It is often good idea to start ecommerce from scratch, however for some of us it doesn’t work as we work for established ecommerce retailers and wholesalers, where ecommerce application might be custom developed and hosted on Linux/PHP/MySQL, Oracle or another non Microsoft solution.
In this situation you would rather consider custom integration with existing ecommerce web site and we would like to share with your some highlights. We are trying to write this small publication for programmers and IT people as a review:
1. eConnect SDK. If you are comfortable with Microsoft Visual Studio C#, VB or another .Net language programming, plus you are fluent with XML and have good SQL querying background, you should take a class or try self study on eConnect. With this Software Development Kit you can program virtually all core modules Great Plains objects: GL Accounts, Customers, Vendors, Employees, Addresses. SOP Invoices, Purchase Orders, etc. eConnect might seem a bit complex, especially when you are very brave and would like to try coding custom SQL Stored Procedures, in this case, please consider the following fact – eConnect is written in SQL Stored procs (that are encrypted) and you probably do not want to do it second time, especially taking into consideration the fact, that in Microsoft Business Solutions programmers have access to all the Dynamics GP Dexterity source codes and got appropriate training
2. eConnect Posting restriction. eConnect doesn’t post Dynamics GP batches, as this is how Great Plains architecture was built. Batch posting is prerogative for GP user, who supposed to review the batch (print batch edit list report), get sufficient evidence that all the transactions are correct and ready for posting and then post the batch from Great Plains user interface. If you really think that you need to post GP batch from ecommerce application directly, please read the next paragraph about Dynamics GP Posting Server, or Autopost
3. Great Plains Posting Server. We developed this Add-On in Dynamics GP Dexterity, it deploys native Dex posting routines and by doing so eliminates the problems with Software QA, as it is not exposed to programming bugs. Posting Server or Autopost is for Software Developer and it allows programmers to flag Dynamics GP work transactions batch for posting. Batch posting checker is running every few minutes and it looks at batch ready for posting table and if batch is there, it triggers Dynamics GP regular batch posting routine
4. SQL Scripts in ecommerce integrations. We have several scripts collections, one of them is Order Connector, which allows you to deploy scripts to move ecommerce orders or invoices to Dynamics GP SOP Orders and Invoices accordingly. Order connector runs faster in our opinion that eConnect methods, as we are not validating all Dynamics GP business logic and instead give you green light with simple Orders and Invoices
5. If you have concerns, or would like to get more info, see presentation, feel free to call us: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com
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