Released on: January 4, 2008, 10:31 pm

Press Release Author: Alba Spectrum Group

Industry: Computers

Press Release Summary: In this small article we would like to share our Microsoft
Dynamics GP version update experience, where upgrade was done for relatively large
GP databases: over 70GB the largest company and we had 5 companies of similar size.


Press Release Body: In this small article we would like to share our Microsoft
Dynamics GP version update experience, where upgrade was done for relatively large
GP databases: over 70GB the largest company and we had 5 companies of similar size.
Upgrade path was 7.5->9.0 service pack 2 and then to 10.0 service pack 1. In any
case latest service pack is recommended if you move your GP version to 10.0. We
understand that upgrade to 10.0 was really enabled for the majority of Great Plains
customers only in November 2007, when Microsoft Business Solutions released GP 10.0
SP1
1. Prior to 10.0 SP 1 upgrade. When SP1 was not yet released, we tried probing
upgrade and got issues with POP10100 table, which was pretty "popular" issue, known
in 7.5 to 9.0 upgrade. Also Microsoft upgrade 9.0 SP2 to 10.0 (no service pack)
took substantially longer than upgrade from 7.5 to 10.0. In our case in moving to
version 10.0 we got upgrade issues for table IV10200. So, our recommendation -
don't even try upgrade to 10.0 without service pack applied to your 10.0 upgrading
workstation.
2. Service Pack 1 fixes. First of all - the upgrade performance increased - the
upgrade time was reduced from over 20 hour to about 5 hours. Next - the problem
with IV10200 disappeared.
3. Check Links recommendation. In our case check links prior to upgrade would take
several days to run, which was not practical. However when upgrade was done and we
went into production on version 10.0, we saw multiple places where check links would
be a help: drilling down to GL open transactions, trying to open query to PM posted
documents are two places. We immediately scheduled checklinks to run over next few
weekends to cure all the companies. Warning for customers with custom integrations,
where data is moved to GP through SQL stored procedures - in your case check links
may find integration business logic validation issues, so check with your custom
integration developers if check links is safe thing to try
4. FRx. This time the decision was made to move FRx to Citrix 32 bit (as you may
know it is not fully compatible with 64 bit Citrix at this time). FRx 6.7 move was
surprisingly difficult - we got a lot of problems, related to Citrix security
restrictions. Also we got issues related to export to Excel - as Microsof
recommended - there should not be spaces in path and file name, otherwise export to
Excel produces errors
5. GP Security migration. As Microsoft explained - in order to migrate
old-fashioned security for users from 9.0 to new security model in 10.0, you GP
workstation installation path should not have spaces - which was a bit surprising as
regular upgrade process creates GP workstation in C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft
Dynamics\\GP, and this path obviously has spaces. Please be aware about security
upgrade problem
6. Reports problems. Also, we got issue with Purchase Order Blank form. By
whatever reason temp table, which is replacement to POP10100 had empty company name,
and ship to address fields. In order to work around we had to replace this table in
ship to address calculated fields with Site master table - this did the job, however
it took us several hours to analyze the problem as not every PO was printed with
blank ship to address. Company name was blanked on every report, until we replaced
it with Company Name global field. Also - this seems to be more often happening
problem for 10.0 than it was happening for earlier versions - Reports.dic becomes
corrupt after several modifications of one of the reports - the cure is simple: you
make a copy of "corrupt" Reports.dic and import reports into fresh Reports.dic. The
corruption in our cases behaved in the inability to add new text fields - these new
field were immediately turned to unknown field, when we moved cursor out of them
7. GP Integration Manager in Citrix. IM didn't manifest any issues, when it was
moved to Citrix 32 bit (the reason to stop it at 32 was eConnect .Net components
compatibility)

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com ,
help@albaspectrum.com. 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving GP customers USA and
Canada Nationwide, local service in Chicago and Houston. We specialize in
technically challenging GP upgrade, integration, customization projects, including
GP support for large corporations. We also do Great Plains Dexterity programming:
upgrade Dex modifications, Dexterity custom reporting, Crystal Reports. Give us a
call if you need in-depth Great Plains technical expertise


Web Site: http://www.albaspectrum.com

Contact Details: Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com ,
help@albaspectrum.com. 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving GP customers USA and
Canada Nationwide, local service in Chicago and Houston