Microsoft Great Plains Upgrade – version 8.0 overview for IT Director/ControllerWritten by Andrew Karasev
This is short article, written in question/answer/FAQ style to give IT Director/Controller balanced top level information on Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains upgrade. If you have Microsoft Great Plains as main accounting and ERP system you need to know some technical details on Great Plains version upgrade and what is going on behind scenes, which options do you have in case of Dexterity, VBA, SQL customizations, ctree/Pervasive migration to MS SQL/MSDE. As of right now it is reasonable to upgrade to Microsoft Great Plains 8.0 Is upgrade required? Not actually, but you have to consider these factors •Technical Support discontinuation - old version may not be supported - currently if you are on version 6.0 - support is already discontinued. You can not have Microsoft Business Solutions help you, but obviously you have MBS partners who can still help you. If you are on Ctree or Pervasive SQL, then your support expires December, 31 2004. •Tax Updates/Magnetic media expiration - if you have US Payroll module and depend on it with W2 and other forms - you must stay with version, which is supported and has tax updates. If you are on Ctree or Pervasive SQL - then you will not have tax updates for these platforms at end of 2004 and your W2s maybe inaccurate. If you have a lot of employees - you may have issues with government. •Following Technology and Microsoft rules - Microsoft wants you to be on newest platform and provides you best support when you follow this rule •If you do have heavy customization - we recommend you to skip one version, for example if you are on version 7.5 - do not upgrade to 8.0 and wait for next version What is upgrade in language of technology? Upgrade has server and client sides. •Server side - upgrade converts tables from old format to new one. In general words - Microsoft Business Solutions developers may change table structure, append additional fields to add new functionality, things like that. Upgrade copies table with changes to temporary table, then drops original table, recreates it with new structure and copies all data from temp table to newly created one. •Workstation side - workstation is written in Great Plains Dexterity and has Dynamics.exe - engine and DYNAMICS.DIC - dictionary. These two plus all additional files will be replaced with new ones. Other dictionaries, such us REPORTS.DIC and FORMS.DIC should be also upgraded and upgrade will try to deal with them automatically. In some cases modified reports (in REPORTS.DIC) could not be upgraded and need to be recreated in new version. What is customization upgrade? You should consider different types of customizations: Dexterity, VBA/Modifier, SQL, ReportWriter, Crystal Reports •Dexterity Customization - being very short - Dexterity may have so called Custom Forms - these do not need upgrade - they should work as is. Then Dexterity may alter existing Great Plains forms (so-called Alternate Great Plains forms) - in this case Dexterity customization should be redone for these forms/screens. Plus additional consideration should be given to Dexterity triggers, shadow tables, etc. •VBA/Modifier customization - Modifier allows you to modify existing Great Plains windows - it creates so called modified Great Plains windows, stored in FORMS.DIC. Usually modification is placing new buttons or fields, which in turn will be given VBA scripts (stored in DYNAMICS.VBA). VBA scripts may call something nice, like Crystal Report, or have some data access logic. Usually old version of DYNAMICS.VBA workds with new version. You may need to rearrange buttons on modified form.
| | Crystal Reports for Microsoft Great Plains – overview for developerWritten by Andrew Karasev
Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it. Now it is targeted to whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele. Small companies use Small Business Manager (which is based on same technology – Great Plains Dexterity dictionary and runtime), Great Plains Standard on MSDE is for small to midsize clients, and then Great Plains serves rest of market up to big corporations. Crystal Reports on other hand is leader in reporting software industry. If you are developer who is asked: how do we extend Great Plains ReportWriter with somewhat more sophisticated – read this and you will have clues on where to look further. 1.Great Plains Tables Structure – first of all you need to know tables to link. Launch Great Plains and go to Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Find table in proper series. If you are looking for customers – it should be RM00101 – customer master file. If you need historical Sales Order Processing documents – they are in SOP30200 – Sales History Header file, etc. 2.Create ODBC connection to GP Company database. Use same technique as when you create standard ODBC connection for GP workstation – but change default database to targeted company database.
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