Microsoft Dynamics Corner

Microsoft Dynamics Promotion

This is a new promotion for existing Microsoft Dynamics users that you may want to take advantage if you are considering migrating to the Advanced Management version from Business Essentials:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Microsoft is excited to announce the “Program Edition Transition (“PET”) Offer” - a Microsoft Dynamics (US) Existing Customer promotion for Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV & Microsoft Dynamics SL customers who are currently licensed on BRL Business Essentials (“BE”) to upgrade to the Advanced Management (“AM”) Edition of their product at a discount.  For a limited time these customers can receive up to a 20% discount off of the regular cost of the transition as well as purchase additional user licenses and modules at up to 20% off of the standard list prices.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE CUSTOMER OFFER
Effective Monday, Aug. 30, 2010, and available until end of business day (11:59pm CST) Thursday, December 23, 2010, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV & Microsoft Dynamics SL existing customers who are currently licensed on BRL BE can upgrade to the AM (Advanced Management) Edition of their product at a discount.  For a limited time these customers can receive up to a 20% discount on the regular cost of the transition as well as purchase additional user licenses and modules at up to 20% off the standard list prices.

OFFER EXAMPLE

• Customer transitions from Microsoft Dynamics GP BE to Microsoft Dynamics GP AM and buys 5 new user licenses at the same time can receive up to 20% off of the cost of the transition and 20% off of the cost of the 5 additional user licenses. 

OFFER NOTES, INCLUSIONS, EXCLUSIONS
Inclusions:

• Offer valid from August 30, 2010 to December 23, 2010.
• This offer is only available in the US to eligible US customers.
• Offer available to existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP or Microsoft Dynamics SL customers transitioning from Business Ready Licensing - Business Essentials Edition to Business Ready Licensing Advanced Management Edition.
• Additional Business Ready Licensing User licenses and/or Business Ready Licensing modules or granules of the same edition must be purchased on the same purchase order in order to receive the offered discount.

Exclusions:
Offer does not apply to:

• Customers whose enhancement plan has lapsed.
• Enhancement plan fees - standard Enhancement Plan fees apply.
• Third Party (ISV) software and functionality.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM and CRM related Services or Components.
• Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Other offers and promotions including volume discounts cannot be combined with this offer with the exception of the Microsoft Dynamics GP DCO/Light User Offer currently in market until 23 December 2010.

This offer cannot be used with special ISV pricing.

Notes:

• Customers must be current on their enhancement plan.
• Standard Product Edition Transition (PET) policy and restrictions apply as described in the Customers Services Guide. Customers deactivating modules within the last 6 months leading up to the PET will either need to reactivate those modules or wait until a total of 6 months from the date of deactivation has passed before transitioning.
• Offer is not redeemable for cash, and is non-transferable.
• Taxes, if any, are the sole responsibility of the recipient.
• Offer available only through participating resellers.

Microsoft releases Service Pack 5 for Dynamics-GP 10

Microsoft released Service Pack 5 form Dynamics-GP 10.  This service pack includes many fixes to Dynamics-GP 10 along with required payroll tax updates.  So those of you that use payroll this is a required update.

A couple of important things you should know prior to applying this service pack:

1. If you are planning on upgrading to GP 2010 when you apply this service pack you cannot upgrade GP 2010 until service pack 1 is released for GP 2010
2. If you are using web services after applying this service pack you must apply the latest hotfix for web services
3. If you are prompted to restart you must restart and restart the service pack install. If you do not start the service pack install the UPR00300 table will fail on the update

Remember to review the complete install documents prior to performing this update.

Link to SP5 on Customer Source

Payroll Bug in Dynamics-GP 2010

Hello all,

We recently did an upgrade to GP2010 for one of our clients and thought I would let everyone know of a bug we found in GP2010.  The bug occurs when processing payroll.  If your posting options are set to create a journal entry per batch what will happen is that you will end up with an unbalanced journal entry.  It appears that all of the distributions are created but some distribution lines don’t include values for all of the employees in that payroll run.

If your posting options are set to create a journal entry for each transaction than the posting is fine.  Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug and a fix should be included in SP1 of GP2010.

Fix for TS 2008 and Dynamics GP10

If some have you tried with Windows Server 2008 there was a problem when you used the publishing application capability with Dynamics GP10 or above GP would hang like it was not responding.  This was a Windows Server 2008 issue and a hotfix was released that solves this.  Here are the details:

 

The Terminal Service RemoteApp (TS RemoteApp) feature is new with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  When Microsoft Dynamics GP was configured with the TS RemoteApp feature, certain pop-up windows would not appear and Microsoft Dynamics GP would appear to "hang" or "lock up".   Because of this issue, Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 and Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 were not supported with the TS RemoteApp feature.

Microsoft has released a hotfix to resolve the issue with pop-up windows  appearing hidden when using the TS RemoteApp feature.  Here are the steps to download and install the hotfix:

1. At the link below, click the "View and request hotfix downloads" link at the top of the page to download the hotfix.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983533/en-us

2. Install the hotfix on the Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 server.
NOTE: The hotfix labeled "Windows Vista" also applies to Windows Server 2008.

3. If you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista workstations, install the hotfix on those operating systems.

Once the above hotfix is installed, Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 and later versions will be supported with the TS RemoteApp feature

New GP Service Pack

GP Service Pack 10.00.152 was released on 7/8/2010.  This is an important update for users of the payroll module because it includes required payroll updates.  This update is also provides updates to the code as well so it needs to be applied to all work stations.  So even if you don’t use payroll there are fixes that could resolve some issues.

This service pack replaces the service pack that was released on 6/22/2010.

DCO Licensing

For those of you that don’t know Microsoft has released a new licensing model for Microsoft Dynamics-GP called DCO licensing.  DCO licensing stands for Dynamics Client for Office.

DCO licensing essentially replaces the Business Portal licensing that a user would purchase to access the web capabilities of Dynamics-GP.  One of the changes that is occurring with the new licensing is that you will no longer need to purchase separate business portal applications.  Each DCO license allows the user to access the following Business Portal applications:

• Order Management
• Requisition Management
• Field service Suite
• Human Resources self service suite
• Project time and expense

DCO Licenses also gives the user access to Excel reports, SRS reports, business intelligence features, KPI’s and charts, Analysis Cubes, and the Analysis Cubes Library.

This is all great value at a starting price of 195.00 per user.

The piece that is not mentioned in too much detail are the users that never owned business portal.  The new licensing model requires a DCO license whenever a user accesses the Dynamics-GP data and are not using a Dynamics-GP client.  What does this mean? Well what this means is that if you write a report or build your own integration each user that access that integration or uses that report needs a DCO license.  Let’s look at this scenario.

Company A builds a series of SQL Reporting Services reports for managers and executives that deliver information regarding their business.  Company A has 5 executives and 30 managers that access these reports.  In this scenario Company A would need to purchase 35 DCO licenses to allow the users to run the reports.

These rules also apply if you purchase a third party program that interfaces with Dynamics-GP and the application is accessed outside of the Dynamics-GP client.  Let’s look at another scenario.

Company A again has a 10 user Dynamics-GP system and uses the payroll module.  After evaluating the web based time sheet program that Microsoft provides they feel that it doesn’t meet their needs and decide to purchase a ISV product that matches the requirements.  Company A has 300 employees that will submit time.  The ISV product costs 200.00 per user for their product.  In order to use the product with Dynamics-GP Company A would need to purchase 300 DCO licenses @ 125.00 per user which is the price break for 300 users.

In Prior versions of Dynamics-GP non GP users were able to access the SQL Reporting Services reports that are available with the product.  That is not the case in GP2010 and GP10 under the new licensing.  Each non Dynamics-GP user would be required to purchase a DCO license to access the SQL Reporting Services reports and Excel based reports.

GP 2010 and Office 2010

With the recent release of GP2010 and Office 2010 we are all excited about the new capabilities of the new software.  Something that was missed in the system requirements is that GP 2010 does not support Office 2010 64bit.  So for those of you that are using 64bit operating systems and want to take advantage of the 64bit version of Office you will have to wait.  How long is not known.

Dynamics GP 10 Hotfix

A new hotfix was released for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.  This hotfix primarily applies to users of the Project accounting series of Dynamics-GP.  For those of you that have access to customer source click here for the information.

Dynamics GP Payroll Tax Round 3 Update

Payroll Round 3 Tax Update Tax Update Info

Microsoft has released Payroll Round 2 and Round 3 for Dynamics-GP rather quickly.  The two tax updates affect District of Columbia, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and EIC.

This is just a tax table update and is not a code change so if you have already performed your year end tax update you can just do the tax table update on the server.

Windows Virtualization

 

Some of you may have been hearing about virtualization either on web sites, trade magazines, or from your IT department.

Well what is virtualizatoin and why should I care?  Virtualization was introduced several years ago by couple of software companies most noteably VMWare.  Microsoft soon followed with their version of virtualization software in 2005.  What virtualization gives you is the ability to consolidate multiple servers onto one physical machine.

One of the main benefits you get with Virtuaization is cost savings.  Consider an environment where you have three servers.  A SQL Server, email server, and terminal server for remote access.  Each one of these servers can cost between 6 and 7K each.  Now consider consolidating those servers onto a more robust server between 10 and 11K.  That is a real savings of almost 10K on hardware. 

Those are the hard costs, now lets look at some of the soft costs.

With a virutalized environment you can see a reduction of IT support costs for things such as:

• Software Maintenance
• Disaster Recovery
• Restoring previous states
• Increased performance of applications

Click  here for a great white paper on the benefits.