Andrew Karasev

Great Plains Customizations: Dexterity, eConnect, SQL Scripting

Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP or formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise accounting, logistics, manufacturing, sales order processing, purchasing, MRP, warehouse management application fits to the majority of companies in USA, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America

In this small publication we would like to give you sort of Dynamics GP modification orientation session, assuming that you are technology oriented IT specialist, who is supporting Great Plains internally.  Before we jump into GP programming world, please note that Great Plains doesn’t support Unicode characters: Chinese, Korean, Japanese.  Plus, it depends on SQL Server collaterals and accents, so in order to translate Great Plains screens to such languages as Lithuanian, Russian, Latvian – you will need to install SQL Server with appropriate collation.  Now to the topic:

1.       Microsoft Dexterity, formerly known as Great Plains Dexterity, it is the shell, written in C Programming language, which in turn has its own Sanscript scripting language and Software Development Environment.  Dex allows you to integrate your add-on into Dynamics GP security realm as well as User graphical interface.  Dynamics GP Dexterity is not open source programming language, so you should not expect to turn your own in-house programmers to begin coding in Dexterity overnight or even over couple of months.  Dexterity also is dependent on Great Plains tables and screens structure, so our opinion is simple – subcontract Dexterity customization project to your Great Plains Technology Partner

2.       Dynamics GP eConnect.  Initial remark on eConnect – prior to thinking on eConnect programming, consider upgrading Great Plains Dynamics GP to version 10.0 or at least 9.0 – eConnect was introduced for Dynamics GP 7.5, however you should allow some time for GP customization tools to mature.  eConnect is C#, VB.Net and SQL programmer friendly, you have to be familiar with Great Plains objects: Customer, Vendor, GL account, SOP Invoice, POP Purchase Order, Payroll Employee, Customer Address, etc.  eConnect to some extent replicates Great Plains Dexterity business logic, however it does it in more Object Oriented Programming manner

3.       SQL Scripting for Dynamics GP Great Plains.  It is certainly a temptation for SQL coder to begin GP integration project in direct SQL insertion statements.  We respect this and admire your brave aspiration.  Please, take, however, into consideration the fact that eConnect is already written in SQL stored procedures, so you should not probably try to recode eConnect – instead consider deploying it

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