Book Image

Developing Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Applications

By : Leslie Vail
Book Image

Developing Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Applications

By: Leslie Vail

Overview of this book

Microsoft Dynamics GP is a sophisticated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application with a multitude of features and options. Microsoft Dynamics GP can also be used to develop dynamic, mission critical applications. In "Developing Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Applications" you will learn how to create and customize Dynamics GP Applications. This hands-on guide will take you through the initial steps of setting up a development environment through to customizing and developing an example application using tools such as Dexterity, VSTools and sanScript. "Developing Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Applications" will take you through the complex steps of creating and customizing Microsoft Dynamics GP applications. Starting with an overview of Microsoft Dynamics GP architecture you'll then move onto setting up your development environment. You will learn how to make your application come to life with Dexterity and sanScript. You will create table operations and ranges as well as object triggers to make powerful and practical business applications. You will deploy your Dexterity solution before moving onto customization with Modifier and VBA. This book will also take you through ways of enhancing and extending your application without code using the SmartList Builder and Excel Report Builder. Using these highly flexible tools you'll be able to create data connections that will increase the usability and functionality of your ERP applications.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Developing Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Applications
Credits
About the Author
Index

Overview of tools


In the beginning, you had only Dexterity to create customizations. A few years later, VBA was embedded into the product, providing access to a stress-free cross-dictionary functionality. After that, Continuum entered the scene for Visual Basic and Delphi programmers. Continuum provided even more access to third-party dictionaries and was an efficient tool for smaller-scale customizations.

In Version 7 of Dexterity, COM objects were supported. Now you could integrate web services with Dynamics GP and call them. Using COM, Continuum was repurposed as an Application Programming Interface (API) for Dynamics GP objects.

Then, Visual Studio Tools (VS Tools) came along. VS Tools opened the black box that was the Dynamics dictionary, and the ability to customize Dynamics GP spread like a virus. Suddenly, there was a long list of options for you to choose from for custom development.

On the home front, tools were being acquired that were targeted at power users instead of programmers...