06 April 2009

Weekly Dynamic: Module Homepages in Dynamics GP 10

While doing the 50 Tips presentation at Convergence, my co-presenter, Pam Misialek, repeatedly pointed me away from the drop down menus and to the home page for navigation. With the emphasis being placed on this from Microsoft, I'm working on changing the way I work so that I can better help you.

There's a lot of subtle benefits to the homepage and lists plus there may even be a drawback or two. Consequently I thought that I would spend a couple of Weekly Dynamics taking you through these features.

When you pick Home on the Navigaton Pane to the left you get Smartlists in the Navigation Pane and a set of metrics and Outlook connections on the main Home Page. However, if you pick one of the other buttons like Sales or Purchasing things get even cooler.

Selecting the Sales button for example changes the Home Page to show all the menu choices for Sales in one place. There are headers that correspond the menu above. For example, instead of selecting Transactions->Sales->Sales Transaction Entry (3 clicks) users can select Sales off of the navigation screen and pick Sales Transaction Entry under the Transaction header (2 clicks). If a user is already on the sales homepage, it's one click or 1/3 of the work! Even more important, it's 1/3 of the work every time you click something on that page and all your options are available at a glance.

User can also roll up sections to get them out of the way. Setup and Utilities for example are used left often so it's convenient to roll them up and get those individual items out of the way.

That's enough to get you started. Next time we will dig deep into the benefits of Lists on the navigation pane.