I'm working through new stuff in GP 2013 as part of my joint session with Errol tomorrow and frankly, all of my favorite new features won't fit in the time that I have to present. I figured most users wouldn't mine if went a little long, by like 3 hours, but 'they' said no, I have to choose. It's not quite like choosing between my children because let's face it, buying Dynamics GP is way cheaper and less smelly than having a child, I mean a teenager but and infant could work too there I guess. But I digress.
I'm skipping the vote this week to reflect on all of the cool stuff we asked for that made it into GP 2013. Things like depreciation undo, printer selection, P.O. prepayments and clearing unit accounts at year end. Oh and there is better SSRS integration and tolerance handling and...there I go again. So I thought that I would leave you with a short tale (I mean story, tail is the thing that wags) that I'm certain, is probably not very true, mostly.
This conversation almost certainly didn't take place in a unnamed hallway in an out of way building on Microsoft's Fargo campus between an unnamed program manager and an generic Dexterity developer, when Dynamics GP 2013 was merely a gleam in Marketing's eye.
Program Manager: So the world is moving to the cloud and so are we. We need to make the future of Dynamics GP cloudy.
Developer: Um, you mean like MAS 90?
Program Manager: No, I mean that we have to build a web client for the next version of Dynamics GP.
Developer: Funny you should mention that. In what little work time I have left after reading all of Mark Polino's blog posts every day, I had lunch with a robot space alien that gave me a magical box that turns Dexterity into HTML...or maybe I wrote it myself and you're just not paying me enough. Either way, I live in Fargo so it's all good, eh.
Program Manager: That's great! But we can't just ship a web client. Users will want more than that. It's not like we're Oracle and we can keep raising enhancement fees without delivering any value. Besides, Polino already suspects that Musgrave uses alien technology for the Support Debugging Tool. We're going to need to add more features as a diversion. But where do we get them from?
Developer: Hey, what about Microsoft Connect? You know, that website where users can suggest and vote on new feature for the next release of Dynamics GP.
Program Manager: I keep talking about that but I didn't know that anyone actually uses it. Dust that off and see what you can find. I know that we need some Fixed Asset stuff. People whine at me about Fixed Assets all the time. Maybe some more reporting thingies. Reporting is like Chinese food. People want more 20 minutes after you give them something great. Oh and we need name for the new product. Something Marketing can't say no to. Maybe 'Dynamics GP Super ERP Software of Greatness...with Bacon'? You can never go wrong with bacon.
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This was definetly, assuredly not how Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 probably got all of those great new features that we've been asking for.
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