Hello again
This article follows on from the Where is the Support Debugging Tool for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015? post from yesterday.
Back in May 2008 I was at the Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Airlift in Fargo, ND, USA and was attending Developer Toolkit training run by Steve Gray. On the last day of the training I came up with an idea which would allow menu navigation entries to be dynamically created and called via an API exposed to Visual Studio Tools. Encouraged by Steve and Leslie Vail I turned the concept into a prototype by the end of the day. Menus for Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP was born.
After discussions with the development and support teams, it was agreed that if I was to do all the development, documentation and testing work, that Menus for Visual Studio Tools could be released publically for developers to use.
The first build was released for Microsoft Dynamics GP version 10.0 in September 2008. The tool was only meant to be for version 10.0 as the plan was to provide similar functionality within the core product in the next release. Well, it turned out that other development work took priority and so I had to develop and release Menus for Visual Studio Tools for version 11.0 (GP 2010) in June 2010 and again later for version 12.0 (GP 2013 and GP 2013 R2) in December 2012.
Since I left Microsoft in October 2014, Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015 has been released and no one within Microsoft has updated Menus for Visual Studio Tools to work with the new version.
I know many of you want to know what the future of the tool is and when it will be available for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015.
Like the Support Debugging Tool, I am negotiating to gain ownership of the code so that I can update it for future versions. Working with the legal department of a huge organisation like Microsoft can be hard work and things take a long time. I am hoping to get an agreement in place soon.
Once I have control of the code again, it will be updated and rebadged as a product of Winthrop Development Consultants.
My plan at this stage is to offer the existing functionality at no charge.
If there is demand, I would like to extend the functionality to include integration with other system features of Microsoft Dynamics GP such as Home Page, Toolbars, Area Pages, Navigation Pane, Security, Lists, SmartLists, etc. For this advanced version, there will probably be a nominal annual subscription fee per site to cover the development costs.
So here is your chance to let me know if you want an advanced version and what “Dexterity only” functionality you want exposed to make it easier to develop code in Visual Studio. Please post comments with your thoughts.
[Edit] Please see the new product which replaces Menus for Visual Studio tools:
Looking forward to your feedback.
David
11-Mar-2016: Added details about Visual Studio Integration Toolkit.
This article was originally posted on http://www.winthropdc.com/blog.
Winthrop Development Consultants Blog 
Hi David, Adding security to an advance version would be good but can you elaborate on what you meant by home screen etc….do you mean creating custom items to add the the home screen?
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Having the ability to hook the menus into a security task/role would be great! We had to roll out own security for our customizations and I’d love to ditch it for a standard task.
I hope the negotiations go well. We’re going to have to go back to the “old way” of hooking off of the additional menus and our staff isn’t looking forward to it.
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Hi David
I would like to see VSTM for GP2015 as I have a fwe customizations that depend on it.
An advanced version with enhanced security would be great.
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