Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 Dexterity Customizations review

Let’s come through Great Plains Dexterity technology and upgrade process step by step

1. Dexterity is C shell.  It was designed in earlier 1990th to provide DB and computer platform transferability for new ERP application – Great Plains Software Dynamics.  Dexterity determines such attributes of GP as DYNAMICS.DIC, Dynamics.Set, Dex.ini, Dex.exe, Reports.dic, Dex_row_id.  Dexterity supports its own DB indexing and table structure schemas as well as it own forms and reports, plus it has its own scripting language – sanscript.  If you have custom dex business logic, programmed for you in the past by GPS software development partner, you should have Dynamics.dic with your custom logic and scripts, in some cases former partner provides you with extract.dic
2. What is new in Dexterity.  Dexterity has some features of .Net, however they are not really critical, if you have legacy Dexterity customization to be upgraded.  In this case you need your old sanscript codes to be reviewed and if former programmers deployed Dex cursors, possibly you will need this old logic to be moved to SQL stored procedures
3. COM objects support.  This functionality was introduced in Microsoft Dexterity version 7.0.  If you think about software development architecture – COM object support allows your dex code to penetrate into Windows platform and be in control of your workstation and its custom applications: XML web services, MS Exchange com object custom logic, integrations, etc.  In 1990th GPS Dexterity evangelists probably could not consider such proprietary technology as Microsoft Com objects to be supported as they had the goal to keep dex computer platform independent: Mac, Windows, Sun/Solaris, Unix, etc.  But, when Microsoft purchased Great Plains Software, Dexterity was revised
4. Dex customization update.  GP Dex upgrade is pretty much the same process as 5 years ago.  You should handle Dynamics.dic with your custom sanscript codes to your Microsoft Dynamics GP customization partner and give them some hints on your custom logic and all the technical documentation, if you have it
5. VBA/Modifier.  Alternatively, you may have modified GP business logic programmed in VBA scripts, attached to so-called Modified GP forms.  If this is the case, you should furnish Dynamics.VBA file to your MBS development partner with relevant desctiptions
6. Dexterity Reporting.  In the late 1990th Dexterity was used to create custom reporting for Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise.  In that time Crystal Reports were coming on the scenes to become reporting tool, plus Dex has better integration with GP security model and works in multiple databases: Pervasive SQL/Btrieve, Ctree/Faircom, MS SQL Server 2005/2000.7.0/6.5.  In customization upgrade you can keep dex reports, but we recommend you to switch to either Crystal Reports or Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services – SRS