DynamicAccounting.net

Information on Negative Payroll Deductions

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:00:03 PST

Cindy Mikeworth has a new post up at Total Accounting Solutions looking at Negative Payroll Deductions.

Weekly Review: Change Column Names in Smartlists

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:00:02 PST

Just in case you forgot this from your original GP training, it's important to note that you can change the titles of columns on Smartlists. This means that "QTY Allocated" can be changed to show "Quantity Allocated" on the smartlist. You can also change it to anything else! To do this:

Open a Smartlist up.
Select Columns.
Pick an item in the Display Name column and change the name.
That's it. To save the changed name for this smartlist, save it as a favorite.

That's it. It's easy as can be, but not very obvious. If you have a lot of Excel sheets where you end up changing the titles every time you export from GP, this is a great tip.

Originally Posted by Mark 6/06/2006 11:03:00 AM

Info on the Document Date Verify Tool for GP

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:00:01 PST

Frank Hamelly takes a look at the available Document Date Verify tool for Dynamics GP. This tool verifies that a document date falls within an existing period in Fiscal Period setup.

Solving Win 7 font issues with Dynamics GP

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:00:03 PST

David Musgrave has some new insights up at Developing for Dynamics GP. He takes a look at a solution for the problem of overly large fonts displaying by default that can happen when using Windows 7 and Dynamcis GP. Best of all, he provides a fix.

Happy Thanksgiving!

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:45:00 PST

Tomorrow we celebrate the Thankgiving holiday here in the U.S. so don't expect any updates tomorrow. The Weekly Review will be out later today so take a break and enjoy tomorrow!

Interview with Dynamics GP MVP Frank Hamelly

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:00:08 PST

DynamicsWorld.co.uk has a new interview up with fellow Dynamics GP MVP Frank Hamelly. Make sure that you check it out.

Creating Quick and Dirty Financial Statements in FRx

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:00:00 PST

Frank Hamelly's latest tip covers creating a quick and dirty income statement or balance sheet in FRx using account type.

GP Error Tracing from Mohammad Daoud

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:07:15 PST

Mohammad Daoud has a new post up on tracing errors caused by the language not being set to English in Dynamics GP.

WSS or MOSS 2007

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:02:00 PST

What's better for Dynamics GP users, Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) or Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007 (MOSS)? The answer of course it "it depends". To help you figure out what it depends on, DynamicsBlogger has a nice set of guidelines up. I would add that version 11 is supposed to support Workflow on WSS not just MOSS so there's one more item to consider.

Upgrading to SQL 2008

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:00:01 PST

Frank Hamelly gets a little technical with his latest tip as he looks at some great new features in SQL 2008 and SSRS.

Excel Report Builder: "Wrong Number of Arguments to Replace Text"

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:00:03 PST

Over at DynamicsBlogger, Janakiram M.P. has put a bunch of new posts that I'll be highlighting. One of them looks at an error that occurs with service pack 4 and Excel report builder. Janakiram takes us through the issue and the current, temporary, resolution.

Dynamics Extensions

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:00:00 PST

On Thursday, Microsoft announced three new add on services for the Dynamics ERP products. They include Site Service, a web development application, Commerce Service, a multi-channel e-commerce solution and an enhanced version of Microsoft's payment service. All of this launches next year so partners should get more information soon about how this will affect Dynamics GP specifically. Additionally, it's cool to see that Size Service is based on Azure, Microsoft's next generation database in the cloud.

Microsoft, SAP and BI

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:30:01 PST

Microsoft is tapping SAP's BusinessObjects to help fill the gap after the PerformancePoint debacle. I had heard that this was coming several weeks ago so it's not a big surprise and the eweek article covering it is essentially a press release. More than that however, we had a client get a demo of BusinessObjects' Planning and Consolidation product and they saw functionality similar to the millions of rows in memory functionality in found in PowerPivot now in beta for Excel 2010.

The bottom line is that Microsoft had to do something. The roadmap for FRx/Forecaster/Enterprise Reporting just left too long of a gap between where they are and where they want to be. The risk to SAP is that this becomes another Crystal Reports, pushed by MS for a while and then dumped when the FRx set of products get farther down the road. I also don't think that they do a great job of selling the Excel/Excel Services/PerformancePoint Services/Sharpoint stack against dedicated BI solutions. It's too much like selling parts not solutions.

The bottom line is that I don't think that Microsoft is ready to abandon the BI space to anyone long term. I just don't have any insight into what the long term solution will really be for MS yet.

Note Lines and GP Web Services

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:00:01 PST

Over at Dynamics GP Land, Steve Endow has coverage of formatting note Lines using web services for Dynamics GP. Hint, it doesn't work the way you think it should work.

Accessing a Table Buffer when it is not passed as a Parameter

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:30:00 PST

David Musgrave takes a look at accessing a table buffer when it is not passed as a parameter as part of his Three Trigger Technique series. Sure it sounds like something from an old west movie, the three trigger technique, but it's much cooler than that, it Developing for Dynamics GP.

Dynamics GP Testing

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:00:02 PST

Everyone welcome Alice from the Dexterity testing team! She has her first blog post up at Developing for Dynamics GP. In her first post, Alice tackles test environments and testing automation options. Welcome to the conversation Alice!

Blank Currency ID During an econnect Integration

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:30:01 PST

What happens when the Currency ID remains blank after an econnect integration even though the functional currency is set correctly? The DynamicsBlogger has the answer and the fix.

GP Refund Checks

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:00:00 PST

Tim Williams of AMLLP has a new post up looking the often underused GP Refund Checks functionality.

Slow Inventory Posting

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:00:01 PST

Mariano Gomez is back with a look at why inventory related transactions may be posting slowly.

FRx Transaction Detail Codes for Dynamics GP

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:46:41 PST

New at DynamicsBlogger, Janakiram M.P. is providing a handy list of all of the FRx Transaction Detail codes that work with Dynamics GP.

Weekly Dynamic: Complex Web GoTos in Smartlists

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:24:11 PST

Developing for Dynamics GP has covered passing complex parameters through shortcuts in the past. Similarly, I recently had a chance to pass a complex parameter to a web page through a GoTo on a Smartlist. I thought I would spend a few minutes showing how this works.

The basic scenario was simple. A client needed to pass an invoice number as a parameter to an internal web page connected to an imaging system. Clicking the GoTo would open a web browser, pass a URL with the embedded parameter and an invoice image would open.

When using Smartlist Builder there is a button to create a GoTo. Clicking the button opens the GoTo window. The Plus (+) button creates a new GoTo and one option is to open a webpage. So far so good.

Clicking the Open Webpage option lets you set a description to appear and a enter a URL. To just open a web page, that's all that needs to be setup. Clicking the plus sign allows the assignment of parameters. This useful for sending search strings to say Bing or Google and in our example, an imaging website.

The parameter gets a name that is actually passed as part of the parameter string. The parameter can only be 30 characters long. In addition, you select a table and field from the Smartlist to pass. Multiple parameters can be added by clicking plus.

For the first parameter, GP Actually passes the website, a question mark (?) to indicate a parameter, the parameter name, an equal sign and the field value from the select field in the Smartlist.

For example, a Bing search for Dynamics GP would look like this:
URL: http://www.bing.com/search
parameter: q
smartlist field value: Dynamics GP

The GoTo would put it together like this: http://www.bing.com/search?q=Dynamics GP

For basic queries this works great, but what if the parameter is more than 30 characters? What if the parameter you're passing needs to be in the middle of a parameter string? Don't worry, there's a way around this.

The secret is to create a calculation and pass the calculated result ot the GoTo. My client had a very long parameter string with the invoice number at the end so here is what I did:

I grabbed the entire parameter string AFTER the first equal sign (=). I would need that for the parameter later.
Created a calculation in Smarlist builder using the calculation button and pasted the parameter string in as a calculation with single quotes around it for SQL.
Then I added a plus sign (+) and selected the invoice number from the available fields at the right. This gave me almost the entire parameter string. The calculation looked like this:
Finally I created a new GoTo with the parameter information before the equal sign as my parameter name and selected the calculated field instead of the invoice number as the field to append to the end.

Everything worked perfectly and now selecting a GoTo from that Smarlist reports fires up a web browser and displays the related image.

As we worked with this for a few days we learned a couple of things. The invoice number passed through the calculation could also be passed as a second parameter instead of being embedded in the calculation. The only real benefit is clarity.

Secondly, the Smarlist field being passed as a parameter needs to be included as a key field in table. We missed this the first time. The Smarlist was built off a single view and didn't need a key field except to satisfy Smarltist Builder so Batch Number had been randomly picked as the key field.

Consequently, until we added Invoice Number as a key field, Smartlist Builder was passing as parameter an invoice from the batch that included that invoice number, but not necessarily the right invoice number. It was occassionally right and often wrong. Including Invoice Number as a key field in the Smartlist solved this problem.

Don't be a Propellerhead

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:13:47 PST

Steve Endow takes a look at the pitfalls of techno love and how it can lead to over-engineering of customizations for Dynamic GP. Check the whole thing out at Dynamics GP Land.

Technorati Tags: Dynamics GP

Letter Writing Assistant

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:00:00 PST

Frank Hamelly tackles the Letter Writing Assistant in Dynamics GP today.

Account Entry Checkbox

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:02 PST

Also new at Rose Business Solutions, Liane McIlraith looks at what the Account Entry checkbox does and how it can help reconciling.

Removing Discontinued Items During Inventory Year End

mpolino@gmail.com (Mark) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:00:00 PST

New at Rose Business Solutions, Liane McIlraith takes a look at removing discontinued items during inventory year end.