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Great Plains Integrations Tools: IM, eConnect, Dexterity - overview for programmer
Alba Spectrum
Great Plains Integration Consultant Newsflash: IM, eConnect, Dexterity - Alba Spectrum
Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP is good platform for integration with your current and legacy applications: ecommerce, CRM, EDI, Microsoft Access and even non-Microsoft platforms, such as Oracle, Lotus Notes Domino, MySQL/PHP, DB2. In this small publication we would like to review Dynamics GP or Great Plains (as it was previously known) integrating tools and scenarios:
1. Dynamics GP Integration Manager text integrations. This module is user friendly and you can easy build CSV or Tab delimited text files integrations. IM has predefined destinations to such popular GP objects as Customer, Vendor, Employee, GL Account, plus Transactions: Sales Order Processing (Quote, Invoice, Sales Order), Purchase Order Processing (Purchase Order, Receiving Transaction). If you are Payroll outsourcing company - you can easily integrate your customers' employee time cards to give you the idea about typical industry case
2. Integration Manager Advanced cases. Here you have more challenging scenarios, when you have to pull data from external database. In IM you likely will need to deploy Advanced ODBC queries, based on Microsoft SQL Server Views (which might be heterogeneous: SQL Linked Server to Oracle DB, for example). Plus advanced ODBC query should be considered when you have Text file to be integrated, which has non-structured format (you have to weed out comment lines, headers, footers and other attribute of human report). Also, consider the case, when you have to produce document header and lines from single text file - Advanced ODBC query with union construction should be considered
3. eConnect. This SDK has various exposures, however the core of this connector is set of encrypted stored procedures. Great Plains 10.0 installation automatically installs eConnect stored procs, for earlier versions, such as 9.0 you can install eConnect Runtime manually. We do not recommend eConnect to Great Plains customers, who are on version, earlier than 9.0. So, if you are on GP 8.0 or 7.5 - you can consider deploying eConnect, but just the fact of SDK maturity should incline you to the idea to upgrade your Great Plains installation to 10.0 or 9.0. eConnect is open for C# or VB.Net Microsoft Visual Studio programmer, who is also familiar with XML and SQL Stored Procedures concept. Just one warning - eConnect doesn't post GP batches, consider Great Plains Auto Posting Server to fill this gap
4. Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity is the EDI and fundament of GP architecture. Dex is almighty, when you are thinking about Great Plains customization and integration. However Dex requires professional Great Plains Dexterity programmer to be involved, and it might be not feasible to train your IT internal programmers to begin software development in Dexterity. Dexterity is good fit to program integration, when eConnect doesn't provide functionality - good example is GP invoicing module
5. SQL Stored Procedures. As Great Plains, since version 8.0 is available exclusively on MS SQL Server DB platform, it is natural temptation to try program integration in SQL stored procedures. The drawback of this method is long learning curve in understanding the nature of programmed transactions, the disadvantage of "competing" with eConnect stored procedures, where all the work is already done
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum LLC, help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, http://www.albaspectrum.com. Serving ERP and MRP community since 1994, local service in Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Atlanta. Information portal: http://www.pegasplanet.com We serve you USA and Canada nationwide from our Dynamics GP call center: California, Illinois, New York, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Ontario, Quebec, Washington, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Oregon, New York, New England. International clients welcome from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South Africa, UK, Brazil, Caribbean, Central America
Author Site
12/30/2008
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