Microsoft Great Plains upgrade, customization redesign, placing back into Microsoft Dynamics annual enhancement program, custom reports version revision, Dexterity and VBA/Modifier custom logic upgrade
When you have out-of-the-box non-modified version of Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains 6.0, 7.0, 7.5, 8.0 or 9.0 upgrade is pretty straight forward process, Dynamics GP Utilities do the job. However this ideal case is rare, real customers have Microsoft Dexterity customizations, ReportWriter modified reports, modified Great Plains forms (Modifier with VBA scripts), Crystal Reports, SQL stored procedures – all these modifications needs professional consultant to be analyzed, upgraded and even redesigned. Let’s look at technical highlights:
o Microsoft Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity customizations were introduced in earlier 1990th and since then the whole spectrum of Great Plains clients depends on these modifications. Dexterity was initially aimed to provide database independence (with Dexterity cursors – these were working with Btrieve/Pervasive SQL, Ctree as well as MS SQL Server 6.5). In 2004 Microsoft Business Solutions stopped support for all the other DB platforms, except Microsoft SQL Server 2000/7.0. This single fact makes Dexterity cursors pretty slow and less efficient, than aggregated logic of SQL select and update statements. The other typical Dexterity customization upgrade issues are alternate forms.
o ReportWriter reports. Microsoft Dynamics GP upgrade guidelines list reports, that needs to be recustomized, or modified from scratch. Our experience indicates that in the majority of cases we can “upgrade” these reports without “demolition” by analyzing change to Dexterity functions, introduced in the new version.