Since forever, the pundits have been preaching the demise of Great Plains Dynamics / Microsoft Dynamics GP. When I joined Microsoft in 2001, one of the things that influenced my decision was the th…

David Musgrave tackles The future of Microsoft Dynamics GP | David Musgraves Winthrop Development Consultants Blog

I appreciated David’s defense of GP. Generally I prefer not to respond to respond to rumors. Lots of people seem to like to like to just make stuff up for a reaction. I do that too, but I call it fiction and put it in a novel.

Speaking of fiction, Death from Above is free on Kindle Feb 6, 2017 – Feb 10, 2017. 

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Is the traditional user manual as we know it dead? I ask this as an honest question, wondering if my love for manuals has something to do with my generation.

The Microsoft Dynamics GP team moved from paper manuals to PDF based manuals some time ago. Like paper, the PDF manuals were completely updated with each release. Starting with GP 2015, not all the manuals were updated. Only manuals where the module had significant changes were updated and marked as GP 2015. Also, the manuals moved to an online location organized by version. This created a weird game of hide and seek where users had to...

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Perfmon for all of the Dynamics products continues to get updates. What’s New in DynamicsPerf 2.0 !!

The post What’s New in DynamicsPerf 2.0 !! appeared first on DynamicAccounting.net.

User acceptance testing is a frequently missed step in a Dynamics GP implementation that has the potential to make a launch go much smoother. After all, nobody wants to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars implementing a system, only to have the users not adopt it at the end.

Instead of just hoping for adoption, user acceptance testing allows you to ensure the requirements – hopefully! – laid out at the beginning of your project are met and that you users have a voice during the implementation. So, with that in mind, here are four secrets to a good Dynamics GP user acceptance test.

1. Train your testers before they test

Users need at least basic training on how to use the system before they do their user acceptance test. Without it, they’ll need click-by-click instructions to get through their processes, which is time consuming and doesn’t provide real results.

1. Provide detailed testing scripts

Give each user a detailed testing script of what they need to test. If you just give them a carte blanche, they’ll either neglect the test entirely or deliberately try to break the system. Neither of which provide meaningful results.

So, what you need to do is to outline in detail the processes that they use every day. Then, have the user mark off each of the items that they successfully test, to verify that each function works.

1. Test using real data

You want users to do a realistic test of their every day transactions. If the person does sales orders or purchase orders, have them grab a stack of the ones that they did last week and replicate that in the new system. If they do importing, have them actually run one of the previous imports to ensure everything populates.

1. Support users during testing

Users need support during the whole process of user acceptance testing. It is a brand new system to them, and you're trying to test whether the system works. You're not trying to test the user's knowledge of it.

You don't want them to get into a space where they get stuck, then frustrated and say, "The system doesn't work." Help them along through the process and you’ll avoid false claims that something is broken when it was just misunderstood.

Are you looking for some more advice on how to do a great user acceptance test? Talk to Prophet Business Group or check out our other blog on the topic.

- Tracey Wright, Software Consultant, Prophet Business Group - Dynamics GP, Dynamics 365 and Office 365 in Central Canada

The Microsoft Dynamics GP team moved from paper manuals to PDF based manuals some time ago.

The GP MVP community has had a lot of discussions lately about the lack of user manual updates. As usual, we have lots of opinions. Some of mine are now up at The User Manual is Dead. Long Live the User Manual. – MSDynamicsWorld.com

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Dynamics GP Partners: What’s better than free in February?

Few things in life are free—unless you’re a Dynamics partner needing marketing support! Check out the free offers at the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Services Bureau (MSB) on PartnerSource as well as other value-added services. You’ll see examples of three MSB offers below but there are more than 60 marketing services available on the MSB site on PartnerSource. It’s your one-stop shop for marketing support—and boosting your business in 2017!

• Free Twitter profile and header graphic design from Mabbit Marketing: When it comes to Twitter account management and optimization, you can’t go wrong with Mabbit Marketing. Offering intelligent, straightforward social media management solutions for Microsoft Dynamics partners, Mabbit Marketing offers a free Twitter profile and header graphic when you sign up for a Twitter account management package with a six-month commitment. Learn more at the MSB Inbound Marketing and Social Media site and see why a Dynamics partner said “the quality of their posts is outstanding.” Contact Mabbit Marketing at info@mabbitmarketing.com or 941-650-4986.

• goERPcloud: FREE sales tools and marketing opportunities for Dynamics Partners: There’s nothing better than free and goERPcloud has opened free memberships for both ISV and VAR Dynamics partners! ISVs: you can have a company profile, list four products in the goERPcloud Marketplace, provide your marketing assets in the Cloud Resource Library and submit blog posts on how your solutions solve problems for business for free. VARs: you can have a profile that integrates into the Free On Demand Dynamics trial app, which embeds into your website in one line of code. You also get the benefits of providing your marketing assets in the Cloud Resource Library and posting blogs on how your company can help businesses solve real challenges for free. Check out goERPcloud’s free offers on MSB today and contact jeff@goERPcloud.com or 855-377-2568.

• Develop and enhance your Internet presence with August Ash: Since 1999, August Ash has been helping clients achieve online business success. Their Internet marketing services provide proven strategies, tactics and tools to increase traffic, and ultimately revenue, for Microsoft Dynamics partners. See why one Dynamics partner called August Ash “a great partner to work with … because of their ability to truly understand our marketing/website needs.” You’ll find three August Ash Internet marketing offers at the MSB Inbound Marketing and Social Media site on PartnerSource. Contact August Ash at shaukaas@augustash.com, ehanson@augustash.com or 952-851-9400.

All Marketing Services Bureau agencies ("MSBs") and Partner Development Centers ("PDCs") are independent entities separate from Microsoft Corporation and any of its affiliates ("Microsoft"). At no time does any PDC or MSB have the power to (a) bind Microsoft, or (b) create in favor of any person any rights that Microsoft has not previously authorized in writing. The services promoted by this website should not be construed as an endorsement by Microsoft of any MSB or PDC services or as creating a partnership, joint venture, agency relationship, franchise relationship or any fiduciary duty between PDCs and/or MSBs and Microsoft. Microsoft does not have any ​influence over the terms, conditions or pricing of the services offered by MSBs or PDCs. In addition, Microsoft is not liable for information contained on external MSB or PDC sites that are linked to this site. You are free to contact and negotiate the services you require directly with MSBs or PDCs; Microsoft does not have and disclaims any interests in your business relationship with MSBs and/or PDCs.​

The next Windows and Devices Partners community call is on Thursday, February 16 at 12:00PM Eastern Time, 9:00AM Pacific Time. This month’s call will focus on Microsoft FastTrack for Windows 10, the recently announced addition to Microsoft FastTrack that will help you accelerate your customers’ Windows 10 adoption. We’ll also talk about Microsoft Intune for Education, a new program that helps schools easily set up and manage classroom devices.

Sign up for the February 16 partner call

Microsoft FastTrack for Windows 10 – Deployment assistance through partners

Our guest presenter for FastTrack for Windows on February 16 is Liz Keyser. As a FastTrack for Windows project manager, Liz manages content and partner programs for FastTrack for Windows.

FastTrack for Windows provides a single digital destination for the tools, resources, and guidance needed for a successful rollout of Windows 10. Unique to this service is that deployment planning and service delivery is provided through partners. We are making it easier for customers to find the right partners to assist in their deployment directly through the FastTrack portal. Partners will be able to identify applicable offers to help you accelerate Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus deployment, including Windows Accelerate for proofs of concept and pilots, Desktop Deployment Planning Services, and the Windows Defender ATP Customer Rebate offer. If you have the Windows and Devices competency, you can request funding for Windows Accelerate offers directly through FastTrack.

Resources

• Microsoft FastTrack announcement for partners
• Get on the FastTrack to deploy Windows 10
• Microsoft FastTrack website
• Windows Accelerate
• Windows and Devices competency
• Microsoft FastTrack Yammer group 

 Microsoft Intune for Education

Our guest presenter for Intune for Education on February 16 is Andrea Schneider. Andrea is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Windows and Devices in the Microsoft US subsidiary, leading those efforts in the Education and SMB space.

In today’s classrooms, more than 90 percent of schools use shared devices, with unique demands to set up and manage these devices. Educators face more demands than ever before, with nearly 50 percent of teachers serving as their own tech support in their classrooms. Specially designed for schools that want to put devices in classrooms and not touch them again for the rest of the school year, Intune for Education makes it easy for either IT admins, or teachers playing the role of IT in the classroom, to get up and running in minutes on Windows 10 devices and easily manage shared devices.

Partner sales and marketing assets for Intune for Education are available on the Microsoft Education Partner Network.

• Read the announcement about Microsoft Intune for Education
• Join the Microsoft Education Partner Network (MEPN) for access to partners sales and marketing materials

Windows and Devices Partner Community

• Sign up for the February 16 partner call
• Community call schedule
• Windows and Devices Partners Yammer group
• Community blog series
• Training and enablement

We look forward to continuing the conversation with you about the Windows 10 opportunity. We use our Windows and Devices Partner Community calls, blog posts, and Yammer group to share information and connect with you. If you’re serious about building and sustaining a profitable Windows practice, and want in-depth assistance, email WinRecruit@microsoft.com or post your question in the Yammer group.

Whether you run Microsoft Dynamics ERP, or even just Quickbooks, you probably don't realize how long your company would be down if you suffered a hardware failure, ransomware attack, or even a site disaster like a fire or flood.

Most companies don't realize that a typical serious data loss or corruption, even with a solid backup system in place, can often take days or even weeks to be back up and running again.  There are a variety of reasons  but just a few are much time it takes to fresh install windows server,  SQL Server, download the dozens of patches and install, the anti-virus software, ERP software, license files, ERP data, configuration etc.  And this all assumes your IT personnel are available immediately to address things.

With EverSafe, you have a system that is taking complete 'snapshots' of all your servers, typically every hour.  Any kind of downtime and you can simply restore files, or actually fail over to the on-premise EverSafe hardware server or EverSafe servers in the cloud should your site be damaged.

A backup system that isn't tested regularly isn't really worth much.  A Symantec survey shows more than 50% of all backups aren't able to be restored when needed.   With EverSafe, every night the system boots up a virtual copy of your servers and then emails you a screen shot of the windows login screen.  You can even configure complex testing scripts such as logging into the server, launching the ERP system and sending you a screenshot of the system up and running.  Imagine the peace of mind with a complete disaster testing being done every night automatically.

See a live demonstration here to see how it works!

One of the most common questions in consulting: Why should we upgrade to the next release?

Answer: To take advantage of the new features and enhancements to make your business run more efficiently.

If only it were that simple, in every organization the reasons to take on an upgrade are always different but at the core I believe the main driver is to take advantage of the improvements constantly being made to the software.  Each and every release offers many new and enhanced features that can help optimize and improve your business.

Some highlights of the enhancements made Dynamics GP 2016 and Dynamics 2016 R2

• Scan multiple pages for Document Attach
• Enter Prepayments for the entire Purchase Order amount, including tax. Prior to GP2016, pre-payments could only be entered for the PO Subtotal minus Trade Discount.
• Allow Credit Card as a Payment Type option to be used in the Payables Check Run process.  The total amount of the check run processed will create an open invoice for the Credit Card vendor.
• In Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 you will now have the option include or exclude inactive pay codes when looking up pay codes in the Payroll Transaction Entry Window for an employee.
• A new navigation list was added in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 that enhances the user’s ability to sort, search, and edit their Payroll Posting Accounts.  The new Payroll Posting Accounts navigation list allows for users to import and export their Payroll Posting Accounts setup.   For example, a user can export their setup, make changes in Excel, and then import those changes back into the system.
• SmartList favorite protection Greater control over changes to SmartList favorites is now available by requiring a password to modify a favorite. When users try to modify a SmartList favorite they will be prompted to enter a password.
• SmartList Designer SmartLists available in Advanced Lookups Users can now assign SmartList Designer List favorites to Advanced Lookup windows. Favorites now can be assigned to all lookup window
• Batch in use error message now Indicates the name of person editing a batch in the message "Batch is being edited by another user" There is now greater visibility for showing which specific users are editing batches. If you try to edit a batch that another user is already working with, that user’s ID appears in the message appears. Previously, the message only indicated that ‘another user’ was editing the batch.

And, there are many more.

A knowledgeable partner makes a large investment in staying up to date on what each release can bring to its customers, and it’s a great idea at upgrade time to schedule a review of the many new features included and how your organization could adopt and benefit from them.

As a consultant, it’s very rewarding to show a client something new that will immediately have an impact on the users experience and productivity, it’s what makes the job fun and exciting.

Kurt Quiggle, ERP Staff Consultant.  Kquiggle@arcticit.com.

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To kick off 2017, PowerObjects hosted a nine-session series of Microsoft Dynamics 365 educational webinars that covered a range of topics from apps, to design, to learning paths and more.

If you weren’t able to catch all of the sessions, you are in luck! The entire web series was recorded and is available for you to watch anytime on our webinars-on-demand page. Here is an overview of the nine sessions:

CRM for Dynamics 365: What’s New Overview 

This session explores and demos what’s new with the CRM for Dynamics 365 update. For those on previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you’ll learn what’s changing and what’s staying the same.

Speaker
Tad Thompson CRM-MCT
Senior Technical Advancement Developer, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: What’s New in Field Service

The service industry continues to become more transient with our mobile workforce but the need for system tracking and maintenance remains constant. This session explores how the new field service functionality can anticipate, automate, and even help prevent system disturbance.

Speakers
Bill Kern
Solution Design Consultant, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: App for Outlook 

Outlook and Microsoft Dynamics CRM have always played nice but, now their super powers have been combined to be better, stronger, and more streamlined.  In this session, we see how old friends like knowledge base articles, sales literature, and email templates can be pulled in directly from CRM to emails. The result will help you work faster and more efficiently while still tracking all client activities from Outlook into CRM.

Speaker
Avni Pandya
CRM Training Consultant, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: Relationship Insights

Explore the new relationship insight functionality that Sales Managers and CRM administrators have been craving, displayed visually within your Dynamics 365. See the amount of time dedicated to an opportunity or the health of a client relationship at the record level without having to ask the account executive.

Speaker
Tad Thompson CRM-MCT
Senior Technical Advancement Developer, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: Mobile Features

See all the new bells and whistles that empower us to do our jobs via our pockets. Learn about the new streamlined interface that won’t do the job for you, but nudges you in the right direction by putting content and priority a tile away.

Speaker
Michael Rich
Solution Design Consultant, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: What’s New in Portals

Portals are the gateway for your CRM for Microsoft Dynamics 365. They give users access, but not too much access.  This session explores how to make your customer, business partners, or employees’ experience better via the updated functionality. If you currently have a portal or are looking to add a portal, make sure to watch this session!

Speaker
Tad Thompson CRM-MCT
Senior Technical Advancement Developer, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: Designing the User Experience

Designing your CRM for Dynamics 365 just got a little bit easier. We’re talking about any business application needed for your CRM for Dynamics 365 system: entities, charts and business process flows would be some examples. Learn about the drag and drop functionality in designing these applications and, get this, the drag and drop designer extends to the site map. Yes, that means designing with NO CODE.

Speaker
Avni Pandya
CRM Training Consultant, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: Learning Paths

Have you ever leveraged a “how to” YouTube video? Or used a step-by-step guide to complete a task?  In this session, we will demo this functionality and explore the CRM for Dynamics 365 Learning Paths. That’s right, learn CRM while navigating CRM!  Learn how this will look and feel within your system and start planning on how you can leverage this for training and onboarding needs!

Speaker
Gretchen Opferkew CRM MVP
Director of Education, PowerObjects

CRM for Dynamics 365: What’s New in Project Service

Project managers rejoice! This session dives into how Microsoft project can now connect to CRM for Dynamics 365 – staffing that project just got easier! Build your project plan, staff your plan and repeat–now that you have this new functionality at your disposal.

Speaker
Robert Justen
Solution Design Consultant, Sales, PowerObjects

We hope you find each of these webinar recordings useful and that you learn a lot!

Happy CRM’ing!

The IT Channel Company (TICC), via it's division Quattro Business Solutions (QBS), an SMB Distributor for Microsoft Dynamics, has announced a new strategic partnership with Dynamics 365/CRM services and development firm MindsUnited.

The partnership will combine QBS' distribution capabilities and ERP expertise with MindsUnited's CRM knowledge, tools and services, according to officials of the two companies. As part of the deal QBS has acquired a stake in MindsUnited.

"As a business- to-business software company with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM solutions for partners and SMB customers, this strategic partnership allows us to unite our innovative CRM services with the marketing and distribution...

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This article describes the features, fixes, and other changes that are included in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.1.

New features introduced in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.1

Sell more with Social Selling Assistant

Microsoft Social Engagement introduces Social Selling Assistant, to empower your salespeople to sell more by leveraging social media. With this application, your salespeople get personalized and smart recommendations to share on their social networks to enable them increase their social presence, gain trust from their followers, and generate more leads.

You can access Social Selling Assistant from within Microsoft Social Engagement and install it from the Microsoft AppSource into your Dynamics 365 for Sales application. The AppSource app adds a new dashboard that contains Social Selling Assistant. Salespeople can access this dashboard from the Dynamics 365 web client, as well as from Dynamics 365 for tablets. Dynamics  365 for phones is currently not supported.

Share a post to LinkedIn

With this release you can add your personal LinkedIn account as a social profile. With it you can share any public post in Microsoft Social Engagement to your professional network on LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn social profile will be available for the post action “Post Link“. When you share to LinkedIn, you can choose between two visibility options: show the post to everyone on LinkedIn or to your network only. This post action is available across all Microsoft Social Engagement services, including the newly released Social Selling Assistant. For you to start sharing, go to Settings> Social Profiles, and then click the Add Profile button, select LinkedIn Profile, and follow the steps..

Japanese & Chinese (traditional) User interface

Microsoft Social Engagement introduces the user interface in Japanese and Chinese (traditional) languages. Users can change the language of the user interface under Settings > Personal Settings > Your Preferences. The localization of the user interface also includes the respective calendars for Japanese and Chinese (traditional) languages.

Issues that are resolved in Microsoft Social Engagement 2017 Update 1.1

In addition to the new features, Update 1.1 addresses the following issues and improvements:

• Fixed an issue where RSS feeds based on a keyword search topic were only acquiring data when at least one full feed custom source search topic was set up.
• Fixed an issue where we were unable to process a high number of RSS feeds added to Microsoft Social Engagement.
• Fixed an issue with the description of the Facebook User account type.
• Fixed an issue to improve readability of posts with multiple sentences and paragraphs.
• Fixed an issue where content from Blogs was displayed in JSON format.
• Fixed an issue with truncated tool tips for domains and custom tag names in the Allowed Domains and Custom Tags settings pages. The full label is now shown in the corresponding tool tips.
• Fixed several issues to reduce execution errors and the resulting number of e-mail notifications for Automation Rules.
• Data exported to Excel from our app will now use Excel’s date format. This means you will see dates according to the localization settings of your operating system and can change them easily.
• Data exported from the widget “Sources history” now labels all sources as expected.