Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics GP Integration Manager Troubleshooting & FAQ

In this small article we would like to give guidelines to Great Plains IT support people, who is trying to troubleshoot Microsoft Dynamics GP in-house, sometimes appealing to Microsoft Business Solutions support. GP IM is using several technologies, however the most popular is Great Plains workstation as OLE server - this technology comes back to 1990th when Microsoft was parading with its OLE, OLEDB, ODBC and other technologies and is tightly linked with Microsoft Data Access Components (MS DAC). In general you may think about processes this way - when you launch traditional IM it hides Microsoft Great Plains workstation and uses it behind the scenes to validate GP business logic

o IM Known Bugs. This is when you are getting error messages, related to MDAC libraries, such as TTGErrors. You have to look for the exact remedy in Microsoft Dynamics techknowledge database, but general rule is this - try to clean up MDAC installation, uninstall IM and then install newest MDAC and reinstall IM

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o IM Registration issues. Since version 7.5 Microsoft requires IM to have separate reg key. Known issue with entering reg key is if you do not install IM properly, but simply copy GP workstation folder and IM program files - in this case Windows registry has no info about IM and it "forgets" about registration. You need to reinstall IM and apply recent IM service packs accordingly

o eConnect. This should be IM future, it is in process of being rewritten in eConnect. eConnect doesn't have performance obstacles and doesn't use OLE server. With this new technology IM will be capable to import unlimited number of records in "real time"

o Old versions of IM. Some versions of Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise were released with IM, which needed immediate service pack application - otherwise it simply was not functional. If you are on GP version 7.0 - please do not install IM from CD - look for the service pack

Please feel free to call us at any time: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com , skype albaspectrum

Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics GP Integration Manager Troubleshooting & FAQ

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com [http://www.enterlogix.com.br] ), serving clients in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Diego, San Francisco, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, St. Luis, Springfield, Aurora, Naperville, Milwaukee, Boston, Atlanta, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Calgary, Seattle, Provo, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Toronto, Montreal, internationally: Australia, New Zealand, Palau, Pakistan, Egypt, Germany, France, Spain, UK, Latin America and Brazil

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Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Tools Review

Microsoft Dynamics project was first known as Microsoft Project Green, and got its current name in September 2005. Currently Microsoft Dynamics unifies the family of former Microsoft Business Solutions ERP & CRM products: Great Plains, Microsoft CRM, Axapta, Navision, Solomon. The idea of former Project Green was to create several Microsoft Suites: Financial, HR, Manufacturing, Supply Chain (SCM) on the base of its ERP products, where they would assumedly take the best core for each suite from one of MBS ERPs. Microsoft Dynamics seems to emphasize interfaces unification and merge, so you should not be confused if all the sudden instead of GP database you will be switching to say Axapta database for SCM. Obviously in the initial phase of Microsoft Dynamics each product: GP, NAV, AX, CRM, SL has its own integration methods and tools. Let's consider Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 integration tools in this small article

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o eConnect. It was initially designed for eCommerce web developers to enable them use Microsoft Great Plains as backend for eCommerce application. So - the answer is natural - it is good tool to create GP objects, such as Customer, Product, Sales Order or Invoice. Later on eConnect logic took over almost every object in Microsoft Dynamics GP. eConnect has some limitations, however - it was designed to take care of creation and update of so-called work records, such as enter Sales Order, then Sales order transfer to Invoice and Invoice posting were supposed to be the duty of GP operator - in the case if you need posting to be done automatically you need eConnect extensions

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o SQL Stored Procedures. We do not recommend you to use DTS directly, because data validation is pretty sensitive and you need to imitate it in the code of more flexible stored procedure. Also stored procedure may be the way to go, when your integration is pretty simple and straightforward and it is not feasible to pay for eConnect or Integration Manager. As developer / programmer what you need to do is enter transaction you expect to integrate in GP test environment and look how do they go to SQL tables. In GP you have DYNAMICS (or system) database and multiple company databases, you integration is usually hits company database only. The most typical tables for integrations: SOP10100 - Sales Header, SOP10200 - Sales Lines, RM00101 - Customer master, RM00102 - Customer Address Master, PM00200 - Vendor Master, etc.

Please do not hesitate to call or email us: USA/Canada: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, Europe: +44 20 8123 2580, +45 36 96 55 20, Mexico: 52-55-535-04027 help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Tools Review

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com http://www.ronix-systems.de [http://www.enterlogix.com.br] ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally.

We are serving USA Nationwide: CA, IL, NY, FL, AZ, CO, TX, WI, WA, MI, MA, MO, LA, NM, MN, Europe: Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, OAE, Bahrain), Asia: China, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South & Central America: Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Chili, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico

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Microsoft CRM Custom Design & Development: SDK, C#, SQL, Exchange, Integration, Crystal Reports

Microsoft CRM is new player on the CRM software market. The whole conception behind CRM seems to be different. In case of traditional CRM software (Siebel, Oracle) - the application was designed with platform independence in mind. Microsoft CRM is dedicated to Microsoft technology and so deploys all the Microsoft tools: Windows Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange 2003/2000, SQL Server, Crystal Reports Enterprise, Biztalk server, Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Great Plains as backend, etc.

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If you are software developer, database administrator or web designer who is asked: how do we customize Microsoft CRM - we are giving you directions in this article.

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Microsoft CRM SDK - this is software development kit with C# and partly VB.net code samples - it is supported by Microsoft Business Solutions technical support. It is based on web service calls, if you are C# .NET developer - you are excellently positioned to do this type of customizations. This is the preferred modification scenario and this should be easily upgradeable customization. VB.Net examples will be available soon. Legacy SQL Data integration. This is also easy and safe. If you have SQL database, sitting on the same or linked SQL Server - you can create ASPX .Net application and simply integrate it into CRM. You can place it on the navigation bar or menu in isv.config - please refer to MS CRM SDK Legacy ASP integration - this is somewhat more sophisticated. You have to deploy HTTP handler to be a middle party between CRM which is .Net based and ASP which is legacy IIS. The trick is - you have to have INI file with security settings to penetrate into MS CRM with proper credentials, calling web service. Microsoft Exchange Programming. Microsoft CRM has Exchange connector - which moves CRM incoming email to MS if it has GUID in its subject. You can alter this logic (for instance - move email to CRM if it doesn't have GUID but it is from the sender who is contact or account in MS CRM). Refer to MS Exchange SDK onsyncsave event handling. Then simply apply some MS CRM SDK programming - you need some COM+ objects creation and VB programming experience. Direct SQL touch - in #4 above I described you the scenario with MS Exchange handlers - this would be ideal world if MS CRM SDK does the job. But - in real world this is not always true - you have to do direct flags correction in CRM database (like making Activity closed, moving email attachments/octet streams, etc). This is not supported by MBS technical support - but you can rescue to this technique if you have to get job done. MS CRM Customization tool - this is rather end-user tool and we don't describe it here - read the manual. We've described above the options to use when this tool doesn't do the job Crystal Reports - feel free to create Crystal report - tables and views structure is self explanatory. Try to avoid the temptation to create your own SQL view or stored procedure in MS CRM database, instead - create custom database and place your view and stored proc in it.

Happy modifying! help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft CRM Custom Design & Development: SDK, C#, SQL, Exchange, Integration, Crystal Reports

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, VB/C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

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