My Favorite Cool Features in Dynamics GP 2010
Posted Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
There has been a ton of buzz around Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. I’m so excited about Dynamics GP 2010 that I wrote a book about it. It’s due out in August. A couple of people have asked me what my favorite features of Dynamics GP 2010 are so I thought that I would share them over a couple of posts. I’ll start with some of the big features and then I’ll post a follow up with some lesser known but still very cool features. Today we will look two killer features: email and Word reporting.
The ability to email documents directly from within Dynamics GP is huge. Even better, the GP team didn’t fool around and come up with a partial solution just to say that they have the feature. The email features set and process seems to be well thought out. Emailing from Dynamics GP supports sending individual documents and bulk emails for things like this week’s invoices. Even better, the documents can be embedded in the email or attached as files and maximum file size can be controlled too. This is a per vendor setting so its great for vendors who aggressively filter attachments. Additionally, the Dynamics GP team learned from the Office 2007/PDF creation mess. Dynamics GP 2010 can email attachments as Word (DOCX), HTML, XPS or PDF files right out of the box.
This feature is really compelling and it works for a variety of Sales and Purchasing documents including Quotes, Orders, Invoices, Purchase Orders and more.
Word Templates
Another favorite feature is the ability to use Word Templates for document creation. Dynamics GP 2010 ships with a large number of predefined Word templates allowing even more customization of documents like invoices, orders, quotes, statements and purchase orders. Out of the box Dynamics GP provides Word templates for more than 30 different document types. This makes it extremely easy to add things like logos to an invoice or legal language to the end of a purchase order. With Visual Basic for Applications available inside of Word, advanced needs such as swapping logos based on an invoice condition get much easier.
The underlying architecture still uses Report Writer for gathering the data and fields to send to Word. At first this was disappointing because I’m not a Report Writer fan. There is a benefit to this approach though. By using Report Writer for preprocessing, users get the benefit of knowing that Word will have the same information as their existing documents. For example, a Report Writer invoice calculates correctly today. Moving that data through Report Writer and on to Word ensures that it still calculates correctly tomorrow. This removes the uncertainty that would exist around a completely new invoice process using only Microsoft Word. It also means that customized invoice data should upgrade to Dynamics GP 2010.
This feature alone is compelling enough to cause a number of our clients to decide to upgrade to Dynamics GP 2010 as soon as possible. There is a lot more around Word templates for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 but if that isn’t enough to get you excited, check your pulse!
Tags: Dynamics GP 2010, Email, Word
Posted in Dynamics GP
Mark Polino
Mark Polino is a CPA and Principal Consultant with I.B.I.S. Inc. He is a Microsoft MVP for Dynamics GP and he holds multiple accounting and Microsoft certifications. Mark is the creator and presenter of the wildly popular 50 Tips in 50 Minutes series for Dynamics GP. He was recently ranked #16 of the Top 100 Microsoft Dynamics Most Influential by DynamicsWorld and his book, the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Cookbook is a bestseller for Packt Publishing.
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[...] big features and then moving to some cool stuff that has gotten less publicity. Check it out at the DynamicsCare GP blog. Published: Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 12:30 [...]