If you are developer or application consultant, who customizes and integrates Microsoft Great Plains with eCommerce applications, you probably already come across the problem of autoposting when you already fed in and created working batch in SOP, POP, Payroll, etc. Typical eCommerce example – you can create SOP Order or Invoice and even apply deposit or payment against this document, however it is not clear how to post the batch automatically – eConnect leaves it to the operator for verification and approval. You can have many different customization approaches to do the job – in this small article we would like to share with you very elegant method, using GP Dexterity process server to do the job:
o Dexterity Engine. Microsoft Dexterity or former Great Plains Dexterity is currently the engine for so-called fat client, it processes according to the dictionary (DYNAMICS.DIC) and this dictionary (plus few so-called third party dictionaries) plays all the business logic of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
o Dexterity Posting Logic. Instead of trying to replicate pretty complex posting logic of Dynamics GP in SQL Stored Procedures, it is better idea to deploy Dexterity Posting logic directly. You simply “provoke” Microsoft Dynamics GP workstation to post at the certain event firing, provoking in the sense that Dexterity thinks that operator pushes Post button on the batch or master posting forms.
o Scenario. You use eConnect to create work documents and place them into the batch, you do not do any posting, you just “signal” in one custom table that this specific batch in AP is ready to be posted. Customized Great Plains workstation, running permanently, say on the processing server, checks every few seconds this signaling table and finds that batch is ready to be posted. It calls Dexterity Posting chain of procedures in AP module to do the job.
o Upgrade Safe Customization. If you try to implement posting logic in SQL Stored Procedure, every new version will require fundamental revision for your SQL scripts. If you call Dexterity procedures, you just verify that the interface is still the same and upgrade is pretty simple.
o Smart Integration. The described logic allows you to deploy auto posting in any GP module, where posting is applicable. We know examples when customer deploys this smart logic for the integration. Imagine, you can advance GP Integration Manager data import with auto posting to provide automatic on-going data conversion and feeding from your legacy or third party accounting or MRP system.
o For Web Developer. All you need to do is deploy eConnect or relatively simple SQL Stored Procedure to feed order data into work tables: SOP10100, SOP10200, etc. You do your job in Visual Studio.Net C# or VB and then Dexterity posting engine does the rest of the job.