Dynamics Gp Custom Coding Project And Issue Management In Sure Step Notes

Dynamics Gp Custom Coding Project And Issue Management In Sure Step Notes

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Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step helps you organize project around the methodology, specially designed to reflect Dynamics ERP and CRM applications implementation specifics. Here you can find document templates, such as Functional Requirements Document (FRD), Technical Requirement Document (TRD), Statement of Work (SOW), Upgrade Questionnaire to give you few popular examples. We already covered in previous publications Sure Step specifics in custom programming oriented projects. Today we would like to address Issue Management:

1.Software Development Nature. This activity, especially when you are undertaking something, that was never done before (exactly the same way as planned) has some uncertainty. Some of the methodologies allow you to minimize the risk and ensure the predictability: technical design, code structuring (in modules, blocks, classes, procedures), independent quality assurance, testing scripts, etc.

2.Issues are inevitable and could happen at any phase of the project and they are expected in the Design, Development and Deployment phases. Critical issues may change the timeframe, the budget and the whole current concentration of the project management team. They may need to be communicated to the customer for approving the decision

3.Software Developer as the person who may identify the issue. Please, take into consideration that programmer personality by its nature requires concentration on one specific detail at the time, while the issue management requires communication and collective decision making. Programmer might be responsible to document the issue and then it goes to the project manager for appropriate handling

4.Issue Management Recommendations in Sure Step. These recommendations are for project manager: Identify, Document, List, Analyze the issue, determine its priority, plan and communicate resolution activity, update project plan, allocate and assign technical and other resources, follow up, get reasonable proof of the resolution and finally close it

5.Issues possible impact. You can judge the impact magnitude by its priority level. The issue with high priority typically leads to project time line and plan update and often needs Change Request Form sign off

6.Issue Example in Customization work. Lets assume that you got Project Profitability Report to be designed in Crystal Reports. Report layout was modeled in Excel worksheet. You reviewed table structure with developer, where the clear understanding was achieved that each project should summarize sales Invoices and Return (SOP module) and Purchase Receipts with Invoice or Invoice Match (if receipt is recorded without invoice). As project was reasonably low magnitude and revenue expectation (and categorized as low priority within your consulting organization) you assigned new hire developer with minimal to moderate exposure to Crystal Reports design. Developer created nice report with the match to Excel layout. However report produced incorrect result, when it was sent to QA department. Rework activity consumed the remaining portion of the approved budget. However after the review with Software Development department manager, both developer and manager agreed that the data base connection layer should be recreated in SQL Stored Procedure (it was done directly in CR table joins). This example reflect real situation, happened to one of the real Great Plains customers. GP VAR didnt communicate the issue to the customer in time and customer was so frustrated, that they decided to change Dynamics GP consulting firm

7.Issue Example in Initial Data Conversion. One of the real customers acquired Dynamics GP through one of the resellers. Customer indicated in its Functional Requirements, that initial data conversion should bring previous year GL monthly balances from QuickBooks to Great Plains General Ledger and be posted there. Reseller reassured that this is possible in Integration Manager (according to the specifications and general whitepapers for the IM module). The deal went through, however GP Partner assigned junior level developer to do historical year data conversion. Programmer was not familiar with Advanced ODBC data queries in IM and decided to do the migration via Text Files. In the text files and without ODBC data link you are limited to transactions grouping by month (you can try it in Excel if you are maestro of Excel functions). Project went into limbo situation and customer decided to look for second opinion

8.Brief Excurse to GP Customization Tools. There are traditional tools, such as Great Plains Dexterity (it has Dex.exe application interpreting Dynamics.dic meta base, plus most of the add-ons are also Dexterity customizations, registered in Dynamics.set setup file). Second traditional tool is Modifier with VBA scripting, where you can add new field on the existing form and animate it with VBA script (use Microsoft ADO connection if you need the field to interface with one of the tables in the company database). The third and fourth traditional tools are Integration Manager (with VBA event driven scripts) and Extender (especially we recommend Enterprise version maintained by eOne Australia based Dynamics GP ISV. In Enterprise version you can deploy Dexterity Sanscript codes, no debugging). New tools: eConnect, Web Services, Microsoft Visual Studio Libraries for Dynamics GP. Please, feel free to try them if you are Microsoft Visual Studio programmer (code samples are available in C#, C++ and VB.Net). eConnect is the foundation technology and other new tools are in fact abstractions from eConnect (where eConnect encrypted stored procedures are called behind the scenes)

9.Reporting Tools and Instruments. With the introduction of the version 2010/11.0 Microsoft Business Solutions recommends Dynamics ERP Management Reporter for financial statements: Balance Sheet, P&L, Statement of Cash Flow (traditionally it was the area of FRx Financial Reporting). Both MMR and FRX have very similar building blocks and methodology, plus there is conversion wizard from FRx to MMR, which moves your catalogs (reports), rows, columns, trees from FRx to Management Reporter. MR has some advantages, such as deployment on the server and report generation directly on the server (FRx was client driven report generation application). Plus MR is available for report generation over the internet, it supports natively 64 bit Windows (most of the computers sold in merchandise stores are Windows 7 64 bit). If you are selecting between Crystal Reports and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), we would recommend you to review the advantages of SSRS: deployment over the web, windows domain security realm

10.Ecommerce Projects observation. There are add-ons available for such popular platforms as Magento (typically on Linux MySQL PHP platform), .Net Store Front (Microsoft Windows .Net ecommerce shopping cart)

11.If you feel that your concerns are not addressed or your question is not answered, please feel free to contact our office. Support domestically in the USA, Canada, Mexico and internationally. This option is possible via Web Sessions, Skype or Phone conferences and direct visits onsite (in the case of the large scale project). Our consulting team speaks English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Filipino. Feel free to call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, or email help@efaru.com

About the Author:
Andrew Karasev is Great Plains Certified Master, MVP, help@efaru.com 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904. He is also the initiator of eFaru project http://www.efaru.com and founder of Alba Spectrum information space



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