Summit Group Software Blog

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.

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!).

Recently, I’ve had some questions about best practices and tips and tricks for SQL Backups.  Questions ranging from how often should backups be run and how long they should be kept for to the right types of backups to do on a regular basis.  The simple answer to these questions is “whatever works best in your environment”.  Let’s examine some scenarios to help you understand which approach is best for you.

The first example we’re going to look at is utilizing Full Recovery in your database environment.  When your database is set to full recovery, you are enabling your company to experience less data loss in the event of a catastrophic failure.  Full recovery is ideal for organizations that cannot afford to lose more than an hour or two of data entry.  This is because multiple, smaller backups are run throughout the regular business day.  Here’s how it works:

Whenever a transaction is entered into CRM or GP, there is a record of the transaction stored in the transaction log database.  In full recovery mode, these transactions remain in the transaction log database until they are removed via Transaction Log Backups.  These backups truncate (delete) the transaction log and store the transactions that have already been committed to the live database.  In the event of a catastrophic failure, this enables the users to restore the last full backup taken, plus restore the transaction logs of the uncommitted transactions, and bring the database back to the point of the last transaction log backup.

If your database is in full recovery mode and you do not have transaction log backups running, your transaction log database is probably getting huge because those uncommitted transactions are not getting truncated from the database.  If this is the case, you’ll want to run a transaction log backup first, and then manually shrink the size of your transaction log database (you’ll notice that the used space drops dramatically after this backup, but the free space remains high).

The other type of recovery mode you can run in your SQL environment is Simple Recovery.  In simple recovery mode, transactions are truncated from the transaction log database once they are committed.  Transactions are committed once the database hits what is called a Checkpoint.  Once this checkpoint occurs, transactions are committed to the database, and the transaction log is truncated.  This ensures that the size of the transaction log database does not get out of hand, and doesn’t require having transaction log backups running throughout the day.

The downfall to simple recovery for organizations who cannot afford a great amount of data loss is that there is not the ability to run transaction log backups throughout the day.  If you need backups to run throughout the day, you’ll need to run full backups when the system resources are not being utilized (like over lunch or coffee breaks).  Typically, companies running in simple recovery mode run nightly backups, and if something were to happen during the day, they would reenter the transactions up to the last full backup.

The advantage to having a database in simple recovery mode is the ease of use in setting up and monitoring the maintenance plans.  You only need to run full backups nightly (or as frequently as you would like).  There is no need to run transaction log backups to truncate the transaction log database as these are truncated at the checkpoints throughout the day.

Hopefully this will help you decide which SQL Maintenance plan to setup for your organization.  If you need any help determining an appropriate plan for your particular organization, please feel free to contact me and we will create a plan that works best for your organization.