Did you get the memo?? Summit Group Software has moved!
Our new location has many great new benefits — perhaps the best one… Our new training room! We are putting it straight to good use and running a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Administration class for customers this week. It’s a full house in there and they are getting their training fix!
We are running a full calendar of training events - in our new West Fargo facility, as well as classes in Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City for the first time! And don’t forget our full schedule of webinars, too!
What better way to gear up for fall than by getting yourself some of that much needed training on Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft SharePoint, and others!
Check out the new training schedule today:
http://www.summitgroupsoftware.com/php/training.php
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!
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!).