Fast Close and Decisions 2010 Update

We had a great session on closing the books faster using Dynamics GP at Decisions 2010 today. Thank you to everyone involved. The MSDynamicsWorld team was fantastic. Despite my best efforts to crash the question system with volume it held up just fine and we got some great questions out of that. Jivtesh provided an review of the session on his blog at http://www.jivtesh.com/2010/05/mark-polinos-fast-close-for-dynamics-gp.html

This was a lot of fun to do and I’m looking forward to more opportunities to do virtual conferences.

One of the questions afterward led me to realize that I misspoke so I would like to correct that here.

If you create and assign a Task in GP to another user, you can’t see that task later by default. However, there are some options to still make this process work fine for month end. The options are:

1) Assign the task to <Any User> and add the individual’s name that you want to complete the task to the beginning of the task description. All users can see these tasks and GP records who actually competed the task and when.

2) Assign the task to a specific user and use SmartList Builder, Excel Report Builder, SSRS, Crystal Reports, Excel or other reporting tool to build a report from the Dynamics..SY01403 table in Dynamics GP. This table holds all the tasks by user making it easy to build into a report.

3) Assign the task to a specific user and create a custom report using Report Writer in Dynamics GP pointed to the syUserTasks (Dynamics..sy01403). The advantage to this method is that no additional products are necessary and the custom report is easy to export and import. The down side of course is that you have to use Report Writer.

Weekly Dynamic: Tasks in the v9 Homepage

While Dynamics GP tasks won't replace Outlook any time soon, there are some nice task features in v9. Clicking "New Task" on the home page will open the task list. You have to click "New Task" again to actually create a new task.


Adding task info, assigning it to a user and adding a status are all pretty straight forward but now you can actually add a link as well. Clicking the Link dropdown button gives you a choice of a GP link, a web page or an external link. Make your selection and add the link.


Selecting a GP link gives you a selection box like the one for toolbars and picking an external link provides a browse button.


The ability to take you directly to where the task needs to be done is a big improvement. This is definitely useful for that budget spreadsheet, the exchange rate website and as a direct link to a GP maintenance routine. That's just a few examples of how tasks can be useful. Now you can remind yourself to run checklinks and provide a link right to the menu!