HT-NewsGreat Plains Mods: Dexterity, eConnect, SQL - GP customizations review Alba Spectrum
Great Plains Dynamics GP has long history of custom programming, business logic adaptation, integrating scenarios, EDI, reporting. When you are implementing ERP for mid-size modern business, you often mean to cross the borders of pure accounting system and integrate it with MRP
/Software News Articles/ - Naperville, IL, June 22, 2008 - Great Plains Dynamics GP has long history of custom programming, business logic adaptation, integrating scenarios, EDI, reporting. When you are implementing ERP for mid-size modern business, you often mean to cross the borders of pure accounting system and integrate it with MRP, warehouse management, order tracking (UPS, FedEx), barcode, POS and retail, shipping and receiving, supply chain management, etc. You can expect existing add-ons or satellite modules on the GP modifications market, developed and supported by GP ISV partners - and first option is to evaluate these existing extensions. The second option and especially if your modification seems to be simple enough, you can develop it just for your own business. Let"s review the second option, when you do your in-house customization:
1. SQL stored procedures. This is when you review GP table structure and transaction workflow and have your SQL programmers to create stored procedures to feed external data into GP tables. We recommend you to review GP Integration Management module, prior to deciding on SQL scripting, as IM validates GP business logic and you can not violate data integrity if integrating via Integration Manager. If you do not own IM module and would like to try simple integration through SQL scripts or insert statements, make test company, insert data there and try to run check links to see if your data import is accurate
2. Dex. Great Plains Dexterity tool modifies GP user interface, plus it can add custom tables to your companies and Dynamics databases. We would say, that Dexterity is preferred tool, however it is not very easy to get Dexterity developer in staff and Dex is not rapid application development tool. Dex is a way to go if you know or can find Dexterity programming partner or consultant to do the modification design and coding job
3. eConnect. This is very popular SDK, especially for eCommerce programmers and developers, as it allows them to include GP objects and transaction creation scripts and call these logics from their eCommerce applications
4. Posting GP batches from e-commerce application, or extending eConnect logic. eConnect out of the box doesn"t do batch posting job and so you can not post batches automatically as web order is placed and paid. You will need batch posting tools, we recommend you Alba Spectrum Posting Server or Autopost