Great Plains Professional (high end, more than 10 users) and Standard (low end, up to 10 users) are still Great Plains Dexterity based applications and now they are on MS SQL Server only (Pervasive SQL and Ctree support and upgrade is discontinued. Your company had tough time three years ago, your former Great Plains Partner had the same of even larger problems, trying to stay in business. If you have customizations, then your new partner should explore your Great Plains Workstation. Among them were mostly small and mid-size businesses, however we see corporate clients as well with 40 users Great Plains eEnterprise and more. Upgrade should be done by outside consultant through Great Plains Utilities.
Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics of version 7. Microsoft Great Plains is one of the Microsoft Business Solutions family ERP products. So, and again this is our personal opinion - MBS is not bringing a lot of new ERP functionality into Great plains version 8. Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, Solomon, Small Business Manager. Some of the former bugs were related to Pervasive SQL and Ctree platform and plus Windows 2000 Pro bugs, especially from FRx side.
It should be done in Great Plains Dexterity to provide seamless interface for GP users. This is typical customization for Inventory, Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order Processing (POP) modules in Great Plains. Microsoft Great Plains serves majority of US based horizontal and vertical markets. And barcode could help you in automatic picking ticket printing and allocation. If you sell on consignment - you may simply send trucks to your customers every day with recommended combination of items, based on historical data - day of the week, holidays, seasonal variations, etc.
Microsoft Great Plains doesn't have this feature out of the box, and you have to implement it via MS SQL Server Data Transformation package, Stored Procedure or Great Plains Dexterity customization. This is probably complicated with multicurrency - but Great Plains has the module to address this issue. In this small article we'll consider the ways to implement large corporation required features in Microsoft Great Plains. Great Plains is MS SQL Server based application and if you base your Crystal Report on the stored procedure in SQL Server - you can easily get random selection. Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft Navision, Solomon, Axapta.
Your Great Plains has more than 20 users and you have to have upgrade done over the weekend - if it fails - you have business problems.
General tip - Great Plains recommends to logoff and then login back with the same user id. You have a lot or ReportWriter Modified Great Plains Reports. In the case when your Great Plains ctree/Pervasive has third parties - you need to check if the vendor has migration tool - otherwise you have to do manual move, use SQL Linked server to your legacy data. Now we would like to stress you the need to move away from Pervasive SQL 2000/Ctree platforms - you are in trouble - Microsoft Business Solutions cuts technical support for Microsoft Great Plains 7.
Smart List - Export to Excel - this is nice feature in Great Plains - you could create a list with simple criteria and then export it to Excel. Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it.
Direct Web Publishing off Great Plains databases - yes - it is easy now with Visual Studio.
Great Plains Report Writer (ReportWriter) - this is built-in reporting tool. Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.
There is the product on the market, which is integration on the Receivables Management level from RMS to Great Plains, written by Daniel Sionov and Andrew Karasev and maintained by the alliance between LightEdge Solutions (www. Great Plains Integration Manager - if the sales volume is very low, say 100 transactions per day - then you can do data export from RMS and import it into Great Plains via Integration Manager. It was initially created for eCommerce application integration to Great Plains. We do understand the need for midsize and large retail companies, structured as clubs and selling on account to their members to have more adequate integration when you can synchronize your Sales information and have robust Great Plains reporting. You need to know Retail Management System Headquarters and Great Plains tables structure and data flow.
Microsoft Great Plains is Great Plains Software Dexterity written application. In Russia we saw dramatic situation, when multiple Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise resellers went out of business. Former versions - Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise was also popular in Europe. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is very popular ERP platform in the USA, Canada (including French speaking Quebec/Montreal), U. Dexterity has string resources and in order to localize DYNAMICS.
It would take you a lot of time (if you are new to Great Plains tables structure and never coded in Great Plains Dexterity. Plus eConnect allows you to create and update customer record in Great Plains - this is however relatively simple to imitate in the stored procedure. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has several options to enable web ordering. Traditionally Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise had eOrder - this is ASP pages based ordering application, enabling you to place or retrieve your Sales Order Processing (SOP) Sales Orders over the web. You should be the customer in Great Plains company database to be able placing the orders.
You have bunch of Great Plains Dexterity, VBA, SQL customizations and need upgrade and your former GP reseller is not providing customization upgrade services (due to the fact that all developers were laid off several years ago. Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Solomon and Axapta are Microsoft Business Solutions ERP applications, serving to the whole spectrum of vertical and horizontal markets. It is known fact that Microsoft decided to breach contract with Pervasive Software and stop supporting Microsoft Great Plains 7. Ask for customization analysis - most of the old customization pieces should be migrated to new technologies, like Dexterity to SQL and Crystal Reports, web publishing, eConnect, etc. Usually you have to find small nation-wide VAR, who serves you via remote support.
You have identified the need for Great Plains Dexterity customization. If you plan to run Great Plains Utilities from the workstation to create server side (see above) - you need to check Install Client and Server Components. You don't have support for your old Great Plains - then you have to select your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner and pay for the annual support/enhancement plan - you will get new registration key and will be ready for the upgrade. If the volume of historical data is small - you can deploy Great Plains Integration Manager and then post the records in the modules. Your Great Plains has more than 20 users in this case the mistake may lead to serious business problems.
Microsoft Great Plains, Solomon and Navision into several business suites - Microsoft Financial, Microsoft HR, Microsoft Manufacturing, Microsoft Logistics. Microsoft Great Plains is main Microsoft Business Solutions product, targeted to mid-size companies. Simple Cost Centers, based on product line, specific order or other user defined information. Future Sales predictions, based on your criteria. Sales/profitability by customer, item, region or custom criteria.
Great Plains Dexterity, Modifier with VBA, Transact SQL scripting to name the most popular. As mentioned above - this should be preferably done by Great Plains user with approval logic. In the case of integrated web application with Great Plains, we would expect heterogeneous sql queries and reporting, based on these queries and stored procedures. This transaction should be translated into Great Plains as Sales Order in Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order in Purchase Order Processing (POP. Net programmers, you can deploy eConnect Distribution - this is Software Development Kit with sample codes, you can create or modify Great Plains objects, such as Sales Order, Customer record, Purchase Order, Vendor record.
Great Plains Integration Manager - this is rather end-user tool - it is very intuitive, it validates 100% of business logic, brings in/updates master records (accounts, employees, customers, vendors. Microsoft Business Solutions stakes on Microsoft Great Plains as main Accounting/ERP application for US market. EXE) and Great Plains Standard on MSDE or MS SQL Server.
Modifier/VBA custom buttons on the existing screens - alternative to Dexterity is you are comfortable with VBA and ADO.
SQL Linked Servers - you can do direct SQL queries to other ODBC compliant platform via SQL Linked Server (including Microsoft Access) - you may need to familiarize yourself with OPENROWSET command in Transact SQL.
Net code behind approach and Great Plains eCommerce should be rewritten. Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http. Tool->Resource Desciption->Tables, re-sort by Table Group technical name, then make test transactions in Great Plains (SOP module) and see where records go. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains was designed back in the earlier 1990th as first graphical ERP/accounting system for mid-size businesses. Companies, like Alba Spectrum Technologies have implemented multiple diversified eCommerce projects with Great Plains at the back end.
|
|
Software Process Improvement -A Successful Journey
Microsoft Great Plains: Annual Enhancement Program - How To Be Re-Enrolled