don't ask me for my requirements, just tell me some negative stuff!
I was looking to buy a new fireplace grate - for our wood-burning fireplace. One store I went to, I was asked what I was looking for and if they could help me in any way. Good start! "Yes I am looking for a grate for my fireplace". We were standing in front of their display with what appeared to be two styles of grates. The gentleman's response to me? "That grate (pointing to one of the styles) won't last you if you have a fire every day".
Hmmm.... maybe you should ask a couple of questions before losing yourself an easy sale. I'm no rocket scientist but hey, "how often do you use your fireplace?" seems like a good starting point to me, followed by "We have two models to consider, this one here is what I recommend if you use your fireplace a lot since it will last a long time. This other model will certainly suit you just fine if you only have the occasional fire."
Instead I left the store with a lot of doubt in my mind about the first grate - since he planted that seed so well - and they didn't have the size I needed in the other sturdier model. Business lost. I bought a grate elsewhere an hour later! If you are selling ANYTHING, services or products, retail or otherwise, start with asking some questions - qualify, understand the requirements, THEN recommend, and yes please make a recommendation. Anyone can be trained to tell you about a product. It takes experience to take that along with a person's requirements and recommend something to them.
I'll get back to you
This is a common one. "I'll get back to you" is such a common phrase in business and there is nothing wrong with it, unless you don't! We called some firms to come in regarding some possible structural changes. One fellow, nice guy, said he'd talk to his architect or engineer and he or they would get back to us within a few days. It's been two months, we didn't bother to follow up since neither did they. Another fellow, was building a house for a friend of ours, had an appointment to come by the house to look at the same structural stuff. Didn't show up, no phone call. We followed up, we booked another visit, he didn't show up, he didn't call. That was also two months ago. Third example was another tradesperson, spent time with us early in September, said the quote would be ready in a few days. After about 6 weeks and my follow up the response was "I'm having trouble quoting this one" and came back to take another look. "Will have a quote to you in a couple of days". I had to follow up again, "I'm too busy to quote right now". We finally got a quote and booked the work, 3 months later than we wanted.
For the most part, and this could be a "thing" in the construction industry, we have generally found that the people we felt most comfortable with and wanted to continue to pursue we have had to follow up with them to keep the conversation going. It kills me, if you want my business, should you not be pursuing me, not the other way around?
You're busy, I get it
In the construction industry, I've been told you don't want to hire the guy/gal that is able to start your job tomorrow - they should be busy. I get that. What I believe many of these businesses and people can learn is, unless you really don't want the business, keep in touch somehow. Find 5 minutes to update someone. Acknowledge a person's email or phone call - so they know you got it, even if you can't respond right away.
Communication is so important yet so overlooked. All these people have to do is communicate: are there delays? Just let us know, somehow, please, give us a small indication you want my business because I'm sure happy to tell everyone how fabulous your work is when you're done if you do.
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Report Writer series: Formatting Text
Monday, November 22, 2010 How To & Tips, Report Writer
If you have modified many Dynamics GP Report Writer reports in the past, you will have perhaps found that dealing with text fields is sometimes a little tedious. Here are a few simple tips to help you modify those reports a little faster.
Mass change the font on text-only reports
If you are editing a "text" report, or changing a report that was text-based to graphical, and if you want to quickly and simply change the majority of the font sizes or styles, use the Select All command (CTRL + A) to select all text then select Drawing Options (Tools - Drawing Options or CTRL + D) to edit the text. I find this useful when making a text report graphical as I can at least change the majority of the fields to a font and style and then go back and edit individual fields that need different styles, sizes etc.
If you are not sure if you are dealing with a graphical or text report look here on the Report Definition window for the text option to be ticked or not.
Selecting multiple fields to edit text at once
The method above will not work if your report is graphical and if you already have graphical elements on the report - lines, boxes, images etc. since the "select all" will select items that will make Drawing Options unavailable to you. Sometimes using the "lasso" and/or "CTRL-click" methods to select multiple pieces of text is the next best solution. Once you have multiple pieces of text selected then you can continue to editing them as described above (using Drawing Options).
Lasso: this means clicking somewhere outside of the boundaries of an item, and clicking your mouse and drawing a rectangular area around the pieces of text you want to select. Note that different programs work differently with this type of mass-item-selection. Report Writer requires you to completely encircle the item(s) you are selecting for the lasso to "grab" them. Some programs as long as you "touch" the item, it is included but that is not how Report Writer works. Another small quirk is you can only lasso in one section of the report at a time. To get around this, lasso one section, then hold down your CTRL key and continue to lasso around other sections to keep the selections and add to them.
CTRL-Click: this means clicking on an item, then holding the CTRL key as you select additional items. The Shift key also works the same way in Report Writer.
Copying a format from one text field to another
This tip is courtesy of David Musgrave, who, to many GP consultants is a guru with an endless knowledge of GP technical and development subjects. See the full post here that I clipped this from. There is no specific "format copier" feature like Format Painter in the Microsoft Office products. However, thanks to David's recent post, he reminded me that you can in fact copy a format from one text field to another.
What you do is first select the text field that you want to copy FROM, i.e. the field that has the font, size, style, etc. that you want other fields to have. Then you select other fields using CTRL or SHIFT key ensuring the first field is still selected. When you go into Drawing Options, the properties of the first field are already there, so you only need to click OK for the properties to then be applied to all of the selected fields. Voila! Formats are copied!
Changing the "default" font style
This tip is handy if you are adding new text fields to a report and want to avoid the hassle of placing all the text fields and then going back to edit their styles or fonts. Without clicking on anything, go to Drawing Options (CTRL + D) and set what you want the default font, size, style, colour etc. to be. From then on (in that session only), any next text items placed on the report will use that style. Note I said in that session only: unfortunately this doesn't persist between sessions so as soon as you close the layout window that default is gone. However, this little tip does make adding large amounts of text quicker as you can set your styles up front painlessly!
Until next post... happy report editing!
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Canadian Payroll Year End Update - heads up!
Friday, November 19, 2010 Canadian Payroll, News
Two important notes for Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll clients!
1. End of tax updates for GP9.0
This one you should (hopefully) have heard about a long time ago! 9.0 support ends January 11, 2011.
What does this mean? You will need to upgrade to a newer release of Dynamics GP before your July 2011 tax updates. If you do not use Canadian Payroll, there is less urgency however I always recommend keeping on a supported version.
2. 2010 Year End Tax Update has table changes!
Straight from a Microsoft escalation engineer: Canadian Payroll year end update we are anticipating lots of changes due to the re-design of the T4A. We are still reviewing changes, but we will have table changes in Canadian Payroll this year to accommodate these new items.
What does this mean? If the past is any indication of the future, table changes mean more potential complications with installing the tax update and/or lengthier updates. Be aware!
The 2010 Year End update is expected to be ready on customersource/partnersource on December 16, 2010 - best estimate!
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How is your customer service?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 Off Topic Articles
I believe that sometimes companies need to step onto the other side of the counter and view themselves from the customer's standpoint. I don't intend to post non-Dynamics GP related things very often but today I had the good fortune of having three incidents worth talking about - two on the negative side, one on the positive side.
The background to my little story is I recently bought a new house - built in the 1950's - and one of the first changes was putting in a new furnace, air conditioner and hot water heater, powered by natural gas. Yesterday the HVAC install crew was here busy at work all day long, and at the end of the day I get a call from the production manager. Bad news: the gas company doesn't have a record of our install therefore we will not have gas service today, they will accommodate us on Tuesday. Now it's November 15th in Canada - fortunately it is staying at +5 Celsius overnight. Having no heat since it was turned off early yesterday morning and no hot water to shower with this morning was quite a drag but life goes on...
Customer service story #1
Fast forward to today, . This morning I woke up, the house is cold, I'd love to have warmed up with a hot shower but that will have to wait. I make myself a big "to go" mug of tea and head out for breakfast, looking forward to sitting in one of my favourite breakfast joints in Burlington, in heat! I walked into the restaurant, it's a family style restaurant, simple good food, no frills kind of place. I am half asleep still, found and sat at an empty table. Nearly immediately a waitress came over to me, no so much as a "hello" then greeted me with "He wants you to remove that from the restaurant" pointing to my mug of hot tea. So, I picked up my things, took my mug and left to put it back in my car, drinking what I could of it before returning for breakfast. I was annoyed, I was tired, and if I wasn't so tired I would have gone elsewhere.
The lesson I take from this is phrasing is everything when delivering bad news to a client. Had she apologized to me for the bother, explained why it was such a big deal, or simply been a little less curt with her delivery of the message, I would have not minded and not been annoyed. You have options when dealing with clients, and there are many ways to deliver a message. Next time you have to deliver less than good news, think about how to phrase it. I will think twice before returning another time to this restaurant and it all could have been handled much nicer without possibly losing a regular customer.
Customer service story #2
Same day, funny how these things happen in bunches! I was out for lunch today - and for those keeping track, still no gas hookup, no shower, no heat, no hot water. I went to a very busy local specialty grocery store, that happens to have a small eat-in restaurant cafeteria style in it. It's always packed, the food is good, the prices are very reasonable but the customer service is, well, less than stellar. The procedure is you line up, grab a tray, and someone behind the counter takes your order. The challenge typically is, in an effort to be highly efficient and quickly serve people, you are placing your order before you get to the part of the line where you can see the choices of the day. I've often wanted to wait to see what's there but usually default to my favourite because of this setup.
So today was a similar day to what I've witnessed in the past. I had just placed my order, I am not yet in front of the counter where you can see the food choices so I am peeking over others shoulders to see. The lady behind me, perhaps in her 70's, was asked what she would like to order. She explained she couldn't see what there was to make up her mind yet. She was basically asking for a little more time. The counter person though, in an apparent rush to keep the orders coming, spoke to the four of us ahead of this lady "you all have ordered, move out of the way so this lady can see the food". One lady in front of me actually hadn't ordered yet (was still deciding) and the long story short is we were all taken aback at the directive to move. Once again, wording is everything. This could have easily been phrased in a way that we gladly would have parted the line. The counter person also could have taken a step back and relaxed a bit - giving the line a little time to move on its own accord before re-asking for this lady's order.
The lesson I learned here, similar to the first, is what what you say but also ask yourself what the urgency is? Rushing clients through a decision is not wise most times, it will often result in a poorly made decision or one that gets changed. Let the decision come to you when the client is ready.
Customer service story #3
Last one of the day - ending on a positive note! Now that the HVAC guys are nearly done their work on our house, and the gas guys have come and given the thumbs up to power everything on, both the salesperson we purchased the system from and the production manager came to the house to check on the work of their crew. Both asked me if everything was going ok, if I was satisfied with the quality of the work done so far. The production manager also apologized again for the gas install date mishap, but this time getting the apology in person instead of over the phone was nice. The sales guy was happy to see we were happy - so he wasn't going to get any angry phone calls from something he didn't know about.
The lesson I learned here is follow up with your clients, get their feedback on how you did or how your staff did in their last encounter with the client. If something went wrong, you likely will hear about it. If something made the client unhappy but not serious enough to complain, you may never know. If you don't take 5 minutes to follow up and ask about their experience, you may never know and there may be bad feedback out there you don't know about.
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Report Writer demystified - part 2 - other considerations
Monday, November 15, 2010 Report Writer, Security
My last post was the introduction to dictionaries and launch files for those new to Report Writer (or GP). This post is all about things to keep in mind before you actually venture into Report Writer to start working. It’s rather boring stuff but it’s important to protect your reports from becoming corrupt or damaged due to poor process or lack of understanding.
Thoughts on Report Writer access
My recommendation is to create a special userID that is for report writing only - and grant it access only to a test company or Fabrikam (TWO) just to be on the safe side. Why? Well, if you have to log out as yourself and log in as a special user, you are more likely to follow a process once you put your "report writing" hat on. If you can go into Report Writer on a whim at any point in your day, that is when I often see people taking shortcuts (no backups, editing live dictionaries etc.) and bad things can happen!
Process? Can’t I just click the Modify button? What are you talking about?
There are right ways and wrong ways to do a lot of things in life and Report Writer is no different. People can get away with doing things that are not recommended but that one time it backfires on you, you will kick yourself for not following a consistent process. I recommend having a methodology or process for report writing. Mine looks something like this:
I have another process for bringing the reports back into production when they are tested. Your process may be different but the bottom line is, don’t wing it! If you are new to report writer, write down these steps or get a process from your partner/consultant and follow it every time until it is second nature. If you have used report writer enough, you have likely be burned once or twice already from taking shortcuts... and you know the pain in recreating a dictionary or report!
Tracking Report Changes
Keep a log or notebook on the history of report modifications. You would be surprised how often during an upgrade, we see a ton of modified reports that no one knows about (what was modified or why and whether they are being used right now or not). If you want to do yourself a favour, assign someone the task of managing the reports and tracking changes. Because security is required to get to modified reports, it makes sense that the person who tracks this is the person who manages security since they will know based on who asks them to grant access to a new report, what has been modified. It doesn’t need to be exhaustively detailed but a simple log of report name, date changed, reason for change and who requested it would suffice. It would go a long way in the future during upgrades and other times when you are reviewing why certain reports are modified.
TIP: use the Customization Maintenance window to get a quick list of what is modified on your workstation (under the Dynamics GP menu, Tools, Customize, Customization Maintenance). This window shows all modified resources based on the launch file you used; regardless of what reports or forms you have security/access to. Remember my previous post relating to launch file configurations, depending on your configuration, you may not see the same list as another user on another workstation depending on how your workstations are configured and installed. Spot check other machines to compare their lists from time to time.
Make a special launch file for report writing
Review my last post to see how the launch file is designed. To make another launch file, simply open the default one in notepad or another text editor and copy it with a new name. I recommend using a name without spaces in it for the GP shortcut purposes. Example: dynamics-reportwriting.set
The top two parts of the dynamics.set file stay the same; the third part is where you would edit the pathnames of the reports dictionaries to point to a separate folder. The folder can be anywhere, and keep in mind the syntax differences for local vs. UNC pathnames with slashes etc.
Types of Reports
Now we are finally getting into some actual Report Writer information! There are three types of reports within Report Writer – original reports, modified reports and custom reports.
Is It Really Modified?
In my description above, I defined a Modified Report as a report in a reports dictionary for a given module. However, to clarify, sometimes a report is in the reports dictionary that has not been touched. How did it get there if no one has touched it? One common reason is lax security: users who don’t know better are given access to Report Writer. Then the same user at some point will click on the Modify button on a screen output (preview) screen of a report, and clicking on that sends that report and you into Report Writer mode. Typically the user didn’t realize what the Modify button was for, and didn’t know what to do once they got into Report Writer, and simply closed Dynamics GP and returned back to their regular job. The result? Whatever report they clicked the Modify button on is now in the reports dictionary.
The issue: you cannot really tell easily if a report has been modified or not. If you have followed my advice and someone is responsible for tracking report changes, you will know pretty easily if there are reports not on the logbook that are in the report list. My tip? Use Security to try to identify if a report is really modified or not. Read the next section and I’ll explain what I mean!
Security and Report Writer
The last topic of this post is an overview of security as it relates to Report Writer. First there is security to allow a user access to Report Writer itself – as in access to the tool that is “Report Writer”. Secondly, there is security to the modified reports themselves. Users who do not know this often “mess” around in Report Writer only to get frustrated that they cannot see their report changes when it’s simply a matter of granting security.
I’ll back up one step to a previous comment: there are original reports and there are modified reports (I’ll deal with custom reports in a separate note). Any given user can be granted access to the original report OR the modified report but not both at the same time in the same company.
When you modify a report for the first time – i.e. it has not been previously modified – when you are ready to test the report, you need to grant security to see it. Typically my process is I will be working under a separate userID for report writing so I will grant access to the report to that userID in the test company to review it and ensure the changes are what I am expecting. Once you grant access, you can continue to modify the report over and over again without having to go back into security and re-grant access. You would only need to revisit security when you are done with report editing and ready to move the reports to production - to grant access to the report(s) to other users.
Modified Reports (and Forms) fall into the security category of “Alternate, Modified and Custom”. In GP10/GP2010 security, this is within the Alternate/Modified Forms and Reports window. In previous versions of GP, it falls under Alternative, Modified and Custom in Advanced Security. The screen shot below is the GP2010 window showing an example of a report that has been modified. You would select which user(s) or in this case which Alternate/Modified ID’s should have access to the modified report, and choose either the original or the modified report. TIP: if you only have one Alternate/Modified ID, I recommend creating a copy of it for your special report writing user only for the temporary time when the new report is not yet in production. There is nothing worse than granted security to a report while using a local launch file only to have a production user get an error because the modified report does not exist in production yet!
Now, back to the question Is It Really Modified? My tip is to look at security as one way to try to identify if a report is modified or not. If a report has been accidentally placed in the reports dictionary (via clicking Modify on the screen output window), chances are good that no one has security to that report. If no one has security to the modified report and no one knows why it is in the list, chances are it is safe to remove from the reports dictionary!
Next time: I’ll start to dig into Report Writer itself for some tips and tricks.
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Report Writer demystified - part 1 - dictionaries and launch files
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 Report Writer
This is the first in a series of posts about Microsoft Dynamics GP's built-in reporting tool - Report Writer. However, I am starting with some background that is more general to Dynamics GP before I dig into Report Writer itself. Hopefully some of these posts will add some new tricks to your repertoire or give you the confidence to try modifying a report on your own!
The first two articles contain some background and key information to keep in mind. In future posts I will give you different tips and tricks on some fine tuning, how to make your reports look nicer, etc
Background
Report Writer is the built-in reporting tool in Dynamics GP. In comparison to other reporting tools out there, it is definitely not the most user-friendly report-writing tool. It does have its advantages (a few, really, it does!) and for the moment it is the source for all posting journals and those types of core reports.
Security in GP controls who is allowed to use Report Writer and modify reports. TIP: if you run a report to screen, and the “Modify” button is greyed out, you do not have access to get into Report Writer.
Dictionaries
In order to be successful with Report Writer, you need to know a little bit about dictionaries. If you are unsure what a dictionary is (and no, I don't mean the dusty book on your bookshelf with word definitions!), here is a basic primer for you. Dictionaries (.dic files) are groups of resources, more commonly referred to as "code" dictionaries, "reports" dictionaries or "forms" dictionaries. Each product or module that has its own code dictionary will also have the possibility of having its own modified reports and/or forms.
If you have no modified reports or forms yet, you would see no dictionaries on your system for reports or forms, only code dictionaries. These dictionary files get created the first time you go into Report Writer (or Modifier for forms) for a given product or module.
Code dictionaries are typically local – on each workstation in the application directory. Reports & Forms dictionaries could be in various places depending on your configuration. (This is where you should consult your partner or a consultant if you are unsure). Here are the most common configurations:
Launch Files
Dynamics GP uses a file called the dynamics.set file as it's "launch file". This is a text file that tells Dynamics GP what products and modules to launch, where to find the code dictionaries and where the reports and forms dictionaries are located if there are modified resources. The "set" file as it is commonly referred to, is in the application directory.
The dynamics.set file contains 3 to 4 identifiable parts (typically 3):
The first two parts of a launch file, in this case 19 products/modules:
Part 3 of the launch file (part of it - snipped for size). In this configuration, the code dictionaries are kept local and the reports and forms dictionary paths are in a shared location on a different machine. Note: notice how the syntax for slashes and pathnames differs for local paths vs. UNC paths... one anomaly of the launch file!
Why do I care about all of this?
If you've read this far and are wondering why the heck do I care and when is some real advice coming? Well... some basic understanding will go a long way in ensuring you are successful and don't accidentally corrupt your reports dictionary while making a change to a report.
When you launch Report Writer, your first task is to select a product/module dictionary to enter. The dictionary dictates what reports you see, what can be modified, what tables are visible etc. Look for a future post on how to identify which dictionary a report or window is in. If you don't know what the drop-down list is when you open Report Writer, then you may not find the report you want to modify!
In an ideal scenario, you are editing dictionaries which no other user is accessing at the moment. That means having an understanding of where the dictionaries are located, finding them to make backups or take copies and knowing whether you need to consider making a "local" launch file to point elsewhere temporarily.
Next post will cover a little more background to finish off the boring stuff, then we will dig into some Report Writer tips and tricks!
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Find the right G/L account with Aliases
Monday, November 1, 2010 General Ledger, How To & Tips
Do you have trouble finding the right G/L account to use when you enter transactions? Do you frequently use the same G/L accounts on your day to day transactions and have the key them in or look them up each time? Have you recently changed your G/L account numbering and can't remember the new account numbers? Aliases may be useful to you if you answered yes to any of these questions!
What is it?
Aliases are a little-used field on the Account Maintenance window meant for an abbreviation or shortcut to a G/L account. During implementations they are often ignored and left blank.
How to use it
On any window where you can select a G/L account (i.e. where there is a lookup field), there is also a handy little expansion button that looks like this:
. In older versions of Dynamics GP the icon was different - it looks like two small overlapping boxes if memory serves correct. The alias field is inside the expansion window (called the Account Entry window). Once you type in an alias, and tab off that field, the Account Entry window auto-closes and the G/L account it is associated with appears in your G/L account field.
Reasons to use it
Things to keep in mind
Tips for implementing
Tip 1: Export your chart of accounts to Excel using Smartlist and review the accounts to trim it down to accounts where aliases would be useful. (Delete whatever you don't need it for). Then create aliases in your spreadsheet and import them back into Dynamics GP using Integration Manager or your choice of integration tool.
Tip 2: Make the aliases as short as possible - the goal is speeding up data entry, not typing in 20 character phrases! Abbreviate common distinguishing features.
Tip 3: Create cheat sheets for your staff. Don't print a list of all 2000 G/L accounts with their alias but instead look at the patterns you used and create cheat sheets to identify the patterns. Your users are smart enough to put the patterns together to enter complete aliases! Example: one list is the common expense codes with aliases like "offsup" = Office Supplies Expense. If you have 40 office supply accounts because of different departments, projects etc., just list it once with a separate sheet listing the shortcuts for the departments or projects.
I hope this is useful information for some of you! As always, contact me if you would like some assistance with this feature, we are here to help!
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Let the User Date be your friend!
Monday, October 25, 2010 How To & Tips
How many times have you posted something in Dynamics GP on the wrong date because you forgot to change it? Let the User Date be your best friend!
What is it?
The User Date is the default date for any transaction window in Dynamics GP. It will default to the system date when you log into Dynamics GP (i.e. "today").
Some reasons to use it
Around month-end or year-end or other times when you are frequently posting to a previous period, do yourself a favour and change the User Date to a date within that period. All transactions will at least default to the correct period that you are working in.
Things to keep in mind
The User Date defaults back to the system date if you close Dynamics GP and relaunch it.
How to Use It
The User Date may be at the bottom left hand corner of your main Dynamics GP window (GP 10 or later) or in the top toolbar (GP 9 or previous). Click on that date field to open the User Date window. You can also find a menu option User Date under the Dynamics GP menu (or File menu on older versions).
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Tips & Tricks - Date Shortcuts
Monday, October 11, 2010 How To & Tips
Here are few quick and easy tips for you keyboard lovers when it comes to dates inside Dynamics GP.
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Introducing the Kuntz Consulting Blog
Thursday, October 7, 2010 General Stuff
Here is my first blog - woohoo! The blog will be all about my thoughts and experiences with Microsoft Dynamics GP and anything related to working with it, integrating to it, reporting from it and related third party products.
Some of what I will post will be helpful hints and tips from my own experiences in working with this product since 1999. From time to time I will also pass on links to many of the other Dynamics community members out there who have a wealth of knowledge to pass on!
Comments and questions are welcome!
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