Excel Reports Knowledge Base

Here's a great article on deploying Excel reports in version 10 (KB 949524). It's a pretty deep look at the process including info about setup on MOSS. You'll need customersource access to get to this but the article has a lot of info.

Big thanks to Clinton Weldon at I.B.I.S. for the pointer.

Eating My Sharepoint Dog Food

I've preached that MOSS 2007 is going to be important so I'm practicing what I preach at a MOSS architect class this week. Posting may be erratic.

GP 10 Road Show Results

The Dynamics Existing Customer Road Show was pretty good yesterday. Many of the items and themes I was aware of from Convergence but it was a nice refresher now that 10.0 is actually here. My best guess was that there was around a 130 people there. The breakdown (by my estimate) was 3% NAV, 10% SL and 87% GP. God there were a lot of us GP people which was great. They had so many GP folks that they ran out of packets to give us. There were no AX folks since AX wasn't featured in the road show.
The acronym parade continued with Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS), SQL Reporting Services (SRS) and Business Ready Licensing (BRL) getting the most play.
I ran into an number of people I know, some of whom have been featured on this site. It was nice to see Steve Gray of 4penny.net, David, Lars and Joe of SSYH, Sarah of IBG and Angie from epartners. Hmmm.... An ISV and 3 partners. I've got to get a life.
I worked on getting Steve Gray to come talk GP development on the podcast along with Bob Buresh of MS to give us the low down on Business Ready Licensing and hopefully Travis Wandell of MS talking about how to finance your Dynamics GP solution.
So what did I take away from the road show?

• GP 10 easily looks like the best release of GP yet. There's a much stronger emphasis on the user experience. This includes one or two button access instead of long menus, AR & AP balancing (inventory may be coming) and lots of little things like that.
  
• MOSS, MOSS, MOSS. Customers are still pretty skeptical and MS is still pushing this really hard. Get your spoon full of sugar and start figuring out how to get the MOSS medicine down.
  
• Business ready licensing is still really confusing for folks. The bottom line, it may or may not be right for you now. You're best option is  to get with your partner or MS and talk about the direction of your solution.  All the partners I've talked to aren't pushing it unless it makes sense for the client. In some cases it's the only smart choice, for others, not so much.
  
• The reporting model is still tough for people. There's just too many choices with Report Writer, Crystal, SRS, FRx, Smartlists & Smartlist builder and Excel reports with Excel Server. Many of them work through MOSS, a few don't. What scenarios create "live" reports vs. static reports? What do I when want static but get live and vice versa? The GP folks just aren't willing to kill a reporting solution so we've got a buffet.
  
• The Payroll/HR sections got the highest number of improvements in GP10. If you run Payroll or HR, that alone should make you interested in the upgrade.
  
• I realized how much I hate the stupid Fisher-Price diagrams. You know the primary color, text laden wheels, pyramids and charts that Microsoft and so many others like to do. I kept looking for a string to pull so the wheel would spin around and make "Moo" noises. Someone please use a Tablet PC and hand draw it in crayon for me.  That would be better.
  
• If you have a question about GP 10, go to the road show. There are LOTS of people there who can answer it.

Random Takeaways

• Some people still don't know what Convergence is. People who've been running GP for some time. Please email me with the address of the rock you live under and I'll make sure you get some information.
  
• The Dynamics group still doesn't have customer to customer support figured out yet. This gets a separate post.
  
• Some people like living in Fargo.
  
• It was weird walking out by the pool on a break to see 3 or 4 people in swimsuits lounging by the pool and 30 people in business casual on cell phones or smoking.
  

It's All About the SharePoint...Stupid

Pardon my paraphrasing of Bill Clinton's "It's all about the economy stupid" remark from a past presidential campaign, but it seems appropriate. Redmond Channel Partners takes a look at the new GP and SL and concludes that the connections to SharePoint are critical for partners. I say it's critical for anyone using GP into the future as I mentioned in this post  and this post way back in March.
 Stupid is a strong word but it's how I feel about the fact that I'm not far enough down the SharePoint road myself. I think the long time lag from 10.0 to the next version is necessary. This is a big step for a lot of folks, akin to the move from Pervasive to SQL Server. SharePoint integration should add tremendous capability but it will add complexity to the whole solution.
Heck even the diagrams explaining it are complex!

At Convergence 2007 It's All About the MOSS

It seems like money grows on trees for MS but at Convergence 2007 it's not about the trees, it's about the MOSS. That would Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server, not the gray stuff that grows on trees.

The bottom line going forward with GP is, learn MOSS. It's going to be the underpinnings of so much going forward that you're not going to have anything slick that you can do without Sharepoint. Yes it's more licenses, more servers, I know. But unless you're willing to give up all the collaborative features of GP in the future, you'll need MOSS. Let's face it, it's a collaborative world, so learn it sooner rather than later.