Summit Group Software Blog

I woke up today and realized it is almost March.
It has been an absolute whirlwind since the beginning of the year - with year-end of course, and a ton of great projects kicking off the year right.

With spring — comes Convergence! Microsoft’s annual Microsoft Dynamics Customer Conference is held April 24-27, 2010 in Atlanta, GA.

Here’s why I love it:

• Lots-O-Learning - concurrent sessions galore — some highlights for sure this year are going to be the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 launch, Sharepoint 2010 and cool integration info for Microsoft Dynamics, and the next release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Networking - It is incredible the number of businesses out there that use Microsoft Dynamics. Talking to other people who use Microsoft Dynamics, understanding what they do, how they make their living, and how Dynamics fits in is fascinating. AND - there are bound to be companies right in your industry with businesses like yours that you can network with and learn from. You can never have a deep enough network…
• EXPO!! And — SWAG!! (Stuff we all get ;-)) The Expo is full of ISV and third party providers that have amazing add-ons to Microsoft Dynamics. They will have what you need…
• Warm Temperatures! Who am I kidding… We all love a warm weather destination - double it with a fantastic learning opportunity and it is a winner.

AND FINALLY — Summit Group clients on Managed Services Plans have an additional financial incentive to attend… talk to us for more info…

Are you registered? Check it out:
http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/convergence/atlanta10/default.aspx

Closing the payroll module at year end does not have to be done in a certain order with the other modules in Microsoft Dynamics GP.  More importantly it has to be done before your run your first payroll for the next year.  Example if you are closing 2009, you must close 2009 payroll before running your first 2010 payrun.

The order of closing all other modules in Dynamics GP is important.  The modules need to be closed in the folllowing order:  Inventory, Receivables, Payables, Fixed Assets and General Ledger.

With GP 11 set to release just around the corner, we’ve dedicated a number of blog posts to telling you about the new features that will be coming up in GP 11.  Today’s post will discuss some of the new features that will be in the new release of Workflow for Dynamics GP.

Probably the single biggest change to Workflow for Dynamics GP will be the technology that Workflow sits on.  With Workflow for Dynamics GP 10, users were able to install Workflow for free, provided that they had the high-end version of SharePoint, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise.  Although some organizations either had a need for this or already had it implemented, for the smaller organizations that could really take advantage of Workflow in GP, it presented a huge obstacle.

With GP 11, Workflow no longer needs to reside on the high-end version of SharePoint.  Instead, it can now be installed on Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), the free version of SharePoint that you can download and install as long as you are running Windows Server 2003 or newer.  This clears the way for a number of organizations who want to utilize Workflow, but do not have a need or budget to go with a full Microsoft Office SharePoint Server implementation.

Along with the change to the foundation of Workflow for Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft will be introducing a number of new workflows for GP 11.  Among them are a Customer Approval workflow, a Vendor Approval workflow, and workflows for the addition or removal of employees from the Dynamics GP system.  The new version will also include functionality for what is called a “step workflow”, in which the user to whom the task is assigned must complete a number of steps for the workflow to move on, rather than having approval workflows only.

Some good changes coming for Workflow in GP 11.  The addition of Windows SharePoint Services functionality and some new workflows are going to make this product well worth the upgrade.

For 2009, there have been very few form changes to the w-2.  This is great news for Dynamics GP users!

Below are the detail changes around 2009 year end for payroll.  If you are affected by these changes, then you should install the latest GP update.

• 1099-R - New Distribution Code U, for distributions under IRC 404(k), has been added
• 1099-R - Distribution Codes B and U are a valid combination. (not required to be used together)
  • Add country code Kosovo - KV
    • Add country code St Barthelemy - TB
    • Add country code St Martin – RN
      • Updated country code Serbia, changed from RB to RI

When creating Microsoft Dynamics GP users, there is an option to utilize Advanced SQL Server Options, which include:

• Enforce Password Policy
• Enforce Password Expiration
• Change Password Next Login

How does SQL know what Password Policy to set and Enforce Password Expiration? 

The Policy comes from the Local SQL Machine’s Windows Policy. 

How can you verify the settings of the Local Windows Policy?

Type secpol.msc from Start>Run.  This opens the Local Security Settings.  Go to Security Settings>Account Policies>Password Policy.  This is where you will find password policies that will be applied if utilizing Advanced SQL Server Options.

If you are having issues with Microsoft Dynamics GP user logins, KnowledgeBase article #919345 has some great information as well.

The question has been raised:

Does the Dynamics GP W-2 Electronic File format conform to individual State format requirements?

The answer:

The Dynamics GP W-2 Electronic File conforms to Federal filing requirements only.  BUT… if you check with your State, ask them if they will accept the Federal Filing Format.  If they will, then the answer is YES!

With the release of GP 11 just around the corner, we decided to give you a sneak peak at what is in store with some of the new features and functionality.  Today, I will tell you about some of the changes that are being made around Business Portal for GP 11.  With the ever-increasing focus on Business Intelligence, this new release will be combining some of the robust features of SharePoint and SRS with Business Portal  to enhance the user experience.

In Business Portal for GP 11, one of the main changes that is being made is surrounding the web parts.  As you may or may not know, Business Portal is really just some SharePoint pages with a number of Business Portal web parts to display the data.  In the previous releases of Business Portal, these web parts were built on a technology developed specifically for Business Portal called Microsoft Business Framework.  While these web parts were great and did the job well, they were not all that customizable.

With GP 11, a number of these Microsoft Business Framework web parts and Key Performance Indicators in BP have been replaced with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Reports.  These new SRS reports will also have drill back capabilities that we discussed in the first GP 11 blog post.  So that means that you will have greater flexibility with the type of Business Portal web parts that you will be able to create in GP 11.  MBF has not gone away completely, so you can still utilize that technology along with the new SRS functionality for Business Portal.

Along with the release of GP 11, Microsoft is also releasing SharePoint 2010.  Business Portal will be supported on either SharePoint 2007 or 2010, so whether your organization wants to upgrade SharePoint at the same time or not, Business Portal will be able to work for your organization.  Because of SharePoint 2010 being a 64 bit only package now, Business Portal will also be 64 bit compliant, but only when used with SharePoint 2010.  So if you were eagerly awaiting upgrading that Business Portal server to 64-bit, you will be able to with the new version of Business Portal and SharePoint.

Some nice changes coming down the pipeline for Business Portal.  Stay tuned for my next blog posting, which will discuss some of the changes that will be in store for Workflow with Dynamics GP 11!

With Microsoft Dynamics GP 11 rolling out just around the corner, we are dedicating a number of blog posts to giving you a sneak peak at the new features you can expect to see.  Today’s topic is focused on a new feature that will be included with GP 11.  In GP 11, you will now have the ability to print your reports to Microsoft Word forms and also be able to email those reports, right from within core Dynamics GP functionality.

Yes, you heard right!  Microsoft received a lot of feedback to have reports available through another source other than Report Writer, and they have answered with new functionality around Microsoft Word.  With GP 11, you will be able to print most of your reports as either your existing Report Writer report, or you can print them with new Microsoft Word templates.  Microsoft will be shipping a number of templates out of the box, as well as the ability to create and customize your own templates and use them to print your documents.  These templates will be able to be used if you’re on Microsoft Office 2007 or newer.

The way this is going to work is relatively simple and will not require any additional software.  When you choose to generate a report to Microsoft Word, it still goes through Report Writer, which is the “processing engine”.  However, instead of it being printed then in Report Writer, it will be pushed to Word as an XML format, and Word will then be the “design engine” for the report.  With the information being pushed to Word, we will now have the ability to easily manipulate the design of the report, as well as adding our own graphics and style!

GP 11 is also introducing the ability to email documents from right within GP.  With this feature, we can now email reports directly to our vendors, customers, etc.  GP will utilize the power of Outlook to send the emails, either as an attachment or embedded directly into the body of the email.  This will reduce the cost of postage and printing for an organization, as well as simplify getting information out.

Some pretty useful features coming in GP 11 surrounding Word forms and emailing documents.  Check in for my next blog post, in which I will talk about a few more features coming up in GP 11!

The pieces are starting to come together on what the next release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 11 is going to look like.  There are going to be a number of changes coming in GP 11 that we will be giving you a sneak peak into.  The first thing I’m writing about is the future of Business Intelligence.  In GP 10, Microsoft opened up the door to more BI features and functionality.  75 SQL Reporting Services (SRS) reports out-of-the-box, SharePoint integration, and Business Portal functionality were just some of the new features.  In GP 11, these features are expanded upon with the hope of greater usability.

The biggest piece in the enhanced Business Intelligence is going to be SQL Reporting Services 2008.  In addition to the existing 75 SRS reports shipped with GP 10, GP 11 will include an additional 150 new reports!  SRS 2008 is also going to be the underlying technology driving most of our Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and graphs in GP and Business Portal.  The homepage of GP will now have SRS KPI of the GP metrics.  These KPI’s will also be reusable in Business Portal and the executive center, meaning that now you only have to create them once, and you can reuse them in multiple places.

Another key feature with Business Intelligence is the addition of drill-back capabilities.  This allows us to drill back into GP from an SRS report, our Business Portal page, or even a link that we send to people in our organization.  Now when we’re viewing a KPI in Business Portal, for example, we will be able to click on a certain field, and it will pull up our customer card or sales document, depending on the window that report is linked to.  To make sure that not just anyone can access this window in GP, however, you will need to have a copy of GP open in the background to utilize drill-backs.

As you can see, there are going to be some neat changes coming for Business Intelligence.  Watch for the next article, in which we will talk about some changes coming in reporting (here’s a teaser – it involves Microsoft Word!).

This may be somewhat technical, but for those of you who utilize Excel quite heavily and are adept at using Microsoft Query to create refreshable reports/lists, you may want to utilize a Stored Procedure that has already been created in Microsoft SQL.

A Stored Procedure is a group of SQL commands that runs to produce some valued output.  For instance there are Stored Procedures that can put information from the Payables Open Tables together with the Payables History Tables to give you a listing of all of the outstanding payables as of a certain point in time.  We routinely refer to this as a Payables Historical Aged Trial Balance.

There may be times where you want to utilize a Stored Procedure that has already been written and return that information to Excel.  Most times, there are also PARAMETERS that need to be included so that the Stored Procedure will return just the set of data you actually want.

In this example we have a Stored Procedure that compiles Payables info based upon a certain point in time– let’s call it SP_PM_AGED_HISTORY (and it already exists within our SQL database).  The trick is, we also need to be able to identify the DATE in for when we want the procedure to run, because without this important piece of data, the Stored Procedure will NOT run.  This is called a PARAMETER.

Utilizing Microsoft Query we can do the following:

1. Open the SQL View
2. {CALL <storedprocedurename>(?)}  In our example it would look like this: {CALL  SP_PM_AGED_HISTORY (?)}
3. Put the Date in the Parameter that pops up in the following format– MM/DD/YYYY
4. Save the Query and return the results to Excel
5. When you refresh the data, it will prompt you for the Parameter, and you can put in whatever you want for the date.