How many of you readers think that SQL Maintenance is something that IT people do and that it doesn’t really affect you? Do you know if routine maintenance is being performed on your databases to keep them running at peak efficiency? Would you run your car without maintenance for months or years without routine maintenance?Recently, while working with one of our Dynamics SL clients we discovered that their SQL Server was not configured with maintenance plans (automated activities setup on a scheduled basis) to optimize and maintain the performance of their databases. They had their SQL Maintenance plan set up to backup their database, but no optimizations were configured. Much like a physical hard drive on your computer can become … [Read more...] about Dynamics ERP and SQL Server Maintenance
Dynamics SL 2011 R2 Enhancements
For our almost 200 Dynamics SL clients here in Minnesota and surrounding states, Dynamics SL 2011 was significant. Most of our clients have upgraded with few issues due to the stability and testing that was done to this product prior to its release.In the end the item that people have liked by far has been the availability of the Quick Query functionality that was added. This tool has been tremendous in terms of raw data dumps that people have wanted for years. Getting data out is no longer a problem due to the fact that this “module” (included with the System Manager for free) gives users access to the data using field names that users see in screens rather than difficult to use database table names with database field names-which … [Read more...] about Dynamics SL 2011 R2 Enhancements
Dynamics SL Quick Query Enhancement
Have you had the experience where a Quick Query in Dynamics SL takes too long to return results for you? You thought what you asked for was a simple query, but it’s taking too long to give you what you need. We used to have the opposite issue with Dynamics GP, where Smartlists (Quick Query equivalent with Dynamics GP) would only return 1000 records regardless of how many records needed to be in the results to get an exhaustive answer to our query.In Dynamics SL, you need to introduce Paging to correct this issue with the performance of your query.Paging is a function that allows for the Quick Query screen not to return huge amounts of data all at once. It is like a Bing or Google search in that you only get one page at a time. The … [Read more...] about Dynamics SL Quick Query Enhancement
Management Reporter and FRx
One of our largest clients on Dynamics GP 2010 asked me why we have not been pushing them to Management Reporter especially since they just upgraded. When I shared with her that MR is improving dramatically and that the performance should be better than FRx within the year, she was quite happy with that answer. This division of a large bank has a lot of transactions and could not spare more time waiting for financial reports to process.Please read the comments and especially the answers about Management Reporter from the Microsoft team. You can tell Microsoft is very committed to improving this product as it supports all 4 ERP platforms, Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, Dynamics NAV, and Dynamics AX.Attached is the link to this timely and … [Read more...] about Management Reporter and FRx
Dynamics AX 2012 Services Industry Summit in Jacksonville, FL February 13-16
When I signed up for the Jacksonville Dynamics AX Summit I did not expect to be working for one of a handful of partners that were slightly under 5 million in sales. In fact, at the event I started to be a bit self-conscious about our size, until I started to see the product demonstrated.When Tom Higginbotham demonstrated the integration between Sharepoint and AX 2012, I started to realize-we can sell and manage this Microsoft story quite well. One of the main themes of the event was demonstrating how well-integrated Dynamics AX 2012 is with Project Server, Excel, Word and Microsoft CRM. With the broad scope of materials available on the images, a Lync image, an Exchange image and an AX 2012 image, along with the demo scripts-it … [Read more...] about Dynamics AX 2012 Services Industry Summit in Jacksonville, FL February 13-16
Dynamics GP 2010 R2 Available, Stable and Rich in Features
Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 was a nice improvement over Dynamics GP 10. The web services offered expanded tremendously and the role tailed menus got even easier to use. Additional Smartlist built in queries were released and the software got a bit faster as well.We typically only have clients that have very few customizations do every upgrade that comes out so unless there is a specific need for a feature, we would not typically advise a client to upgrade from GP 2010 to GP 2010 R2. However, for the many clients that were still on Dynamics GP Version 10, the upgrade exodus to version 2010 has been tremendous, not only did we add more Dynamics clients in one month (December of 2011) than any time in our 18 year history here at Boyer, we … [Read more...] about Dynamics GP 2010 R2 Available, Stable and Rich in Features
Dynamics GP Year End Thoughts
Today is January 31st. As we look back at how we helped our Dynamics GP clients reconcile to the general ledger, and get W-2’s/1099’s printed and electronically sent, we should reflect on what other resources we can use to help improve this process next year.For Boyer clients, I would continue to attend our Dynamics GP Year End event each year. We get very good feedback on this event each year and people consistently provide positive feedback about the use of their time.For those of you that are not in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, here are some other great resources.The Dynamics GP Blog Community created some wonderful posts here: Schedule of Year-End Closing Blog Posts for Dynamics GP. Here you will find a … [Read more...] about Dynamics GP Year End Thoughts
Dynamics SL Recurring Billing for Software and Professional Services Organizations
Software developers have unique needs with regards to renewing software maintenance plans and generating periodic invoices. The Dynamics SL Billing Schedule/Revenue Recognition Schedule screen in Dynamics SL’s Flexible Billings module does a nice job-but the product our product saw yesterday was much better for a firm that has periodic billing needs that can change as more users or software components are added.The product is one that is developed by long-time Dynamics SL ISV Max Q Technologies.Here are some of the things that impressed me about John Pavain’s demonstration to our software developer prospect:The recurring element can be configured in either or both Accounts Receivable as well as Order Management. The product … [Read more...] about Dynamics SL Recurring Billing for Software and Professional Services Organizations
Dynamics AX 2012 Momentum
It’s hard to ignore the amount of improvement between Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics AX 2012. We have supported Dynamics SL for 18 years and Dynamics GP for 10 years. Dynamics SL has always been the leader in project accounting across the board for the Microsoft options. Dynamics SL has handled multi-company far better than the other Dynamics ERP options.What I see now is Dynamics AX has added tremendous functionality in the project accounting area and multi-company areas. Two improvements I am especially looking forward to that should come soon are a timecard entry screen using HTML5. This is slated for 2013. The other feature already exists in Dynamics AX and that is the capability to schedule resources according to needed … [Read more...] about Dynamics AX 2012 Momentum
Welcome to Dynamics AX 2012-Expert in Services Industries
If you've ever had a neighborhood bully kick your butt only to have the same thing happen to them by an older sibling, you'll understand my delight in Microsoft deciding to focus its impressive Dynamics AX product on Services Industries.There is one particular software firm we used to lose to larger engineering firms. Engineers love process and workflow. They want to see a product's whole flow from project scheduling of resources, to timecard, to timecard approval to project draft invoice to invoice to a/r, to g/l to financial report-and don't skip anything or just show us what's sexy!The challenge we always used to run into with Dynamics SL, which has tremendous financial and project accounting modules, unfolded something like this: we … [Read more...] about Welcome to Dynamics AX 2012-Expert in Services Industries
