Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0: eCommerce web development – overview for Programmer

Jan 8

22:00

2006

Andrew Karasev

Microsoft “Project Green” phase one is reflected in Microsoft Great Plains/Dynamics GP 9.0 realization. It is exposed to .Net developer currently through eConnect and as time goes – more and more eConnect object will have XML web service interfaces. In this small article we will be touching the set of object, deployed in eCommerce application, using Microsoft Dynamics GP as a backend.

Sales Order Processing (SOP). In the light eCommerce case – you push data into SOP10100 – SOP Header table and SOP10200 – SOP Line table. If you do create Sales Orders Only, do not accept deposits against sales order – then you do not care about SOP Distribution table: SOP10102. All these tasks could be realized through eConnect.
Inventory Tables. If you sell from your inventory (not just services), then you use Inventory module tables: IV00101 – Item master, IV00102 – Item QTY master, the last one shows you quantity at the specific location and in general
Receivable Management Tables. RM00101 – Customer master – in case if you create and register new customer or update existing customer info in Great Plains.
eConnect extensions. Obviously eConnect will be repeating the logic of former Great Plains Dexterity objects. In Great Plains you typically create work documents: Quotes, Orders, Invoices and then you post them individually or in the batch – posting process is functionally assigned to the operator, this is why you will have hard time to program it via eConnect (which allows you to create work documents). You will need eConnect extensions or simply stored procedures, which post work records in Sales Order Processing and potentially Receivable Management modules – it is not recommended to create ones from scratch – posting and order transferring logic is very complicated.
Stored Procedures approach. We see more and more cases when eCommerce is built around Microsoft Small Business Financials, former Microsoft Small Business Manager – in such a situation eConnect might be too expensive and too complex – you may need just several SOP oriented stored procedures to create SOP orders and invoices at the back end in SOP SQL tables. The advice to the developer in the case of Small Business Financials – ask SBF user to create sample transaction – Sales Order and watch how did it distribute across SOP tables – you will get the idea and replication pattern for your SQL coding
Development Tools. Microsoft Visual Studio.Net is becoming the tool of choice (over now legacy Microsoft Dexterity or Great Plains Software Dexterity). However if you are eCommerce developer – you will have to use SQL scripting. Usually the first question is – where do I get Great Plains table structure description: Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Sometimes developers ask about Great Plains Integration Manager. This tool is in process of being rewritten with eConnect panidea. Integration Manager up to version 8.0 was relatively slow in its technical ability to integrate bulk number of records – it used legacy OLE Server technology – Great Plains was OLE Server and IM used GP screens to validate integration records. New integration manager should be more powerful and it is in the process of the creation as we write these lines.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM web front. In some cases we see this scenario. Microsoft Great Plains – MS CRM integration is in process of being rewritten on eConnect – currently it uses BizTalk server (and does a nice job, however sometimes you have to programmatically tune the BizTalk integration). In CRM you can create Account or Contact that will be integrated to Great Plains Customer, then Order when submitted can be integrated to Great Plains if needed. Sometimes developers complain, that they have to force credit limit for the CRM Account to be non-zero – in order for the invoice to come through