Linux PHP Sales Management System integration with Microsoft Great Plains overview

In this small article we assume that you have PHP and MySQL developers in IT staff and all you need to do is to get some help in building the bridge to GP accounting backoffice

1. GP Sales Order Processing Module.  If you originate your Sales Orders in PHP frontend, then all you need to do is transfer shipped sales lines to GP SOP invoice, where you will be aging your AR and potentially deploying such modules as Business Portal based Electronic Document Delivery for emailing invoices to your customers
2. GP Purchase Order Processing Module.  Here you typically integrate your vendor invoices, assuming that your business rules require vendor to drop-ship items directly to your customers.  This scenario is often considered as typical for eCommerce platforms
3. PHP lookup to Great Plains.  There are multiple options available, the most reliable and platform independent call could be realized through XML web service.  Other way to consider would be HTTP request/response technology, however it is rather legacy or old-fashioned.
4. Integration Tool.  With Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0, you can deploy GP Integration Manager SOP and POP eConnect connector, which should give you reasonable throughput, comparing to traditional IM connectors, where GP workstation was used as OLE server.  However you should also consider eConnect direct C# or VB.Net programming to create SOP and POP invoices in real time from your PHP application – you should consider the best technological scenario on how to call .Net application with parameters from PHP
5. Emailing scenarios: Great Plains Electronic Document Delivery module is part of GP Business Portal and it does excellent job in scheduling SOP invoices deliveries.  However if you plan to purchase and implement GP Business Ready Standard, BP is not available.  Here you have to consider Microsoft Dexterity customization, which should allow you to build custom screen where you select invoices for emailing and it should also deploy SMTP client to send out invoices.  Invoices should preferably be printed in PDF in custom GP ReportWriter SOP Blank Invoice forms
6. Cross Platform Reporting.  MS SQL Server should be considered as the center for reporting, it allows you to create Linked Server connectors.  ODBC is way to make a link back to MySQL