Keeping it simple

SL users with Terminal Services Tip: missing cursors.

2009-11-11T22:00:32-08:00

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873418

Check out this link if you are experiencing a missing cursor. There is a hot fix available which seems to address the problem Only valid of older 2003 servers with terminal services and Solomon 7.0 users.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP Now Certified for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

2009-11-11T21:57:10-08:00

We jumped the gun with one of our clients about a month ago where they are running Solomon 7.0 fp1 on hype v. All is running well at this site. Here is the official release that ALL of the ERP products are fully support on these new platforms. Yea Dynamics team!!!

Published at Microsoft web site.

We are very pleased to announce that all of our Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM products will be certified to run on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 when these become available on October 22nd, 2009.

Over the past few months, our R&D teams have conducted extensive testing of the current versions of Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics SL on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. As a result of these tests, we are confident that our customers will be able to deploy the latest version of Microsoft's desktop and datacenter operating systems alongside their Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions, and enjoy all the advantages that this will bring to their business, including:

Saving money through server consolidation. By running Microsoft Dynamics applications virtually with Hyper-V, our customers can maximize the utilization of the underlying physical servers, reducing their data center footprint along with costs of sourcing, purchasing, and maintaining server hardware.
Easier, quicker access to information. The improved taskbar and other innovative desktop management features in Windows 7 make finding and interacting with business information easier than ever. We are currently looking into other ways we can optimize the desktop experience with Windows 7 for the next release of our products, by integrating with features such as Jump Lists and Federated Search.
Interacting with Information in New Ways. We're excited by the possibilities that the Windows Touch feature enables in Windows 7, supporting multifinger manipulation of programs displayed on a touch-screen computer. This capability opens up interesting new role-based scenarios that the Microsoft Dynamics research and development team is already exploring.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM team is also hard at work with the Exchange team on certifying Exchange 2010, and are looking to certify later this year.

Moving from Paper to Electronic for Vendor Payments… and save $

2009-10-28T17:11:10-07:00

Most SL / GP users are still paying their vendors via checks. The cost of check stock, envelopes, stamps, stuffing time, and mailing time all add up. Maybe your company should look at switching away from this old method to electronic fund payment methods.

For SL users, here is a link to a short demo on a great integrated solution from Sandler Kahne for EFT payments: Save-Time, Save-Money with this add on module.

http://www.sksoft.com/scrncams/APEFTVideo1.html 5 minute demo

Five new advantages of ACH payments

Sending electronic payments through the automated clearing house (ACH) network — provides you cost savings, convenience, reliability, and security. And with technological advances and new ACH applications, now you have the ability to:

1. Accelerate electronic billing and payment. Use the ACH network to move online bill-pay consumers from paper to electronic bills. You'll reduce accounts payable and accounts receivable costs, improve efficiencies, and increase remittance and bill-payment posting accuracy.

2. Enhance supplier relationships. Checks sent by mail can get lost or stolen, and you don't know how long it will take for them to arrive or when funds will clear. As a result, suppliers might not get paid on time. ACH payments post directly to accounts and settle within one to two days, so there's no speculating when transactions will clear. An added bonus: If you pay suppliers promptly and consistently, you'll often benefit from early-pay discounts.

3. Optimize funds availability. Use ACH debits to concentrate cash from multiple accounts into a single account for investments or loan payments. It's easy and inexpensive to put available funds to work.

4. Improve cash forecasting. With ACH transactions, you know exactly when your account will be credited or debited — an increasingly important function in this economic environment. Domestic ACH transactions settle the next business day; international ACH transactions settle on a set schedule. You may also specify future settlement dates.

5. NEW FEATURE Reduce international transaction costs. When global ACH transactions replace wires, the cost savings are impressive. This act can save as much as 90 percent of their costs of making payments. And global ACH payments have no lifting fees, so payment recipients are happier, too. (I.e. Use ACH instead of international wire transfers)

Multicurrency accounts (MCAs) offer another level of cost reduction. By making global ACH payments from MCAs, you collect and pay in local currencies, virtually eliminating costs for currency trading, foreign exchange risk, or concerns about managing hedging programs.

Maybe 2010 is time to move your company to the 21^st century for vendor remittances.

Regards,

Jeff Cozens

How to create exception reports in Solomon

2009-10-28T15:40:11-07:00

Most of our pre set up reports in Solomon are created with Crystal report writer. Although we have a powerful way to create quick exception type reports using the select tab on a typical report, many SL users are frustrated by the fact that we do not have lookup or F3 possible values for the field column. This is an example of programmer vs. customer interface which means we need to understand what the programmer called a field by the name the programmer originally gave to the field. Here in lies the problem. What programmer think are good names, may not be what you think these names should be.

A tip which can help you get past this problem is to take advantage of your customersource membership. Log in to customersource and in the search customersource field type: Report Assistant. You should be able to find several report assistant brochures which can help you learn about reporting with various modules. Being a graphical person, the part of these report assistance is screen like this:

From this screen you can learn the name of the key table that the data was originally posted to (i.e. batch, apdoc, aptran) and the field name. Know this information it is really a cake walk to get selected data for your exception report.

Another thing people forget that you can select on a field which is not displayed on the report and still create an exception report. For instance, in the report, General Leger Detail you can find information about a specific AP invoice number by creating this type of selection statement:

Where you are looking for ap invoice 1234 in the current GL period.

Good luck with your new tool, Report Assistant.

Regards,

Jeff Cozens

Ps. Contact me if you need more help finding report assistant documents.

Protecting your FRX Reports

2009-10-21T09:42:31-07:00

Got a panic call the other day from one of our clients They had been modifying the row logic for a couple of their FRX reports, but failed to save the original versions. "Help, I really blew it today. How do we recover the missing Frx reports. ?" Our options did not look too good until I realized that she had a backup spec set for all of their FRX reports. This tip applies to anyone running FRx (i.e. Dynamics SL, GP, and Nav) and hopefully can save your "bacon" like it did for this client. We were back up and running in less than 30 minutes, and my customer was very happy.

To follow this tip, you need to be able to log into FRX Designer. Once you are in the program, click on the menu item at the top called Company, then the sub menu called information.

In the left frame of this screen, click on the main Frx company that you want to backup. (i.e. SSI New)

Under the frx System information tab, write down the name of the specification set; (i.e. SOLADV). Next close out of this form.

Next click on the Company menu at the top, and then the sub menu: Specification Sets. This will get you to this window.

Click on the spec set you wrote down in the first step, the then click on the menu Export:

Next for each of the four tabs: click on the tab then click on the select all button, to cause all rows on that tab to be selected.

After confirming that all items were selected (see info at bottom left corner), click on the Export button and export out. I like to add the date to the export tdb file to keep in clear in my mind when the export was run.

Click to save button and you have successfully backed up your entire catalog, rows, columns and tree components for your Frx reports. This is a good file to archive to a save spot. We will be using, however, this file for the next step.

Staying in the Specification set form, click on the new icon, and assign a name and description in the first two fields. (i.e. SSI_bkup_1009)

Click the save button at the top.

After saving this empty spec set, we are going to import the saved building block components from the tdb file, we just created. Click on the import file and select the saved tdb file.

Click the open button to continue, which imports these saved definition to a new spec set.

The import step may take a few seconds. Once done, exit the screen for specification sets and re enter the screen. Select in the left hand frame, the newly created spec set, then click on the export button, this will display all of the saved components in the four areas of catalog, rows, columns and trees.

When a crisis for a lost report occurs, you can recover your lost report definition by using either the saved tdb file or use your backup spec set to create a new tdb file. Taking 5 minutes to set up this simple system can save you hours of frustration, if the problem ever occurred.

Call us if you have questions….. Be save with your frx report definitions, since an ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure….

Regards,

Jeff Cozens

Microsoft Dynamics ERP Construction Offer

2009-10-15T18:24:05-07:00

Microsoft Dynamics SL and Microsoft Dynamics GP promotion targeting small and medium sized Professional Services businesses in the United States and Canada that wish to take advantage of the rich functionality offered by Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Microsoft is excited to announce the "Construction Offer" - a Microsoft Dynamics promotion targeting small and medium sized Professional Services businesses in the United States and Canada that wish to take advantage of the rich functionality offered by Microsoft Dynamics SL and Microsoft Dynamics GP. For a limited time, Microsoft is offering a discount of up to 20% for new customers when they purchase Microsoft Dynamics SL or Microsoft Dynamics SL Advanced Management ("AM") or Business Essential ("BE") edition user licenses.

The SL project series is very robust for both professional services and construction companies.

Call if you need more information.

Jeff Cozens

Status : Web Site for Systematic Solutions

2009-09-23T17:12:04-07:00

Our main website for Systematic Solutions is down. I originally though it was an expired credit card that created a billing problem. This is not the case. It looks like our website, http://www.systematicsol.com was taken offline by our hosting site because it had been taken over by spammers. If any of our readers have been impacted, please let us know, and we express our apologies for any inconveniences you have experienced. Our web host team is working to block the access method used by the spammers. Any names of our blog or customers are never given to others, as per of policy for privacy.

Thanks

Jeff Cozens

Key Expiration Dates for SL and GP users

2009-09-11T17:17:33-07:00

Microsoft has announced that these older versions are having their support ended on October 13, 2009:

Dynamics SL (formerly Solomon) version 6.0

Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) version 8.0

If you know of someone who is running these older products please advise that they are exposing their accounting data to a possible bad situation. Systematic Solutions can do it best to help you with these older software packages after Oct 13,2009, but you are exposed because we cannot use the collective knowledge of the support team if it is required to resolve your computer software problem. Since you are creating mission critical data for your company, we strongly encourage you to contact your local VAR and see about your options for upgrading your software. For our customers, please call: 408 379 1111 to discuss. Don't wait until Murphy's Law gets you!!

Jeff Cozens

What the Dynamics' Compatibilty with Windows 7.0?

2009-09-09T11:09:29-07:00

I have been reading some blogs that the Dynamics GP 10 version has listed on its system requirements approval list the new Windows 7 operating system. The latest system requirements posted in both customersource and partnersource displays the following notice:

Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 will be compatibility with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 once it has RTMed."

This is good news for Vista workstation and XP workstation owners who want to upgrade to Windows 7.0 and immediately use their Dynamic GP software

There is no announcement yet as to compatibility of Dynamics SL with Windows 7.0. I did find this info about the new hyper-V operating system and Dynamics SL:

Microsoft Dynamics SL 7.0 FP1 and Microsoft Dynamics SL 7.0 SP2 or later support Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Performance in this virtual server environment will vary based on and not limited to processor, amount of RAM, number of virtual machines you set up, or other software you are running.

Hopefully SL will get their version compatable immediately for Windows 7.0.

Regards,

Jeff Cozens

Changing the order of columns appearing in a grid form, such as Voucher entry lower grid section

2009-08-26T09:56:00-07:00

This tip applies only to Solomon users.

This change requires that you own the customization manager module. Check your registration area, to confirm if this module is listed, if you are not sure if your company owns this module. This module allows us to access the grid properties for each field. The order in which the columns appear when in grid view is determined by the TabIndex property of each field. The lower the TabIndex property the sooner it will appear in the grid.

The TabIndex property does not change the positioning of the field when in form view.

The steps to make the change in the order are:

1. To access the TabIndex property, open the desired Solomon IV screen.

2. Start Customization Manager from the Customize drop down box on the Solomon Toolbar.

3. Select the field that needs to be moved and select Property Window from the Customize drop down box.

4. Locate the TabIndex property.

5. Change the TabIndex property to a lower number to move the column to the left in the grid, or choose a higher number to move the column to the right in the grid.

6. Once the desired changes are made Save and Exit Customization Manager.

Re open this modified screen and confirm the changes are as desired.

Jeff Cozens