The latest version of Microsoft Dynamics GP was released yesterday and it contains many new features and bug fixes. Winthrop Development Consultants has already updated its products for this Microsoft Dynamics GP – October 2021 release. They are now built against the final build and so are no longer beta builds (except for GP Power Tools which has a new build 29 coming soon).
Check out the previous article for more information:
Today’s article comes about because I was asked if GP Power Tools could easily assign a Security Role to all users in all companies in a Microsoft Dynamics GP system.
GP Power Tools does have a copy feature in the Enhanced Security window which can copy all security settings from a selected user/company to all users in the same company or all companies for the same user, but it does not have the option to push a specific Security Role ID across the entire system.
No problem. We can just use the Developer Tools module to create this functionality in an hour or two.
As a follow on from yesterday’s article on how different languages can be used to drive the Microsoft Dynamics GP user interface, this article discusses the need to move away from the old Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) way of thinking. If you missed yesterday’s article, here is the link.
Now that VBA is “End of Life” and many sites are starting to use GP Power Tools – Developer Tools module to replace the VBA business logic with GP Power Tools triggers and scripts. However some developers are still trying to write code as though they were still limited by VBA rather than leveraging the more powerful capabilities of GP Power Tools and Dexterity.
Awesome News.
This morning (Perth Time) I had an email from Terry Heley from Microsoft with a link to a pre-release (very early alpha) of the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics GP version 18.4 (October 2021) release. This download is provided to the ISV community to help them prepare for the final code when it is released.
A long time customer recently asked if they could get a second Salesperson ID associated with a customer on the Customer Maintenance (RM_Customer_Maintenance) window using GP Power Tools.
There is already really good guide for adding custom fields to windows and reports published (see article: #GPPT Beginner’s Guide to Adding Custom Fields), but that example does not add a field linked to an existing table and so does not have the standard GP features of a lookup button, a zoom button and on-the-fly adding of records.
IMPORTANT: This example uses functionality only available in GP Power Tools Build 28.9.
A recent post on the GPUG (Dynamic Communities) forums asked How to change the default sort order for Item History. The Item History (IV_Item_History) window in Microsoft Dynamics GP shows period summary data from the IV_SUM_HIST_Period (IV30102) table based on the Item Number, Site ID and date range on ascending period basis.
This means that once you have a data for a number of periods, the latest data is always at the bottom of the window and will require the user to scroll down to the bottom to view it.
Here is another awesome customization created using GP Power Tools. A customer requested additional Item Category fields, so this customization was created to double the number of Item Category fields from six to twelve.
The customization uses Modifier to add the additional fields to the Item Maintenance (IV_Item_Maintenance) window and the Inventory Control Setup (IV_Setup) window. The Report Writer has also been used to add the additional category fields to the Item List By User Category report.
As promised in my previous article, this article contains awesome example GP Power Tools – Developer Tools projects for tracking changes to customer and vendor cards records.
Thanks to Eric Gernan from Amaysim Mobile whom I worked with to create this custom functionality and gave me permission to publish generic versions of the projects.
Back in 2017 I wrote an article which demonstrated how to get GP Power Tools to send an email every time the Credit Limit Field on the Customer Maintenance window was edited by a user and saved.
This article revisits this article by enhancing the functionality with the options to log changes to a text file or a SQL table instead of sending an email.
This example shows the different methods that can be used with GP Power Tools to create Self Service SQL Scripts which can be made available to all users or just specific users.
The actual SQL Script used for this demonstration is a simple select query on the Customer Master (RM00101) RM_Customer_MSTR table, but can be replaced by any SQL statements to achieve any manipulation of the data desired.
As I am still working on the next major build of GP Power Tools, I have decided to release another hotfix build with some changes I wanted to get out sooner rather than later. This hotfix build includes a few fixes and minor enhancements to help the developer community who are really starting to adopt GP Power Tools as a replacement for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).
It is highly recommended that all sites running GP Power Tools install the latest code on all workstation and servers where Microsoft Dynamics GP is installed.
I was recently asked how to use GP Power Tools to prevent users from Inserting or Deleting lines from the Sales Transaction Entry (SOP_Entry) window.
It is a really simple customization so I thought I would post it as a sample for your reference.
I was recently asked by my good friend and fellow MVP, Jen Kuntz, about how to best get GP Power Tools running in a Development Environment.
GP Power Tools (GPPT) stores all of its settings and data in tables in the System Database on SQL Server, however, it writes all of its logs and saved files to a shared logging folder. When moving GP to a development environment, you would probably want to change this logging folder to a different location.
The recent Build 28.8 hotfix of GP Power Tools incorporated some Developer Tools module changes to enable so very cool customization options for updating reports based on temporary tables. The big feature enhancement is the ability to store a Table Reference as a Memory parameter.
References in Dexterity are like pointers to a particular resource, so the Table Reference allows access to the particular instance table buffer without needing to pass the table as a parameter to a script.
I had not planned on another hotfix for build 28 of GP Power Tools, but I had some fantastic enhancements that I wanted to get into the product and released to the users so they can use the improved development capabilities and functionality.
It is highly recommended that all sites running GP Power Tools install the latest code on all workstation and servers where Microsoft Dynamics GP is installed.
Here is another simple customization I thought it would be worth publishing because it allows us to discuss some best practices and also show some cool techniques.
I received an email from a user who wanted to use GP Power Tools to replace some VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code using GP Power Tools. They wanted to update a SOP (Sales Order Processing) Sales Transaction Entry User Defined Field based automatically but the code they had developed was not working.
I was recently informed of an issue that a Microsoft Dynamics GP customer site was facing where having more than one user in a particular window at the same time was causing issues.
While the issue has been logged with Microsoft Support, the fix will not be available for a while, so I was asked how easy would it be to force the window to only work exclusively for a single user at a time using GP Power Tools.
The answer…. very easy …. initially.
This article completes the creation of a GP Power Tools customization to prevent POP Receivings from updating the Originating Invoice Cost field on the Item Vendors Maintenance window.
Please make sure you have read the previous articles before continuing:
In the previous articles we used GP Power Tools to identify the table and field we want to work with as well as the script responsible for making the change to the field during the receivings posting process and then used triggers to restore the previous value of the field when posting receivings transactions.
This article continues the creation of a GP Power Tools customization to prevent POP Receivings from updating the Originating Invoice Cost field on the Item Vendors Maintenance window.
Please make sure you have read the previous article before continuing:
In the previous article we used GP Power Tools to identify the table and field we want to work with as well as the script responsible for making the change to the field during the receivings posting process.
I was recently working with a GP Power Tools customer who wanted to solve an issue with how the Purchase Order Processing (POP) module on their Microsoft Dynamics GP system functions.
They have international suppliers who specify the cost for their inventory items on a regular basis by sending through a price list document. Due to long lead times and shipping delays caused by the pandemic, cost pricing might change while the items are still in transit.
The issue is that when receiving a purchase order, the Originating Invoice Cost field on the Item Vendors Maintenance window is updated from the last received transaction, overwriting the current cost price provided by the supplier. The result is that subsequent purchase orders created have the incorrect cost value from the receivings transaction instead of from the supplier’s price list.
