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.
Over the last few months I have been really busy with some non work issues (such as preparing to sell my house), but have also been making some really awesome enhancements and fixes to the Administrator Tools, Developer Tools and Database Tools modules of GP Power Tools and this hotfix makes them all available to the community.
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.
Today, I was asked by a partner how simple it would be to default the Sort by fields on the Payables Transaction Inquiry – Vendor window to Document Date in Descending order. This is previously the type of quick tweak that you might have used VBA (Visual Basic for Application) for.
However, now that VBA is “End of Life” and is not supported on the Web Client and some windows platforms, this is a perfect customization to use the GP Power Tools – Developer Tools module for. The entire customization took me about two minutes to complete. In fact, it took much longer to write this article.
The Dynamics User Group have published the videos of the presentations from the recent DynamicsCon March 2021 event.
It was fun taking part in the conference and I really appreciated the opportunity to present for you. Thank you to the GP Community for voting for a session on GP Power Tools at the conference.
With the release of the GP Power Tools build 28.6 hotfix, a couple of sites have reported that GP Power Tools says it is not registered and then causes Microsoft Dynamics GP to crash if you attempt to open the registration window.
[Edit] This issue is resolved permanently with the GP Power Tools build 28.7 hotfix.
The cause of the issue has been identified and a simple solution is available. We are working with the 3rd party developers involved to prevent the situation occurring in future.
A number of enhancements and fixes have been added to GP Power Tools in the last month and this hotfix makes them available to the community.
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 asked recently to assist with some custom code that had been added to a transaction window in Microsoft Dynamics GP. The customization would work for one user, but not for a different user.
The customization was created using GP Power Tools‘ Developer Tools module, but similar code could have been created using Dexterity, Visual Studio Tools or even VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).
I am writing this article after a good friend, who is a Microsoft Dynamics GP administrator, was having some unexplained issues in his test environment.
The issue was originally identified because GP Power Tools‘ Product Version Validation feature started reporting a dictionary version mismatch for a couple of Dexterity customization dictionaries. What made it really weird was that it only happened for the test windows’ user and and not for his administrator user account.
Due to many requests to be able to control the screen output window of report writer in Microsoft Dynamics GP 18.3, we are releasing a new hotfix which has this feature along with a number of other enhancements and fixes.
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.
We have had a couple more minor issues discovered with GP Power Tools, so we have released a new hotfix build last week to resolve them.
These issues will not affect all users, but it is still recommended that all sites running GP Power Tools install the latest code on all workstation and servers where Microsoft Dynamics GP is installed.
One of the really useful features of the Database Tools module of GP Power Tools is the ability to send Password Reset Emails to users when their passwords are reset.
These emails can be sent when updating the password manually via the User Setup window or automatically when using the Database Validation or SQL Login Maintenance windows of GP Power Tools.
Note: Build 28.3 or later is required for the functionality discussed in this article to work.
This week I received two similar requests and so I thought I would publish a couple of sample customizations which achieve the desired goals.
If you want to have a standard templates when adding Customer IDs and Vendor IDs, these two samples will provide that functionality with just a few triggers using the GP Power Tools – Developer Tools module.
In recent times many Microsoft Dynamics GP sites have been having issues with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). Especially with Microsoft Office Updates breaking functionality and incompatibilities with later Windows Server releases.
There have been compatibility issues reported with sending emails via Outlook and more recently issues with VBA on Windows Server 2019.
