Great Plains Integrations Tools: IM, eConnect, Dexterity – overview for programmer

div align="center">text file – Advanced ODBC query with
Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP is good platform forunion construction should be considered
integration with your current and legacy3. eConnect. This SDK has various exposures,
applications: ecommerce, CRM, EDI, Microsofthowever the core of this connector is set of
Access and even non-Microsoft platforms, suchencrypted stored procedures. Great Plains 10.0
as Oracle, Lotus Notes Domino, MySQL/PHP, DB2.installation automatically installs eConnect stored
In this small publication we would like to reviewprocs, for earlier versions, such as 9.0 you can
Dynamics GP or Great Plains (as it was previouslyinstall eConnect Runtime manually. We do not
known) integrating tools and scenarios:recommend eConnect to Great Plains customers,
1. Dynamics GP Integration Manager textwho are on version, earlier than 9.0. So, if you are
integrations. This module is user friendly and youon GP 8.0 or 7.5 – you can consider
can easy build CSV or Tab delimited text filesdeploying eConnect, but just the fact of SDK
integrations. IM has predefined destinations tomaturity should incline you to the idea to upgrade
such popular GP objects as Customer, Vendor,your Great Plains installation to 10.0 or 9.0.
Employee, GL Account, plus Transactions: SaleseConnect is open for C# or VB.Net Microsoft
Order Processing (Quote, Invoice, Sales Order),Visual Studio programmer, who is also familiar
Purchase Order Processing (Purchase Order,with XML and SQL Stored Procedures concept.
Receiving Transaction). If you are PayrollJust one warning – eConnect
outsourcing company – you can easilydoesn’t post GP batches, consider Great
integrate your customers’ employeePlains Auto Posting Server to fill this gap
time cards to give you the idea about typical4. Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity is the EDI and
industry casefundament of GP architecture. Dex is almighty,
2. Integration Manager Advanced cases. Here youwhen you are thinking about Great Plains
have more challenging scenarios, when you havecustomization and integration. However Dex
to pull data from external database. In IM yourequires professional Great Plains Dexterity
likely will need to deploy Advanced ODBC queries,programmer to be involved, and it might be not
based on Microsoft SQL Server Views (whichfeasible to train your IT internal programmers to
might be heterogeneous: SQL Linked Server tobegin software development in Dexterity.
Oracle DB, for example). Plus advanced ODBCDexterity is good fit to program integration, when
query should be considered when you have TexteConnect doesn’t provide functionality
file to be integrated, which has non-structured– good example is GP invoicing module
format (you have to weed out comment lines,5. SQL Stored Procedures. As Great Plains, since
headers, footers and other attribute of humanversion 8.0 is available exclusively on MS SQL
report). Also, consider the case, when you haveServer DB platform, it is natural temptation to try
to produce document header and lines from singleprogram integration in SQL stored procedures.