Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics and eEnteprise is exposed to programmer via Microsoft Dexterity Integrated Developing Environment. Technically you can also use Modifier or Extender, but these two are actually modules, based in Dex as well.
This is why we will give you Dexterity localization and foreign language translation highlights. First of all – Dynamics GP is available in Spanish for Central and South America, where it supports local taxation and legislation (please, check availability for your country, as some functionality may not be available for specific countries), plus it is available in French for Canadian Quebec. All the other languages likely will require custom add-ons to be supported. Dynamics GP translation highlights:
1. Unicode restriction. Please, be sure, that your target language doesn’t require Unicode (two bytes per character: Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc). Dexterity in turn was designed back in earlier 1990th and coded in C programming language – in time Unicode was not yet on the scenes. For all the rest of us – Latin alphabet based languages (German, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech, etc.), Cyrillic alphabet based (Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian) – you can translate Great Plains screen into your language
2. Dexterity string resources. If you are Dexterity programmer, you will need to open Dynamics.dic dictionary and begin translation Dex string resources from English to your language, then on targeted GP workstations you will need to replace original Dynamics.dic with your custom one. We recommend you to create Excel translation worksheet, where you will have a match of original string with your local translated one – this will be great help in GP version upgrade, as you could imagine, new version will arrive from Microsoft Business Solutions with all English strings and you will need to reapply your translation
3. SQL Collations. We should allow here couple of emotional passages, as we saw numerous questions about Great Plains data entry in foreign languages. Life would be too easy, if all you needed to do would be just translate string resources to your language. Microsoft SQL Server and Windows should support your language. In the case of SQL it means code page and collation. The easiest way to understand exact setting you need – install MS Vista workstation in your language, let’s say Lithuanian, then install MS SQL Server 2005 or 2008 in defaults (change security to be mixed, however) – this SQL installation will give you required code page and collation for Lithuanian language, that you will need to deploy on your Windows 2003 or 2008 Server
4. Supporting GP Installation for multiple countries. Let’s imagine that you have to support Dynamics GP for Poland, Latvia, Czech, Lithuania, where you Headquarters is in Warsaw. You SQL Server should support code page for Poland (Dynamics and Polish company DB), then the company DB for Lithuania should be installed in Lithuanian code page and collation. In Czech code page should coincide with Polish, in Latvia you should again deploy the strategy, similar to Lithuania
5. Give us a call on your specific localization case: 1-866-528-0577. Internationalization of GP is typically required, when you have strong commitment to Great Plains in headquarters, located in USA, Canada, UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Poland
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