eCommerce development for Microsoft Great
Plains: tools and highlights for programmer
by Andrew Karasev
Alba Spectrum Technologies
866-528-0577, 630-961-5918
help@albaspectrum.com
Microsoft Business Solutions Great
Plains, former Great Plains Software Dynamics and eEnterprise was designed in
earlier 1990th as ERP, which can be easily transferable to the
winning Database and OS platform and it was originally available on Mac and PC
Mac OS and Microsoft Windows respectively. Graphical platforms battle is pretty
much over and now with eCommerce demands, we should look at Great Plains
Dynamics tables structure:
- Naming Convention. Great
Plains was designed to be ready to move to the winning database platform and
probably this is why we see this a bit complicated naming convention in place:
SOP10100, RM00101, IV00101 these are samples: SOP header, Customer master,
Inventory master. First we see module prefix: SOP Sales Order Processing,
RM Receivables management, IV Inventory control, etc., then 0 stays for
the master files, 1 so-called work files (before transaction being posted),
2 open files (after transaction is posted) and 3 historical files (when
you close the year in General Ledger transactions are moved from open to
history files). So as you see logic is present and structured, but it is
not friendly to the developer, who never seen and worked with Great Plains
Dynamics.
- Tables Groups. Great plains
was designed to first serve mid-size businesses and then with the availability
of third party modules the intention was to compete on corporate ERP market
with Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP and others big players. This is why we see the
whole cluster of tables to store, say Sales Invoice: SOP Header, SOP Lines,
SOP Distribution, RM Key file, etc.
From the Forms side (or screens) you
can see more human-readable names: SOP Entry, RM_Customer_Maintenance, POP_Entry
or the like. But these legacy Great Plains Dexterity names do not help
eCommerce developer only probably as the reference on which table works with
specific screen.
Lets take a look at the tools
available:
- eCommerce together with
eOrder, and other eXXX products it should be considered as legacy and phase
out product, based on Microsoft eCommerce server and ASP technology, today
Microsoft has new paradigm - .Net and ASPX World
- eConnect was specially
created for eCommerce developers, who integrate Microsoft Great Plains with
eCommerce web interface. This tool covers a lot of Great Plains objects
creation and retrieving functionality, however it does have restrictions,
because it was not intended as replacement to Great Plains Dexterity shell.
For example if you create Orders in SOP via Web interface/eConnect it is
difficult manipulate these orders (transfers to Invoices, backorders,
reallocations, etc.). Another issue with eConnect developers are kind of
used to the fact that Microsoft provides free SDK to its products, Microsoft
CRM for example has freely downloadable Microsoft CRM SDK. For eConnect you
have to pay license and be on Microsoft Business Solutions annual support to
get version upgrades. Also if you are ISV and develop your GP integration to
your customers you have licensing issue with Microsoft.
- Custom SOP/AR stored procedures.
Microsoft Business Solutions partners in their practice usually have several
Great Plains integration projects implemented where integration is realized on
the stored procedures level and transactions are created and manipulated in
Great Plains SOP. So you may end up seeking this type of help
Good luck with
implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns
we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call
866-528-0577
or 630-961-5918!
help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew is Great Plains
specialist in
Alba Spectrum Technologies (
http://www.albaspectrum.com ) Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft
CRM Partner, serving clients in
San Francisco, San
Diego, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Orlando, New Orleans,
Phoenix, Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, Los Angeles