13 April 2009

Weekly Dynamic: Navigation Pane, Lists and Financial Data

Continuing on with new navigational and list functions in Dynamics GP 10 I want to take a look at what happens you pick Financial on the Navigation pane on the left. When you do this, the home page is replaced with a Financial home page and a new set of lists is available on the left. This opens up a whole new set of one click navigation options for Dynamics GP.

For example, selecting Account Transactions from the left, puts journal entry transaction details in the center of the screen. Info about the selected JE is available at the bottom with Debits on the left and Credits on the right. (Something the default Smartlists still don't do, but I'm not bitter).

Across the top are functions in a ribbon like bar. For example, correcting a JE is now a simple matter of selecting the transaction's checkbox and clicking the back out or correction icon. New Journal Entries can be created directly from this screen along with most other financial functions like posting transactions, creating new accounts and generating reports.

The data on this screen can be filtered to limit what a user sees. It can be added to the home page and easily sent to Excel. The Excel export seemed much faster than with Smartlists. Of course you can drill back to the original transaction.

The cool part about this is that a user could pretty much abandon the traditional drop down interface at this point and have everything contextual. The main pane on the right changes to fit the Navigation selection on the left. This means that if a user picks Checkbook on the left, they get checkbook related data and a Checkbook contextual ribbon on the top.

(For all the Microsofties, I know, it's not technically a "ribbon" but I call 'em as I see 'em).

The only issue I've found is that it's a little harder to explain to folks where to go. The old Transactions->Financial nomenclature made navigation explanation simple. "Pick Financial on the Navigation bar" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

In short, I'm really trying to use the new navigation functions. I think that they are the future of the product and I'm enjoying finding all the cool new stuff Microsoft slipped in here.