Dynamics Gp Consultant Newsflash: Great Plains Customization

Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP should be considered as popular platform, where you could alter existing business processes as well as add new custom functionality (create new Dynamics GP Dexterity add-on).  Plus, there are user friendly tools, such as Modifier, Extender, where you can create modifications and add-ons not being Dexterity programmer (however you probably should be familiar with light VBA programming as well as SQL querying).  This small publication is targeted to IT people, who are making their first steps in supporting Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics GP:

1.       Microsoft Dexterity.  Dynamics GP Database and Core dictionaries: Dynamics.dic, for example are products, creating with Dexterity and influenced by Dex architecture.  Dexterity has its own scripting programming language Sanscript, however we would rather classify it as semi-proprietary and it is unlikely to expect generic software developer to be turned into Dynamics GP Dexterity programmer over night or in a few months.  We recommend you to outsource Dexterity customization development to specialized Dynamics GP Dexterity Software Development Factory, or Great Plains ISV Partner.  In Dexterity you can do anything you like with Great Plains user interface, sometimes referred as GP fat client.  Before taking Dex route, we recommend you to review other options

2.       Modifier with VBA.  This tool is easier to program, and it could be given to VBA programmer.  If you have experience programming pre .Net Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 in Visual Basic – you should feel yourself comfortable to add scriplets in VBA.  Modifier allows you to move existing and add new fields to existing Great Plains forms, where you could attach custom VBA scripts to program light Great Plains customization.  In VBA you can even manipulate GP data via old pre .Net ADO

3.       eConnect.  This tool is typically associated with ecommerce integration projects, where ecommerce Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB .Net developer calls eConnect methods to pull objects from GP as well as create new objects and transactions or modify existing ones.  eConnect covers major GP modules: SOP, GL, Inventory, POP, Payroll, Project Accounting to give you the idea.  However eConnect doesn’t have Batch posting functionality, where you have to deploy third party add-on: Posting Server

4.       Recovering old customization and customization upgrades.  If you have legacy Dexterity customization, written and deployed on old Great Plains Dynamics version: 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, 7.5, for example and you are planning to update Dynamics GP version to 8.0, 9.0 or current 10.0, you will need to re-haul Dex code to fit.  You should have Dynamics.dic or Extract.dic dictionary file with the source script in it – in this case you are ready to locate Dexterity programming partner to do the job

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