At this time, May 2009, Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 version has pretty reliable service packs under its belt, especially current SP3. Earlier Great Plains 10.0 upgrades were really surprisingly challenging, especially prior to the time of GP 10 SP1 was released
In this small publication we would like to share recent Dynamics GP upgrade from version 8.0 to 10.0 with migration to new SQL Server machine:
1. GP version 8.0 Service Pack 5 is required. If you plan to move one step to 10.0, you will need to apply SP5 for Great Plains 8.0. Version 8.0 was pretty advanced with Service Pack applications, and virtually all you need to know is to click install button and all the work will be done automatically
2. Great Plains migration to the new server. For earlier versions of GP you had pretty reliable scripts, where everything, including user passwords was transferred smoothly, with current procedure, available from Partner Source, passwords are not transferred, until the name of the SQL Server is exactly the same as the old server name. We recommend you to move GP 8.0 SP5 databases to new SQL Server. Likely that you will migrate backups from SQL Server 2000 to 2005, or even SQL 2008. In this case, please change DB compatibility level respectively
3. Please, prior to launching Dynamics GP Utilities, be sure that you applied GP 10.0 Service Pack 3 (or newer). DB Tables upgrade process is very smooth and we saw no issues
4. Reports.Dic upgrade. Here, you should be aware that Dynamics GP 8.0 was more tolerant to Service Packs discrepancy, meaning that user workstations could be on different service packs and patches level This fact was probably causing SQL red box error messages from time to time (as you know GP Service Pack upgrades SQL Stored Procedures for Dynamics and Companies databases). In our case, we got Reports dictionary upgrade problem, getting error message that Dynamics.dic is not compatible with original Reports.dic version. This problem was fixed when we forced reports migration on the original GP 8.0 Service pack
5. Additional Notes. If you are Great Plains Consultant, you probably aware that Microsoft Office 2007 as well as .Net components, released after Dynamics GP 10.0, lead to the fact, that you can no longer install Great Plains form original CDs. Now you have to apply DexSkipDotNetCheck.mst and SkipDotNetCheck.mst technologies, please download them from Partner Source
6. FRx upgrade. Assuming that you are installing FRx fat client and not fighting with Citrix or Terminal Server, FRx upgrade is smooth. We upgraded FRx 6.7 Service Pack 5 to SP 10
7. Office Web Components. If you will get Microsoft Office Metrics error message on Dynamics GP home page, please download owc11.exe file from Microsoft download center
8. Technically, you could find these upgrade guidelines on GP Partner Source or Customer Source, however we tried to popularize the concerns and pluses by publishing this Dynamics GP FAQ and Great Plains Guru stile article
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