Microsoft SQL Server 2005 System Table Map

You can find the poster of the SQL Server 2005 System Table Map in the December 2005 issue of SQL Server Magazine.

Here is the online version.

Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0

I recently attended a user-group meeting hosted by our vendor and they showed us v9.0. I would say there's not much to expect since 8.0 in terms of functionality. Most of the investment were put to technology and I'm very excited with this version. I like the role-based home pages because it's customised or personalized. There are 21 templates available from Accounting/HR/Production/Purchasing/Operations/IT Managers to Dispatcher, Bookkeeper and even Order processor. Other features I'm looking forward includes Metrics in the home pages, KPIs, SQL Reporting Services and SQL 2005 Password Policies. For detailed information on the features I just mentioned, please open the link below and this would open the Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 homepage then to the Feature of the Day pages:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/productsservices/
products/articles/GP90_FeatureofDay.htm

Great Plains ver7.5 Bug Report II

Let me rephrase the title because GP don't use bug, instead I'll use Great Plains ver7.5 Product Report II.

In Smartlist, sometimes a user can accidentally open an object by mistake. In this case instead of using Receivables Transactions, he/she opens Receiving Transactions. If this happen, you'll get this message:

FP: Null Field Address Form: - XX Wind:XXX Fld:XXXX

When you close the message, the Unhandled script exception error opens. Now you can't get out of the error mesaage and you're stuck. The next thing the user needs to do is contact the Great Plains administrator to clear your userid in the database or use User Activity to delete your session.

I've reported this to GP and the PR code is 42126 which they said doesn't appear that it's slated to be addressed in the coming releases.

If you experience the same error on other objects, please go to CustomerSource and report the incident. The more PR code created of the same nature, will move the PR priority even though this isn't a critical error to resolve in the first place.

Tek-tips Question I

I'm going to create a series for Tek-tips questions from Great Plains users. This maybe a simple question or complex question but would be handy for new and old users of the system.

The first would look at Drop-ship sales orders. Here's the user question:

"We are having a problem with the invoicing distributions when we post a drop ship order. We have a mysterious entry showing up at the end that is not visible in the original distribution screen. It is type for inv and cogs. Does anyone one know where it is coming from?"

ANSWER:
Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold are created during invoice posting and should be coming from the sale line item distribution accounts. This is by design because the cost of the items are not known until the invoice is posted.

If the sales line item distribution is blank you can manually enter accounts, some companies do this whenever a non-inventoried item was entered.

If this is an inventoried item, the accounts should be coming from the item card. If the Drop Ship items account is blank on the item card the system would look at the posting setup for inventory (Setup>Posting>Posting Setup>Display:Inventory) then Drop Ship Items.

Microsoft Dynamics Brand

I've been reading a lot about the new branding that Microsoft did to its MBS products and I thought why not give my own opinions about it.

Back to old times I would say.

Yesterday, it was Great Plains Dynamics Ctree or Btrieve and Great Plains eEnterprise.

Today, we have Microsoft Business Solutions–Axapta, Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains, Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision and Microsoft Business Solutions–Solomon and Microsoft CRM.

Tomorrow, it's going to be Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics SL.

Do you see any resemblance?

Error: Failed to Export the Report

When you try to print a document in Great Plains and you're using Forms Printer, you get the following error: Failed to Export the Report.

Solution:

Crystal Reports 8.5: Copy all Crystal Dlls from C:\WINDOWS\Crystal folder to the C:\WINDOWS\system32

Crystal Reports 9.0: Copy the Files in C:\program files\Common Files\Crystal Decisions\2.0\Bin TO C:\WINDOWS\system32

Crystal Reports 10: The path is C:\program files\Common Files\Crystal Decisions\2.5\Bin

The recommended way is to copy the files but don't overwrite any existing files in Windows\system32, but just add the Crystal files.

Adding more audience to this blog

To cater to a broader audience, I've decided to add Crystal Reports. I've been helping a lot of users in MBS Great Plains community site and Tek-tips in how to create, look for sql tables or even linking tables.