Great Plains Dexterity ? Microsoft Great Plains Customization Overview

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, former Great Plains Software Dynamics and eEnterprise are Dexterity-written applications. Also small business line: Microsoft Small Business Manager or Small Business Financials is written in Dexterity and uses the same code base as Great Plains.

The history of the Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity - is proprietary programming language and technology, designed back to earlier 1990th with the goal to build platform independent graphical accounting package - Great Plains Dynamics. Dexterity itself is written in C (following popular those days hope - that C will provide platform independence). You can install Dexterity from Great Plains 7.5 CD #2. Obviously it requires a lot of learning / training, but it allows your custom piece be seamlessly integrated with Great Plains interface.

? Native Dexterity Cursors. Dexterity was designed as platform independent programming language and so if you want your code to be operable on all currently supported databases - you use Dexterity ranges and loops to manipulate the records

? Great Plains Dexterity with SQL Stored Procs Nowadays, most of Great Plains installations are moved to SQL Server - so you can use Dexterity for custom forms drawing only and make the buttons run SQL stored procedures.

? COM Objects calls. Beginning with version 7.0 Dexterity supports COM objects - you register them as libraries in Dexterity. Refer the manual. This technique allows you to call such nice things as web services across the internet.

? Dexterity Forms - if you like VBA and are comfortable to do all the business logic in VBA - you can use Dexterity as new forms creator/editor. This is OK - but you have to purchase VBA/Modifier and Customization Site Enabler from MBS.

? Great Plains Alternate Forms. These are modification to existing forms ? the ones found in DYNAMICS.DIC. The most popular customization are made on SOP Entry form. If you are designing your customization ? we recommend you to avoid alternate forms ? the problem is customization version upgrade. In the case of alternate form ? customization should be redone.

Some restrictions. Great Plains is actually integration of multiple dictionaries: DYNAMICS.DIC, ADVSECUR.DIC, EXP1493.DIC, etc. In your Dexterity customization you can deal with one dictionary - DYNAMICS.DIC. If you need cross dictionaries customization - consider using SQL Stored Procs for crossing dictionary borders and pulling data/making changes in the other dictionary.

You can always have us help you with the customization. Call us: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918.

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Florida, Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

---

Crystal Reports for Microsoft Great Plains

Microsoft Business Solutions ? Great Plains is designed to meet... Read More

Snort for Network IDS

What is Snort?Snort is an open source network intrusion detection... Read More

Assertion in Java

Assertion facility is added in J2SE 1.4. In order to... Read More

Microsoft Update - 5 Reasons to Update Service Pack 2

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the Windows XP... Read More

Microsoft CRM Messaging through Lotus Domino eMail Server - Balanced Solution

Microsoft CRM and IBM Lotus Notes Domino seem to be... Read More

Groupware and Online Collaboration: Collaboration Series #4

This article is the fourth of a series of articles... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Customization Recovery & Upgrade for Large Corporation

At the end of XX century, in the late 1990th... Read More

Rapid Application Development - Is it Really a Need of Today?

Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a software development methodology. In... Read More

A Simple Computer Software Definition

What is Software?Software is a set of instruction written to... Read More

How To Create A Data Capture Procedure Checklist For Your Small Business CRM Software

Fortunately one of the most common reasons cited for the... Read More

The Truth about Colossus: Are You Just A Magnetic Image?

What is Colossus?Colossus is software licensed to about twenty-five insurance... Read More

Spyware, Adware, etc. -- Terms and Common Sense

When reading an article where some term is used often,... Read More

25 Things Mapping Software Can Do For You

1. With mapping software you can create a report that... Read More

QuarkXpress Tips: How to Move Content Between Print and Web Layouts

Since its release in 1987, QuarkXpress had made an immediate... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains RW: Report Writer

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is marketed for mid-size companies... Read More

Free Software: How Not To Get More Than You Bargained For!

I completed an experiment recently. I wanted to find out... Read More

Freight Forwarding ERP: Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains customization & setup ? overview

Microsoft Great Plains may be recommended for international freight forwarding... Read More

PHP On-The-Fly!

IntroductionPHP can be used for a lot of different things,... Read More

5 Mac Security Tips You Can?t Live Without

So, you've bought a new Macintosh, and now you may... Read More

The XP Firewall Isnt Enough

You might think you don't need a firewall... Read More

Did You Ever Want to Completely Erase Everything on Your Computer?

Did you ever want to erase everything on your computer?... Read More

Cisco CCNA Certification: Becoming A Truly Valuable CCNA.

I've been active in the Cisco Certification track for four... Read More

Is Your Computer Sick?

Viruses and spyware usually show up on your computer one... Read More

Recent Studies Show that 9 out of 10 PCs Are Infected with Spyware

Spyware and malware are large problems for Internet users today... Read More

The Death of Windows

I have always regretted how Microsoft price gouges and rips... Read More

How To Develop Software For Your Business

Software development is a risky business.Many software developers are barely... Read More

Lotus Notes Domino and Microsoft CRM Integration

Well, even if the combination might look very unusual, we... Read More

Reporting Tools for Microsoft Great Plains ? Overview For Developers

Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular,... Read More

eConnect: eCommerce Development for Microsoft Great Plains

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has several options to enable... Read More

Microsoft Business Solutions - Navision Customization: C/SIDE, C/ODBC, C/FRONT, XBRL

Microsoft bought Navision, Denmark based software development company, along with... Read More

Explore the Internet in a Whole New Way

For a long time now Microsoft's Internet Explorer has ruled... Read More

Linux ? Keyboard Or Mouse

Just stress testing one of the latest Linux distributions. Been... Read More

Introducing GRML

Creating a new markup language.Introduction.General Reuse Markup Langauge, or GRML,... Read More