Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics GP Upgrade Checkpoints – overview for consultant

• Versions 7.0, 7.5, 8.0 on MS SQL Server 2000 or 7.0.  If we are talking about Microsoft SQL Server, then these versions upgrade is very smooth, without known major issues, when you had to do data repair on SQL scripting level
• Version 7.0 and 7.5 on Pervasive SQL 2000 or Ctree Plus / Faircom.  Former name of this package was Great Plains Select, later on it was introduced as Microsoft Great Plains Standard.  Customers, who were on Ctree/Btrieve-Pervasive SQL 2000, had to migrate to MS SQL Server version of the product.  Remember Migration tool?  This was Great Plains Dexterity application – or chunk file.  As technical consultant you had to integrate this dex chunk, then setup ODBC connection to empty Great Plains installation on SQL Server (with exactly the same account format as on your legacy Pervasive/Ctree) and launch migration
• Version 6.0.  These days you saw two lines of Great Plains ERP: eEnterprise (high end) and Dynamics (standard).  The name “eEnterprise” was also applicable to version 7.0.  eEnterprise was available on MS SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0.  With version 7.0 Dynamics was available for MS SQL Server as Microsoft Great Plains for SQL Server.
• Versions 3.2, 4.0, 5.0 and 5.5.  If you are customer, who is on one of these versions, you should be aware that you need professional consultant, having experience upgrading these old version.  These good-old-days versions historically required some or even major data repair, “forced upgrade” and other unpleasant technical hands-on.  With SQL Server it might be less challenging, however with Ctree/Btrieve data repair requires tables linking techniques with Microsoft Access ODBC connection, etc.  Additional complication here is the fact that Microsoft Dynamics/Business Solutions doesn’t support versions 7.5 (since January 1sth 2007) and earlier.
• Dexterity Customizations.  Dexterity was designed as multiplatform development environment, which resulted in cursor-like database access manner.  However with switching to MS SQL Server platform, original Dexterity cursors were discouraged to use
• Great Plains Accounting.  This product line is legacy and not supported by MBS.  What you need to do is this – select Microsoft Dynamics GP VAR, ask them to get GPA migration tool, and do GPA migration to Microsoft Dynamics GP.
• GPA on Macintosh.  This version of GPA uses Ctree 4.X, which is not Ctree Plus.  For you this means, that ODBC driver requires OTF files or Vendor.DB to do data migration, if you do not plan to migrate to Dynamics GP, but instead would like to switch to another MRP package.  In this case we recommend you to print ending balances via GPA reporting, enter them in your new ERP and keep legacy Mac application for historical queries.

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