Cell Phone Why Should I Upgrade

Cell Phone Why Should I Upgrade

by: Declan Tobin

We hear from friends or just general chat by people wanting to upgrade their cell phones. There are a number of very good reasons to upgrade but unfortunately the main reason people upgrade and without thinking is because the cell phone manufacturers are blitzing us with advertising on a daily basis with new features. I bet you can pinpoint a few friends who have new cell phones and have no idea as to how to go about using all the key features.

Upgrading your cellular phone needs some careful thinking. Many of us upgrade for fashion purposes to keep up with modern looks, understandable if you have a cell phone from the early years you might want something a little more portable and flexible in use.

Upgrading still costs money so choose wisely. There are many different upgrade options today such as Camera cell phones; PDA Cell Phones, GPS Cell phones and now we have the new line of 3G cell phones available. Honestly the best place to choose a cell phone is on the Internet, it’s your decision and not the sale rep at some store twisting your arm for a sale and blinding you with useless information.

You need to know the differences and the different functionality of the cell phones before you just go ahead and upgrade. By doing a little research you get to choose exactly what fits your needs and budget. GPS phones (Global Positioning Satellite) are widely used by people with a love for climbing or adventure walking in remote regions.

GPS phones can be pinpointed to a pacific area should you be lost or in need of assistance, long distance drivers and employers also find good use for these phones. Employers can trace the whereabouts of employees or the phones themselves if lost or stolen.

PDA phones are ideal for people who like using pocket organisers. These phones are expensive but have similar functionality to that of a PC, ideal for office workers or sales reps.

Camera phones are self explanatory, simply a phone that can take photos. There is more to camera cell phones but in a nut shell that’s what they do. They are classed more of a fun phone to have and prove very popular among all age groups. Once you have an idea of what the different phones do and can’t do you are better placed to come up with an upgrade decision.

Flip phones are very popular at the moment, these are the phones with the pop up screen, they are available in Camera, PDA and GPS format but be aware they are not for everyone, I personally do not find them very user friendly but that’s my opinion, I like to just answer the incoming call without messing around with the phone.

The phones on today’s market a very light weight compared to the large style from years ago, those of you who still use these type phones today should look at upgrading and come to terms with the technology of today.

General advice:

If you experience a bad reception on a regular basis you should check with your cell phone carrier first before changing the phone, most of the time it tends to be a bad signal due to the cellular phone carrier rather than the fault of your phone, many people just jump and buy the phone only to find that they same problem is reoccurring. In certain area’s you may need a small cell phone antenna or booster costing very little to get a better reception.

Powering down very quickly:

If you find that your cell phone powers down too quickly the chances are you need a new battery, once again many people exchange the whole cell phone instead of just the battery. The conception that batteries are almost as costly as the cell phone is untrue. You can get batteries at very competitive pricing along with third party battery from different suppliers.

No Power:

If you find that you have no power in your cell phone even after charging for hours, it could be one of three things. Firstly the battery in the cell phone could be completely dead, secondly the recharge supply unit could have a problem and last of all it could be the cell phone itself, by eliminating the first two you could save yourself money. It may all seem common sense but you would be surprised at how many good working cell phones are thrown out.

About The Author

Declan Tobin is a successful freelance writer providing advice for consumers on purchasing a variety of Prepaid Phone Plans which includes Cell prepaid plans, Carriers, and more! His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information for all of your phone interests and needs. http://www.no1incellphones.com.

This article was posted on April 08

by Declan Tobin

Provisioning/User Management System Upgrades: Part

Provisioning/User Management System Upgrades: Part One Ten Reasons Why Not To Do An Upgrade or The Gentle Art of ขNot Doingข When Good Systems Go Bad

by: Hallett German

Tommy Sherman daily monitors a helpdeskprovisioning queue for a large company. The current provisioning/user management system was written with homegrown software. It has not had a major update for several years. Each day, he is getting more and more frustrated. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot keep up with the increasing workload. New employees are screaming for their system ids and have no way of checking their id creation status. Existing employees are demanding timely updates to their ids when they transfer across business units. Exemployees exist in the system months after departure. His frustrated manager will be meeting with him this afternoon to talk about his ขunresponsiveness.ข

The above is a real world example. It may happen if a provisioning/user management system is not meeting company needs and there are no plans to upgrade.

This is a two part series on the dark side of provisioning/user management upgrade projects. Upgrade will be defined here to include new hardware and software, and also the supporting environment of business processes, roles, organizations, business rules, etc. This article will discuss reasons why these projects do not get started or fail to reach completion. The next article will cover how to overcome these reasons.

Here are ten reasons why the needed systems improvement are not implemented:

1. No Budget

IT budgets are frozen or only the most needed projects get funded. This will impact hardware/software maintenance, hiring or contracting needed resources, and more.

2. Infrastructure is Not Sexy.

The budget is there but fixing an existing provisioning system is not considered a priority. Sadly, many companies see broken systems or processes as the ขcost of doing business.ข Or companies will do only the minimum upgrade to keep IT infrastructure running. But beware, as once was said in a wellwritten article ขCheap is Expensive.ข It will come back to haunt you.

3. No Technical, Management, Or Financial Champions

It may be a great idea but there may not exist anyone who can sell this at the mid or upper management level in your company. Also, you may experience ขchampion burnoutข – where past champions who unsuccessfully tried to sell the upgrade no longer wish to do it again.

4. Business Case Is Hard to Write

Only by including both ขsoftข and ขhardข savings can can one get the true picture of an upgrade’s return. ขSoftข costs include user login downtime and productivity declines (cost of finding the current information about a person, document, or hardware device), increased calls to helpdesk and decline of helpdesk staff morale) and more. However, ขsoftข savings are often considered irrelevant by management and usually the numbers aren’t there if you rely on hard savings alone.

5. Can’t Agree on Software/Hardware

For various reasons, technical types cannot always agree which is the best software to meet company needs. Differences may be over preferred operating system, vendor, hardware, software configuration and features, or political/personal whims.

6. Undocumented Current Environment

Perhaps due to turnover or lack of time, no one has documented (or recently updated) what the ขAS ISข user management/provisioning environment looks like. This includes roles and responsibilities, business rules and processes, and software/hardware.

7. No Shared and Communicated Vision

No one has written and communicated a possible ขTOBE ข roadmap for provisioning/user management software to decision makers and influencers. This may be due to lack of understanding of the ขASISข environment, politics, lack of time, or lack of knowledgeable resources to create such a roadmap. To ensure overall success, the ขTOBEข roadmap ideally should advocate a phased approach.

8. No Project Resources

All available staff who would be working on a software upgrade are busy doing other tasks (like system administration, user support, or other projects). So, there are no available resources that can be dedicated full/parttime to the project. Also, the company may be reluctant to hire outside consultants to perform the upgrade for various reasons.

9. No Agreement on Upgrade Requirements

It is possible to agree on vision, product, and project team and still get nowhere! Reasons could be an honest difference of opinion on configuration settings, hardware setup, features to enable, degree of customization, and more. Unclear and disputed requirements from the start will likely bring disastrous results.

10. Other Concerns

These are other factors too numerous to mention which could impact getting an upgrade project off the ground. – security concerns, lack of physical space for hardware, no organization/resources for administration, remote locations building their own unapproved ขundergroundข solutions, organizational changes and mergers (with new organizations having their own IdM vision), vendor changes and mergers, and more.

Conclusion

I hope that this does not discourage you from moving forward on getting your provisioning/user management underway. By identifying possible obstacles, you can then begin to plan to overcome each of them. In the last article of the series, we will discuss what you can do to get your provisioning /user management upgrade on management’s radar.

For Further Information

Abridean ข15 Rules for a Successful User Management and Provisioning Projectข

http://www.abridean.com/SubPage.php?parent=experience&child=WhitePapers&grandchild=15Rules

Gomolski, Barbara ขWhen Cheap Is Expensiveข Computerworld 2/16/2004

http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/roi/story/0,10801,90151,00.html

Lewis, Jamie, Blum, Dan ขThe Enterprise Directory Value Propositionข Burton Group 1999 http://www.burtongroup.com/

Microsoft ขThe Provisioning Challengeข http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/mps/challenge.asp

About The Author

Hallett German ([email protected]) is president of Alessea Consulting (www.alessea.com) specializing in Identity Management, Project Management, and Business Development. Copyright 2004 Alessea Consulting All Rights Reserved

This article was posted on August 07, 2004

by Hallett German

Microsoft Great Plains as ERP and Microsoft CRM as

Microsoft Great Plains as ERP and Microsoft CRM as CRM

by: Andrew Karasev

If you have Microsoft Great Plains and support it for your company then you need to know some technical details about Great Plains version upgrade and what is going on behind the scenes, which options do you have in case of Dexterity, VBA, SQL customization, additional complexity comes with migration from ctree/Pervasive to MS SQL/MSDE.

What is upgrade in the language of technology? Upgrade has server and client sides.

Server side upgrade converts tables from old format to the new one. In general words Microsoft Business Solutions developers may change table structure, append additional fields to add new functionality, things like that. Upgrade copies the table with changes to temporary table, then drops original table, recreates it with new structure and copies all the data from temp table to the newly created one.

Workstation side workstation is written in Great Plains Dexterity and has Dynamics.exe engine and DYNAMICS.DIC dictionary. These two plus all the additional files will be replaced with the new ones. Other dictionaries, such us REPORTS.DIC and FORMS.DIC should be also upgraded and upgrade will try to deal with them automatically. In some cases modified reports (in REPORTS.DIC) could not be upgraded and need to be recreated in the new version.

What is customization upgrade? You should consider different types of customizations: Dexterity, VBA/Modifier, SQL, ReportWriter, Crystal Reports

Dexterity Customization being very short Dexterity may have so called Custom Forms these do not need upgrade they should work as is. Then Dexterity may alter existing Great Plains forms (socalled Alternate Great Plains forms) in this case Dexterity customization should be redone for these forms/screens. Plus additional consideration should be given to Dexterity triggers, shadow tables, etc.

VBA/Modifier customization Modifier allows you to modify existing Great Plains windows it creates so called modified Great Plains windows, stored in FORMS.DIC. Usually modification is placing new buttons or fields, which in turn will be given VBA s (stored in DYNAMICS.VBA). VBA s may call something nice, like Crystal Report, or have some data access logic. Usually the old version of DYNAMICS.VBA workds with the new version. You may need to rearrange buttons on the modified form.

SQL you may have some stored procs for data integration, EDI or the like if the addressed tables will be changed in the new version then you need to analyze your SQL code. The good news is Microsoft Business Solution doesn’t make a lot of changes since version 7.0, because Microsoft is now trying to merge the products it owns: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta and so has different priorities

ReportWriter MBS doesn’t change tables, but it keeps changing Dexterity formulas used in ReportWriter original reports this is the problem in socalled Modified Reports upgrade usually you have these reports modified: SOP Blank Invoice form, SOP Blank Picking ticket, etc. If report can not be upgraded it should be redone in the new version with some exceptions.

Crystal Reports the nice thing about Crystal Report id doesn’t need to be upgraded (if the fields in the tables exist in the new version which is usually true statement)

What is upgrade for thirdparty modules? Your Great Plains may have socalled third party modules: Mekorma, Kampdata, Horyzon, Wennsoft, Avalara, Truepay, Trinity, Intellisol to name a few

Third party modules may have their own utility for upgrade. You just need to know that your thirdparty is ready for the new Great Plains version if not you just wait and stay on the old version.

What is migration from Ctree/Pervasive.SQL 2000 to MS SQL/MSDE? MBS has migration tool. You need first to install Great Plains on SQL Server with exactly the same account/segments structure and then install migration tool (it is Dexterity chunk) on your ctree/Pervasive workstation then, when you integrate the chunk you will map it to target SQLbased Great Plains Company, select all system and company tables, click the button and it will move all your tables onebyone. In the case when your Great Plains ctree/Pervasive has third parties you need to check if the vendor has migration tool otherwise you have to do manual move, use SQL Linked server to your legacy data

Do I need consultant? It is probably good idea to have consultant to do the upgrade. We strongly recommend you to use consultant in the following cases

You have Dexterity customization

You are doing migration from Pervasive/Ctree to Microsoft SQL Server/MSDE, especially when you have thirdparties without migration tools

You have a lot or ReportWriter Modified Great Plains Reports

You have old version of Great Plains: Dynamics or eEnteroprise 6.0 or prior in this case you can not appeal to Microsoft Technical Support it is discontinued

Your Great Plains has more than 20 users and you have to have upgrade done over the weekend if it fails you have business problems

You don’t have support in this case you have to select your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner and pay for the annual support/enhancement plan you will get new registration key and will be ready for the upgrade

Good luck in upgrading and if you have issues or concerns √ we are here to help! If you want us to do the job give us a call 18665280577! [email protected]

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, California, Colorado, Texas, New York, Georgia and Florida, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com) You can reach Andrew at 16309615918 or 18665280577. He is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 06, 2004

by Andrew Karasev

How To Upgrade Your PC

How To Upgrade Your PC

by: Alex Fir

Before you upgrade your PC hardware it’s best to search all options and ask for advice. Only after this you can go and buy a new component. It’s also useful to check if you really need an upgrade.

Do not upgrade your very old PC because it would cost a lot of money. It’s cheaper to buy a new computer in such cases because they are easier to upgrade later.

Upgrading the hard drive:

The majority of people do not really need to upgrade their hard disk, unless they use it for playing a lot of music, movies, and games. A 20 GB hard drive is sufficient to keep new office and internet applications, and all your files and data.

A medium sized hard drive would be around 40 GB and the maximum would be around 60 – 80 GB.

Before upgrading your hard disk it’s best to do a complete disk checkup including disk scan, defragmentation, etc. If you happen to be an average user and need more storage you can add an additional drive to the existing one. Before an upgrade, be sure to back up your files.

Upgrading the RAM:

RAM or Random Access Memory is the shortterm memory of the PC. It keeps data that is being worked on now and may or may not be transferred to the hard drive that represents the longterm memory of the computer.

Current processors can perform an enormous number of operations per second. The hard drive, on the other hand, is significantly slower to handle so much information. This is where a highspeed RAM memory comes in. RAM needs a power supply to keep data. Once the power is turned off the data is lost.

Almost all PCs have 64 MB RAM and often 128 MB. If you want to run newer applications on your PC then you must upgrade to 128/256 MB RAM.

A lot of people who upgrade from 98 to Win 2000 discover that their computers lock up very often. This is because they don’t have enough RAM.

CPU upgrade:

If you choose this upgrade, you will have faster execution of instructions but it leaves the RAM and hard drive capacity unchanged.

This sis the most cost effective upgrade and can increase the efficiency of your computer considerably. Seek a professional help before you take a decision.

Motherboard:

Upgrading motherboard is not such a good proposition unless you replace the CPU and the RAM as well to achieve greater performance levels. You upgrade the motherboard either because the current one doesn’t support a faster CPU or the CPU requires a different socket. It could be very expensive. Think about buying a new PC.

Ports:

Ports are sockets at the back of your computer where you plug in external devices. Older PCs work on ขparallelข ports. If you need to work a lot on peripherals such as digital cameras, digital camcorders, CD burners, and scanners then you need to upgrade to USB and Firewire ports if you are not using them already.

Both tend to be cheaper than the ขparallelข and SCSI devices they replace. Always make sure that there are no compatibility problems with other devices in your PC when you plan to upgrade any hardware on your machine.

About The Author

Alex Fir

If you are planning to buy laptop computer visit Laptop Computer Center for the latest news and information. http://www.laptopcomputerscenter.info/.

This article was posted on August 24

by Alex Fir

Microsoft Navision Customization Upgrade – tips fo

Microsoft Navision Customization Upgrade – tips for Programmer/IT Specialist

by: John Kleb

When Microsoft bought Navision it had the plan to take over European market of Business Applications. Now Navision has multiple installations in US and it is very good fit for midsize manufacturing companies. Currently Microsoft Business Solutions is on the way of creating socalled suites: Microsoft Financials, Microsoft Distributions, Microsoft HR, Microsoft Manufacturing. It is very difficult to say which product will be the core of which suite, but the best guess is this: Microsoft Great Plains Microsoft Financials and probably Distribution/Supply Chain Management and HR, Solomon Microsoft Project or Professional Services, Navision Microsoft Manufacturing. If you have Microsoft Business Solutions Navision and support it for your company then you need to know some technical details about Navision version upgrade and what is going on behind the scenes, which options do you have in case of C/SIDE customization or Jet Reports.

The challenge of Navision Upgrade This should be understood by both: software developer and company executive.

• One Dictionary in contract to such product as Microsoft Great Plains, where customization goes into separate dictionary Navision customization sits in the same dictionary. This means that when new version is out there the customization should be reanalyzed and moved from the old dictionary to the new. If you remember the history Navision actually merged several dictionaries couple of versions back this was very tough time for customization upgrade

• SQL Server side from this side upgrade is smooth, because Navision doesn’t use complex SQL functionality and SQL Server itself is rather data storage.

Do I need consultant? It is probably good idea to have consultant to do the upgrade. We strongly recommend you to use consultant in the following cases

• You have C/SIDE customization or any customization for your Navision

• You have a lot of custom Jet Reports

• Your Navision has more than 20 users and you have to have upgrade done over the weekend if it fails you have business problems

• You don’t have support in this case you have to select your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner and pay for the annual support/enhancement plan you will get new registration key and will be ready for the upgrade

Good luck in upgrading and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job give us a call 18665280577! [email protected]

About The Author

John Kleb is Certified Navision Specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Navision, Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Washington, Colorado, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com). You can contact John: [email protected]

This article was posted on September 02, 2004

by John Kleb

Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise Upgrade – things

Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise Upgrade – things to consider and FAQ

by: Andrew Karasev

If you have Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise (version 6.0 or earlier) and support it for your company then you need to know some technical details about Great Plains version upgrade and what is going on behind the scenes, which options do you have in case of Dexterity, VBA, SQL customization, additional complexity comes with migration from ctree/Pervasive to MS SQL/MSDE. Currently you are probably thinking to upgrade to Microsoft Great Plains 8.0 or 7.5.

What is upgrade in the language of technology? Upgrade has server and client sides.

Server side upgrade converts tables from old format to the new one. In general words Microsoft Business Solutions developers may change table structure, append additional fields to add new functionality, things like that. Upgrade copies the table with changes to temporary table, then drops original table, recreates it with new structure and copies all the data from temp table to the newly created one.

Workstation side workstation is written in Great Plains Dexterity and has Dynamics.exe engine and DYNAMICS.DIC dictionary. These two plus all the additional files will be replaced with the new ones. Other dictionaries, such us REPORTS.DIC and FORMS.DIC should be also upgraded and upgrade will try to deal with them automatically. In some cases modified reports (in REPORTS.DIC) could not be upgraded and need to be recreated in the new version.

What is customization upgrade? You should consider different types of customizations: Dexterity, VBA/Modifier, SQL, ReportWriter, Crystal Reports

Dexterity Customization being very short Dexterity may have so called Custom Forms these do not need upgrade they should work as is. Then Dexterity may alter existing Great Plains forms (socalled Alternate Great Plains forms) in this case Dexterity customization should be redone for these forms/screens. Plus additional consideration should be given to Dexterity triggers, shadow tables, etc.

VBA/Modifier customization Modifier allows you to modify existing Great Plains windows it creates so called modified Great Plains windows, stored in FORMS.DIC. Usually modification is placing new buttons or fields, which in turn will be given VBA scripts (stored in DYNAMICS.VBA). VBA scripts may call something nice, like Crystal Report, or have some data access logic. Usually the old version of DYNAMICS.VBA workds with the new version. You may need to rearrange buttons on the modified form.

SQL you may have some stored procs for data integration, EDI or the like if the addressed tables will be changed in the new version then you need to analyze your SQL code. The good news is Microsoft Business Solution doesn’t make a lot of changes since version 7.0, because Microsoft is now trying to merge the products it owns: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta and so has different priorities

ReportWriter MBS doesn’t change tables, but it keeps changing Dexterity formulas used in ReportWriter original reports this is the problem in socalled Modified Reports upgrade usually you have these reports modified: SOP Blank Invoice form, SOP Blank Picking ticket, etc. If report can not be upgraded it should be redone in the new version with some exceptions.

Crystal Reports the nice thing about Crystal Report id doesn’t need to be upgraded (if the fields in the tables exist in the new version which is usually true statement)

What is upgrade for thirdparty modules? Your Great Plains may have socalled third party modules: Mekorma, Kampdata, Horyzon, Wennsoft, Avalara, Truepay, Trinity, Intellisol to name a few

Third party modules may have their own utility for upgrade. You just need to know that your thirdparty is ready for the new Great Plains version if not you just wait and stay on the old version.

What is migration from Ctree/Pervasive.SQL 2000 to MS SQL/MSDE? MBS has migration tool. You need first to install Great Plains on SQL Server with exactly the same account/segments structure and then install migration tool (it is Dexterity chunk) on your ctree/Pervasive workstation then, when you integrate the chunk you will map it to target SQLbased Great Plains Company, select all system and company tables, click the button and it will move all your tables onebyone. In the case when your Great Plains ctree/Pervasive has third parties you need to check if the vendor has migration tool otherwise you have to do manual move, use SQL Linked server to your legacy data

Do I need consultant? It is probably good idea to have consultant to do the upgrade. We strongly recommend you to use consultant in the following cases

You have Dexterity customization

You are doing migration from Pervasive/Ctree to Microsoft SQL Server/MSDE, especially when you have thirdparties without migration tools

You have a lot or ReportWriter Modified Great Plains Reports

You have old version of Great Plains: Dynamics or eEnteroprise 6.0 or prior in this case you can not appeal to Microsoft Technical Support it is discontinued

Your Great Plains has more than 20 users and you have to have upgrade done over the weekend if it fails you have business problems

You don’t have support in this case you have to select your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner and pay for the annual support/enhancement plan you will get new registration key and will be ready for the upgrade

Good luck in upgrading and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job give us a call 18665280577! [email protected]

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 20, 2004

by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Great Plains: Getting New Users Licenses

Microsoft Great Plains: Getting New Users Licenses – Annual Service Plan FAQ

by: Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, Axapta, Microsoft CRM require existing customer to be on active service contract: enhancement program. Minimal maintenance plan gives you free new software version (however upgrade itself, if it is done by your MBS partner is not free). If you are outside of USA/Canada: Mexico, South America, UK, South Africa, France, Australia, New Zealand – you may have different promotion campaigns and might be not required to be on the service contract. In this article we assume that you are US/Canadian client.

Can I get new licenses without being on the service contract? The answer is no – we tried to negotiate with MBS on behalf of midsize and large corporate clients, who are socalled orphans, or without support/service plan. Please, understand the rules of ERP application support. It is normal practice when large business ERP requires service plan. Microsoft Business Solutions in turn requires its MBS partners to pass multiple certification and quality assurance (QA) tests

What is reenrollment fee? Currently reenrollment fee is 35% of the software price list. From time to time you may catch reenrollment promotion campaigns, the minimum known was 20% (September/October 2004). If you are on version eEnterprise 6.0 and skipped 4 annual payments (16%) and now in order to upgrade to Great Plains Professional 8.0 you pay 35% (which includes 16% enhancement plan for the next year), then your penalty is just 19% I’d say go ahead and reenroll.

Great Plains Standard vs. Professional. Great Plains Standard (or former Great Plains Dynamics) has certain limitations: number of users is capped at 10 and number of employees (US Payroll) is capped at 500. Great Plains Standard is available on MSDE and MS SQL Server

New Modules Addition. The same rule applies – you have to be on enhancement program to get additional modules. So, if you need say Fixed Assets module and if you are without support – you need to reenroll in order to get FA module reg key.

Customization Upgrade. If you need Great Plains Dexterity, Modifier/VBA, Continuum, eConnect. SQL Stored procs customization upgrade, you need to find MBS customization partner. As your customization was done by somebody else in the past (who probably is out of business now), we or the partner you select can not guarantee the upgradeability of your custom piece – we’ll try our best.

Reports Upgrade. Good news – if you have Crystal Reports, working with Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise 6.0 – then upgrade should be simple, because table structure didn’t change – only minor changes were introduced.

Switching to Great Plains. If you are considering Great Plains to be your ERP, we know successful implementations, customizations in the following industries: aerospace & defense, textile, nonprofit, services, recruitment & placement, oil & gas, pharmaceutical, hospital & healthcare, transportations, distributions, logistics & supply chain management, education, government, beverages, jewelry, gold & mining.

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 18665280577 or 16309615918, [email protected]

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Germany, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 03

by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Great Plains Upgrade – things to conside

Microsoft Great Plains Upgrade – things to consider and FAQ

by: Andrew Karasev

If you have Microsoft Great Plains and support it for your company then you need to know some technical details about Great Plains version upgrade and what is going on behind the scenes, which options do you have in case of Dexterity, VBA, SQL customization, additional complexity comes with migration from ctree/Pervasive to MS SQL/MSDE.
What is upgrade in the language of technology? Upgrade has server and client sides.
Server side upgrade converts tables from old format to the new one. In general words Microsoft Business Solutions developers may change table structure, append additional fields to add new functionality, things like that. Upgrade copies the table with changes to temporary table, then drops original table, recreates it with new structure and copies all the data from temp table to the newly created one.
Workstation side workstation is written in Great Plains Dexterity and has Dynamics.exe engine and DYNAMICS.DIC dictionary. These two plus all the additional files will be replaced with the new ones. Other dictionaries, such us REPORTS.DIC and FORMS.DIC should be also upgraded and upgrade will try to deal with them automatically. In some cases modified reports (in REPORTS.DIC) could not be upgraded and need to be recreated in the new version.
What is customization upgrade? You should consider different types of customizations: Dexterity, VBA/Modifier, SQL, ReportWriter, Crystal Reports
Dexterity Customization being very short Dexterity may have so called Custom Forms these do not need upgrade they should work as is. Then Dexterity may alter existing Great Plains forms (socalled Alternate Great Plains forms) in this case Dexterity customization should be redone for these forms/screens. Plus additional consideration should be given to Dexterity triggers, shadow tables, etc.
VBA/Modifier customization Modifier allows you to modify existing Great Plains windows it creates so called modified Great Plains windows, stored in FORMS.DIC. Usually modification is placing new buttons or fields, which in turn will be given VBA scripts (stored in DYNAMICS.VBA). VBA scripts may call something nice, like Crystal Report, or have some data access logic. Usually the old version of DYNAMICS.VBA workds with the new version. You may need to rearrange buttons on the modified form.
SQL you may have some stored procs for data integration, EDI or the like if the addressed tables will be changed in the new version then you need to analyze your SQL code. The good news is Microsoft Business Solution doesn’t make a lot of changes since version 7.0, because Microsoft is now trying to merge the products it owns: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta and so has different priorities
ReportWriter MBS doesn’t change tables, but it keeps changing Dexterity formulas used in ReportWriter original reports this is the problem in socalled Modified Reports upgrade usually you have these reports modified: SOP Blank Invoice form, SOP Blank Picking ticket, etc. If report can not be upgraded it should be redone in the new version with some exceptions.
Crystal Reports the nice thing about Crystal Report id doesn’t need to be upgraded (if the fields in the tables exist in the new version which is usually true statement)
What is upgrade for thirdparty modules? Your Great Plains may have socalled third party modules: Mekorma, Kampdata, Horyzon, Wennsoft, Avalara, Truepay, Trinity, Intellisol to name a few
Third party modules may have their own utility for upgrade. You just need to know that your thirdparty is ready for the new Great Plains version if not you just wait and stay on the old version.
What is migration from Ctree/Pervasive.SQL 2000 to MS SQL/MSDE? MBS has migration tool. You need first to install Great Plains on SQL Server with exactly the same account/segments structure and then install migration tool (it is Dexterity chunk) on your ctree/Pervasive workstation then, when you integrate the chunk you will map it to target SQLbased Great Plains Company, select all system and company tables, click the button and it will move all your tables onebyone. In the case when your Great Plains ctree/Pervasive has third parties you need to check if the vendor has migration tool otherwise you have to do manual move, use SQL Linked server to your legacy data
Do I need consultant? It is probably good idea to have consultant to do the upgrade. We strongly recommend you to use consultant in the following cases
You have Dexterity customization
You are doing migration from Pervasive/Ctree to Microsoft SQL Server/MSDE, especially when you have thirdparties without migration tools
You have a lot or ReportWriter Modified Great Plains Reports
You have old version of Great Plains: Dynamics or eEnteroprise 6.0 or prior in this case you can not appeal to Microsoft Technical Support it is discontinued
Your Great Plains has more than 20 users and you have to have upgrade done over the weekend if it fails you have business problems
You don’t have support in this case you have to select your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner and pay for the annual support/enhancement plan you will get new registration key and will be ready for the upgrade
Good luck in upgrading and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job give us a call 18665280577! [email protected]

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, VB/C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 28, 2004

by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Great Plains Remote Support overview

Microsoft Great Plains Remote Support overview

by: Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Great Plains is now standard midmarket ERP application, serving the whole spectrum of businesses. In the case of midsize business we usually see strong IT team with SQL querying skills plus accounting department is already trained to use Great Plains and needs minimal help in figuring out on how to use new Great Plains version and features. In this situation company may leverage itกs work force strength and minimize ERP application support cost. This is the goal of Microsoft Business Solutions and the philosophy of future computer systems. In this situation in our opinion there is no need to have expensive local support when consultants are coming to you on regular basis and spend at least four hours onsite, charging somewhat close to $200 per hour. Also, please take into consideration the fact that consulting companies have to train new hires to do the job, and formal training should be supplemented with serving to real customer. Below we give you your options to support Great Plains with minimized support cost.

Minimizing upgrade/migration cost. It is not a secret that Microsoft Business Solutions VAR has to maintain itกs cash flow. It is often conflicts with your interests. Have Great Plains partner to trigger you Microsoft promotions on Migrations/Upgrade/Placing you back to enhancement program. Do not succumb to reseller attempt to sell you migration with list price.

Local Partner is it the best and cost effective way? First, place yourself into local partner shoes. When he is fighting to win your business he is competing against other local vars they are using traditional sales&marketing techniques: trade shows, expensive permanent sales people to do cold calls and then presentations onsite. This will drive following hourly consulting rates to the sky. Nationwide small partner usually does its marketing over the internet and this is only few percent of the revenue. Another thing to consider nationwide partner doesn’t have to come to you and have onsite meeting it is all done over the phone.

Do you have complex customization? If you do you need to know that local partners are making substantial revenue on customization upgrade. At the same time they do not specialize in customizations they have to deal with broad range of issues with their clients. I would guess you would rather appeal to specialist who is dealing with customizations on the daily basis. The same comment is relevant for upgrade and migration.

Do I need consultant? It is probably good idea to have consultant to do the upgrade. We strongly recommend you to use consultant in the following cases

You have Dexterity customization

You are doing migration from Pervasive/Ctree to Microsoft SQL Server/MSDE, especially when you have thirdparties without migration tools

You have a lot or ReportWriter Modified Great Plains Reports

You have old version of Great Plains: Dynamics or eEnteroprise 6.0 or prior in this case you can not appeal to Microsoft Technical Support it is discontinued

Your Great Plains has more than 20 users and you have to have upgrade done over the weekend if it fails you have business problems

You don’t have support in this case you have to select your Microsoft Business Solutions Partner and pay for the annual support/enhancement plan you will get new registration key and will be ready for the upgrade

Good luck in selfsupport and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job give us a call 18665280577! [email protected]

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 07, 2004

by Andrew Karasev