Customising the Company Login window series Part 4 – Visual Studio Tools

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools Module can provide this functionality without needing customizations. (http://WinthropDC.com/GPPT)

Following on from my previous posts: Customising the Company Login window series Part 1 – Introduction, Customising the Company Login window series Part 2 – Visual Basic for Applications and Customising the Company Login window series Part 3 – Dexterity, here is a discussion about trying to create a solution using Visual Studio Tools.

Customising the Company Login window series Part 1 – Introduction

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools Module can provide this functionality without needing customizations. (http://WinthropDC.com/GPPT)

Recently a comment from David M (not me) was posted on the Support Debugging Tool Portal page asking:

“We have some fairly long names for our GP companies. Well, when logging onto GP, the second “Company Login” screen cuts off the company names too short for us. The entry field for companies allow for longer strings (65 Characters) but only displays 31 characters on the pull-down list. There is plenty of real estate on this window going unused. Can anyone think of a way to enhance/fix this to display more of the company name?”

Using Menus for Visual Studio Tools to launch ad hoc and custom applications

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

Back in July 2008, I was attending a Developer Toolkit training course run by my friend, Steve Gray. It was during this course that the idea for Menus for Visual Studio Tools was created. Being the geek I am, I had a prototype of the concept running the next day. That code eventually became what you know as Menus for Visual Studio Tools.

Handling Australian GST Requirements for Payables Transactions in eConnect

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

As part of the handling of Australian Good and Services Tax (GST), Microsoft Dynamics GP needs to be able to track if a Tax Invoice has been received for payables transactions.

This is important as a company must have a Tax Invoice for a purchase before they are allowed to claim the Input Tax Credit for that purchase. The Input Tax Credits are balanced against the tax they have collected from sales and only the balance is due to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

Quick Tip: Debugging Visual Studio Tools

This is a reposting of an article Lee Butenhoff originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

Let’s jump right in. We debug our Visual Studio applications over and over; and attaching to the test environment is among the most important, and time-consuming skills we use. (How many times have I launched GP2010 when I was thinking of GP2013?)

Of course we all simplify our testing by building the dll and pdb files directly in the DynamicsAddins folder (right?). If not, start doing that.

Were that the only thing to learn here, that knowledge alone would be worth the price of admission. But it’s a fairly obvious step, and many of us already send the built dll file to the folder.

Menus for Visual Studio Tools Portal

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Menus for Visual Studio Tools is now Visual Studio Integration Toolkit from Winthrop Development Consultants (http://winthropdc.com/VSIT)

Menus for Visual Studio Tools Build 9 for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 Released

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013, I am pleased to announce the release of Build 9 of Menus for Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP for version GP 2013 (v12.0).

GP Web Services and Invalid Character Errors

This is a reposting of an article Chris Roehrich originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

I am going to go over the steps to find and resolve invalid data characters in Dynamics GP that cause GP Web Services exceptions.   A common process of “copying and pasting” a block of text from an external program into the Note window for a Dynamics GP record or an import routine directly to the SQL tables can cause Dynamics GP Web Service to throw an error.   When using a .Net application that does a GetSalesOrderByKey error, you may see something like this:

“The application encountered an unhandled system exception.  Contact your system administrator for details.”

Differences with SQL Transaction Rollback behaviour for eConnect for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

A recent case has highlighted some subtle differences in behaviour with eConnect for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 and the way it handles SQL transaction commit and rollback.

Microsoft Dynamics GP Addins DAG Utility

This is a reposting of an article Srinivas Ramidi originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

Today, I have another treat for Visual Studio Tools developers.

After I posted the article: How to update Microsoft Dynamics GP Visual Studio Tools Addins on a live system, I was contacted by another community member, Srinivas Ramidi. He has created a little utility that makes using the DAG (Dictionary Assembly Generator) tool easier by providing a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to the tool.

Srinivas was graciously willing to share his utility and asked if I could post it.

How to update Microsoft Dynamics GP Visual Studio Tools Addins on a live system

This is a reposting of an article Luc St-Yves and I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

Today I have a treat for all the Visual Studio Tools developers out there.

While at Microsoft Convergence 2012 Houston, I was approached by Luc St-Yves to discuss a tool that he was creating that would allow Visual Studio Tools Addins to be updated on a live system. This is especially useful on a terminal server or Citrix system where you cannot get every user to disconnect when you want to put an update into production.

Choosing between eConnect for Microsoft Dynamics GP and Web Services for Microsoft Dynamics GP

This is a reposting of an article Chris Roehrich originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

Should I write this integration using eConnect or Web Services for Microsoft Dynamics GP?   This is often a question we receive at conferences like Convergence or in support cases from both Customers and Partners.  Like most questions in our field, there really is no concrete answer to this one.  The answer is usually the dreaded “Well, it depends on…”.   What I hope to do here with this post is point out some of the differences of the two integration platforms, give you my opinion on what I like about them, and then you can decide how you would leverage them in your own projects.

Leveraging the changes in eConnect for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010

This is a reposting of an article Chris Roehrich originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

In this post I will talk about the changes made to the API for eConnect for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 and how developers can take advantage of these changes to affect their custom application.   If you have been using eConnect 2010 you have already realized that there is a new Windows service running called the eConnect for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Integration Service.   This is a change from the version 9 and 10 days where there was a COM+ application for eConnect that appeared under Component Services.  Like the eConnect COM+ application, the eConnect 2010 service runs under a Windows user that requires DYNGRP role access in the DYNAMICS and company databases.  I will breakdown some of the other changes in the following sections.

Quick Tip: Using eConnect to update Customer or Vendor Addresses with a blank Address Line 3

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

I had a case this week that was asking a fairly commonly asked question about integrating address information using eConnect. The scenario is that we want to update a customer or vendor address and the previous address had three lines in the address and the new address only has two lines. When the update is processed, Address Lines 1 and 2 have been updated, but Address Line 3 has the old data and has not been cleared.

So how can I update Address Line 3 with blank data?

Finding Command Forms and Commands to use with Menus for Visual Studio Tools or Dexterity

This is a reposting of an article Patrick Roth originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

One of the issues ISV’s have when integrating with the Dynamics GP menu system is to determine the name of a command list and command form to use.

VSTools 2010: Adding Company Name to Dynamics GP Home Page

This is a reposting of an article Patrick Roth originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

A few years ago, the question came up (partner, customer, Convergence – I don’t recall) about being able to identify the current company on the Dynamics Home Page of the Navigation pane.

Menus for Visual Studio Tools Build 9 Released

This is a reposting of an article I originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Menus for Visual Studio Tools is now Visual Studio Integration Toolkit from Winthrop Development Consultants (http://winthropdc.com/VSIT)

Well, it has taken a little longer than orginally planned, but I am pleased to announce that Menus for Visual Studio Tools build 9 has now been released for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 and Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 (v11.0).

Microsoft Visual Studio Tools window does not open

This is a reposting of an article Patrick Roth originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

This week an ISV logged a support incident to determine why their Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP (VSTools) form wouldn’t open.  The customization worked fine on the developer’s machine (of course) but didn’t work when deploying it to the customer site.

Cannot activate workflow in Dynamics GP

This is a reposting of an article Patrick Roth originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

Recently one of the support engineers had a case they asked for my help on.

Dynamics Workflow was installed and a new PO Workflow was created and activated in Sharepoint. From the Sharepoint side, everything seemed to be working correctly.

Serializing CDATA tags in eConnect XML Documents

This is a reposting of an article Chris Roehrich originally wrote on my Developing for Dynamics GP blog.

I had a recent support incident where the customer was trying to update a field to a blank value using the eConnect serialization assembly and the value was not being removed.  Specifically, they were attempting to remove the existing value in the ADDRESS2 column of the RM00101 table by setting the string value to a blank value.  The reason why this was happening was really by design with the eConnect stored procedures.   If you do not pass a value, eConnect will use the setup in Dynamics GP to default the value if one exists.   This works great because then as a developer you do not have to worry about passing everything in with the XML document.   That would be painful to have to pass everything in the XML document for being fearful of having data being removed.