Recovering Old Great Plains Dynamics Version

You may find yourself in the situation, when your old Accounting application works until the old server crashes. When such event happens, you may realize that all the consultants, who were involved in initial installation and training are no longer available. So now what?.. Well, lets take a look at the options you may have. First of all, you should be aware that all ever released versions of Great Plains Dynamics, including Select on Pervasive SQL 2000 or Ctree (7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0), Great Plains Accounting on DOS, Windows or Mac (9.5, 9.2 and earlier) are supportable. However here is the problem the pool of consultants, who are still familiar with old versions is small. If you try to turn your case to one of the modern VAR chances are high that they suggest you to upgrade all the way to current version 2010/11.0. If you indicate that upgrade is not an option at this time they may lose interest and say sorry, we simply do not have consultants to deal with your old release. Microsoft Business Solutions technical support also might be very polite in mentioning that they only cover few recent versions (currently in April 2011 they are 2010/11.0, 1.0, 9.0). Probably the way to find consultant is to appeal to nationwide consulting firms with remote support option via web session and phone conference. Lets consider some details:

1.Excurse to historical versions. Great Plains Software Dynamics was introduced as Dexterity application on Macintosh and MS Windows graphical platforms in earlier 1990th. Prior to that GPS was selling and supporting its DOS version: GP Accounting, which was also available for Mac and Windows. GPA was available on Btrieve DB platform. In late 1990th GPS was acquired by Microsoft where Microsoft Business Solutions subdivision was formed to run Corporate ERP business. As MBS soon acquired Navision Software it soon had several Corporate ERP applications, including Navision, Axapta, Solomon. MBS announced so-called Project Green to merge its ERP and Accounting applications into compatible modules. Around 2005 Microsoft Dynamics ERP product family was announced, where each ERP application user interface was set to become similar and intuitive, assuming that you computer users are familiar with Microsoft Office and Outlook user interface. With the introduction of version 8.0, Dynamics GP became available exclusively on Microsoft SQL Server platform (plus its budget version Select on MSDE and SQL Select). If you are reading these lines, it is likely that you missed the boat somewhere before the year 2005

2.Customers on historical versions. Surprisingly enough we still see numerous customers with DOS version of 9.5. Plus there are some customers on Btrieve/Pervasive SQL 2000 DB, usually on version 7.5, 7.0 or 6.0. There is also reasonably large pool of customers, who decided to freeze there Small Business Financials 7.5, 8.0 or 9.0

3.How to redeploy application on the new Server? First of all, you need to understand that older releases are not compatible with current technology trend 64 bit processing. Window Server should be installed in its 32 bit flavor. And all the versions (assuming that yours is not Microsoft SQL Server compatible) should be considered to be deployed on Pervasive SQL Server 2000 DB platform. Assuming that you learn the lesson about 32 bit Windows you can deploy it on the resent Microsoft Windows 2008 Server, or even Small Business Server 2008 (with Active Directory preconfigured to facilitate Small Business IT support)

4.If you are on historical version for MS SQL Server: eEnterprise 7.0, 6.0, or Dynamics C/S+ 5.5, 5.0, 4.0. In your situation it is reasonably simple to redeploy. Version 7.0 should be compatible with MS SQL Server 2000. For earlier releases, you should verify if it is OK to deploy SQL 7.0 or you have to install SQL 6.5

5.Old-good-days popular add-ons. The name we should mention is Intellisol Advanced Purchase Order Processing and Project Accounting. Intellisol International was one of the most successful ISV partners, until its unsuccessful story to offer good deal to GPS for Project Accounting incorporation into the native set of modules (the deal was given to Match Data Project Accounting and Intellisol lost its positions). We support Intellisol Advanced POP module, plus have reasonable exposure to its Project Accounting flavor

6.FRx (Financial Reporting Extender). Currently Microsoft is encouraging its ERP customers to migrate from FRx (popular Financial Reporting tool for Balance Sheet, P&L, with consolidation in Reporting Trees, Multicurrency as well as Excel Worksheet consolidation) to newly introduced Microsoft Management Reporter. Of course we are in the middle of the stream migrating FRx to MMR for active customers. However we feel that FRx will not go away in a matter of several years, and we should have numerous customers in the future, who are willing to retain FRx

7.Crystal Reports. Both versions: connected to Pervasive SQL/Ctree or directly to Microsoft SQL Server database are supportable. We specialize in the cases where Crystal Report should be audited (as its original version produces duplications and other strange things). The general recommendation to Crystal Report designer is to base the report on SQL Stored Procedure (the most powerful method, where you could introduce temporary tables) or View. Both Stored Procedure and View are ready for dataset QA, and when you are happy with the base, go ahead and create report itself (the other way we do not recommend is to use Crystal Report design wizard this is where you may expect duplications, especially where you are making your first steps with CR)

8.Dexterity Customizations. This is usually the concern from the client user workstation. We recommend you prior to trashing the old user computer take a look at Dynamics folder, find Dynamics.set file and read the dictionary name. It is good idea to backup the whole folder. On the new computer (it could be something nice as Windows 7 or Vista, be sure that if you are on Pervasive SQL 2000 use 32 bit version of W7 or Vista), you can copy Dexterity dictionary (the name of the file is specified in .Set file), or deploy Dex customization by copying original so-called Chunk file (with .CNK extension)

9.Data Conversion from GPA for DOS. This is very popular topic, where customers are migrating to new Corporate ERP platform: SAP Business One, QuickBooks, Peach Tree. Data export should be done directly from Pervasive SQL Control Center and you will need DDF files to create ODBC connection there (File.ddf, Field.ddf and Index.ddf where index metadata file is optional). If you have original GPA media (floppy diskettes), please read ODBC manual where you can find the procedure to generate DDF files. We were able to help numerous customers to convert GPA data via Pervasive SQL 2000 SQL Queries, saved into text files (with further conversion to Excel, MS Access, XML). However we found that it is quite difficult to manage customers IT people to follow all the way to install and setup Pervasive SQL 2000 Server on Windows 32 bit. We recommend you to contact our office for uploading your GPS folder (with default company GPData, plus potentially other companies folders). Well map your GPS folder, convert your data and ship it back to you in Excel, MS Access or text file formats (csv, tab delimited)

10.International Customers. See our paragraph above, where we are giving you historical excurse. GPS was pretty active in late 1990th in Western, Central and Eastern Europe. There is large cluster of customers in Poland (where several versions were translated in Polish). When Microsoft acquired Navision Software with strong presence of Corporate ERP and MRP clientele in Europe the natural decision for Microsoft was to let Navision and Axapta keep dominating the European Accounting market. And that is exactly what Microsoft did. If you are multinational corporation we recommend you to consider AX as your Worldwide ERP solution. GP is also available in some countries internationally: USA, Canada, UK, South Africa, Arabic World, Spanish speaking Latin America, Oceania, South East Asia, English speaking Africa

11.Brazil. Here we recommend you to consider AX, NAV or non Microsoft ERP platforms, such as SAP Business One, or maybe local package Microsiga

12.Russian Federation. This is very sad story, as our company back in mid 1990th pioneered in Dexterity string translation and making GP available on the Russian Corporate ERP market (with getting promise from GPS to be declared as its exclusive reseller in the area). In any case, please feel free to call us (by the way of course we speak native Russian), if you would like to learn more about your GP implementation options for your offshore headquarter in USA, Canada, Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Bahamas or somewhere else internationally

13.Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina. GP is localized for your country. We recommend you to upgrade to the current version 2010. MBS also is rolling out AX option in the south corner of South America

14.Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia. In European continental Spain MBS recommends AX or NAV. In Latin America GPS was so popular, that it is still localized and supported

15.For further information, please call us 1-866-304-3265 or email help@efaru.com. We provide service in USA and internationally via web sessions. Local service is available in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Dallas, West Michigan: St Joseph, Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo, Holland, Saugatuck, New Buffalo, Muskegon