Dynamics GP Tech Support Covering All the Versions

There is one requirement – your organization should have current MBS Dynamics GP support contract and it comes with your annual enhancement program.  If you are new or if IT department is new as well, you should consider to call your Dynamics GP Reseller.  If you are not sure who are these people, try to check with accounting department to whom they paid (if they did) recently for Dynamics GP annual support to get the name of Dynamics GP consulting company.  Annual contract has several levels to choose from, beginning from budget option, where you are getting access to new version registration key and have discounted price for new support cases.  There are also the options, where certain number of support cases are included into annual contract and there are several plans where you may have unlimited number of cases and even Microsoft technician assigned to your company.  If you do not have annual support contract active – you will not have access to Customer Source (web based self-service place, where you can search knowledge base, where you see your company info, download service packs, place new support case via web interface or get phone number to call Dynamics GP technical support call center), and you will have to pay higher price to get your cases resolved by MBS tech support.  Let’s now review the options to get support for older Dynamics GP or Great Plains Dynamics versions, to get reenrolled into annual enhancement program, typical tech support issues and their ways to be resolved:
1. Supporting older version of Dynamics GP: 8.0, 7.5, Great Plains Dynamics on MS SQL Server, Pervasive SQL 2000 (Btrieve) or Ctree: 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0 and earlier (high end edition was also known as eEnterprise and Dynamics C/S+).  Here Microsoft Business Solutions likely doesn’t have the budget to train technicians to support obsolete versions and if you call to Microsoft, you may expect to be redirected to Dynamics GP technical support partner, who is known to support older versions.  You may also have issues with older versions of FRx Financial Reporting (current version is 6.7 and obsolete versions are 6.5, 6.0 and earlier)
2. Typical Dynamics GP and Great Plains Dynamics technical support cases and their resolutions.  The leader is probably batch failed to be posted and now in limbo, where you cannot post it again via batch recovery screen.  You can try this resolution route – enable the batch with recovery screen (this screen will be open automatically if you login with the same user credentials, who tried to post the batch without the luck), then do not rush to repost it, instead open batch form and print Batch Edit List report, read it carefully – you will find the errors, associated with some of its documents.  Then, open the documents with errors one by one – if you know how to resolve the errors on the document level – great, otherwise you may either delete or void the document and rekey it second time, or place them into separate butch for being reviewed in the future with your Dynamics GP consultant.  Second issue in its popularity is the user, locked in the system and you cannot login, getting error message that this user is already signed in (this was real fountain of support calls, prior to when this issue was fixed via user deletion in Dynamics GP 8.0).  Login as SQL System Administrator (if you are on Pervasive SQL 2000 – login as the user, who has access to system forms), go to system->user activity, locate the user and click delete button
3. Before you call your Dynamics GP technical support consultant.  You may try to avoid associated tech support cost by doing self-service on the CustomerSource.  If you do not have access info, please consult with your Dynamics GP VAR – they should be happy to help you in getting user access and password.  In Customer Source navigate to Technical Support and from there to Knowledge Base.  Here you should select the product, version, module and key in keywords or exact phrase.  Chances are high that you will be able to navigate and get the solution (technical article, open to Dynamics GP customers).  Actually, these steps are what your Dynamics GP consultant does in the first phase of the problem resolution.  Sometimes you may see several articles with very close (but not exact) problem and several steps suggested to try to resolve the issue.  Please, note that this route is available to you only in the case that you have active annual enhancement program with Microsoft Business Solutions (through your Dynamics GP Partner)
4. How to get reenrolled into Dynamics GP annual enhancement program?  If you are at this point, somewhere in the past you probably decided to stop paying to Microsoft for annual support (as something like 16% of software price list was looking like not really paying you back in services, or maybe your organization was hit hard by historical or current economy recession).  You should expect that reenrollment is associated with some type of penalty.  In our opinion, the right steps to get back is to establish relations with your new Dynamics GP Partner (or reestablish ties with your historical Great Plains VAR or implementation consultant), then have that organization to broke for you (with Microsoft Business Solutions)
5. Supporting Microsoft Small Business Financials 9.0, 8.0, 7.5 (also known as Small Business Manager for version 7.0 and 7.5).  This small business ERP application is scaled down (with some disable functionality) version of Great Plains Dynamics on MSDE 2000 (free version of Microsoft SQL Server).  One of the most popular issues with this application is the lack of ReportWriter modification interface, and you are very limited in modifying such forms as AP Check, Sales Invoice (with your graphical logo).  In order to resolve these issues, we typically export them from SBF and open in Dynamics GP Report Writer to make required modifications, then export them as report customization package and import them in Small Business Financials.  We saw SBF customers with such customization tools exercised as Great Plains Dexterity and Extender – the application is very similar to regular Great Plains version.  Dramatic changes in 2009 – we were very sad, when Microsoft announced walking away from future support of the Small Business Financials business line, the last version released was 9.0.  We moved some of our SBF customers (who had budget to embrace more expensive Corporate ERP application, such as Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Ready) to regular GP 9.0 and then 10.0
6. Dynamics GP on the international Corporate ERP markets.  Former Great Plains Software had really napoleon-scale plans to expand Worldwide.  Great Plains Consultants, working for our company participated in Great Plains localizations on such emerging ERP markets as Russia, Brazil, Philippines.  We also helped Great Plains customers in Poland, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Arabic World.  When Great Plains Software was acquired by Microsoft and with further acquisitions of Microsoft (Great Plains) Business Solutions – Navision, Axapta, Solomon (was part of GPS purchase) – Microsoft “optimized” its international presence and applications availability.  For example, in Europe, Russia the emphasis was made on Navision (Dynamics NAV) and generically Worldwide on Dynamics AX (Axapta).  If you are with older version of Great Plains Dynamics on the international market, we recommend you to call us to discuss possible support or migration/upgrade options
7. Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows or Mac.  It might look like the joke, but this is the fact, that GPA for DOS customer base is larger, comparing to Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL Server 2000!  DOS proved to be very resilient to the future and such computer technologies as Windows/Macintosh/Solaris graphical interfaces.  DOS was and still is very happy with such technologies as Novell, Windows NT.  We really trying to give our GPA customers additional credits in respecting their commitment.  We are supporting all the versions of Great Plains Accounting via remote support USA, Canada nationwide and internationally.  We also suggest to move your GPA from Novell, WindowsNT to newer Windows Server versions, such as Windows 2003, Windows 2007, Small Business Server 2008 (please, note that GPA is not compatible with 64 bit version, so we have to stick to 32 bit traditional Windows)
8. When to upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010/11.0?  This question is often heard from our Great Plains customers.  We would prefer to take the conservative position, where we are little bit behind of the recommended timeline by Microsoft sponsored Dynamics GP technical writers.  In our opinion new offered version is often too innovative and is also backed by service pack strategy (we are giving you something very cool, but we are catching up in resolving hot issues with the new version in service packs).  We do not want our customers to be in the position of the experiments exposed rabbit or mice, this is why we are suggesting you to wait until at least couple of service packs are released for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010/11.0 (likely somewhere in Summer time of 2011)
9. How to request help?  Please call us 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com  We are supporting all the versions ever released of Great Plains Software and Microsoft Dynamics GP.  We also recover failed GP Dexterity customizations, provide second opinion in case when you are in limbo with Great Plains recovery, implementation.  Our consultants speak perfect English, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish, Filipino.  Local Dynamics GP support is available in Michigan, Illinois, California, Texas, and of course we serve you nationwide via web sessions and phone conferences