Category Archives: Debugging

#MSDYNGP Extender View Involving Extender Window/Form – Strange “Add Link” Issue & Reason.

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Firstly, I am not sure whether I should categorise this as an issue. Let me explain this with an example.

For illustrative purpose, my requirement is to assign an additional information to customers. In addition to Country Code, I would like to assign from which continent a customer is from.

First step; to create an Extender Form named Continent Maintenance in which I will maintain list of continents. I do not need anything information other than an ID (Continent ID) and a name (Name); as shown below:

Snip20140114_1

Note that there are no fields apart from ID and Description.

Second step; I am going to create an Extender Window for Customer Maintenance (Cards -> Sales -> Customer -> Additional -> Continent) to assign a continent to a customer. Extender Window definition is as follows:

Snip20140114_2

Third step; is to check whether things are properly done and confirm. Let me open Customer Maintenance and see if I can access this new Extender information:

Snip20140114_3

Perfect. Let’s now get into the actual issue.

I would like to create a view to retrieve customer continent information. To achieve this, I would like to link Assign Continent (Extender Window) with Continent Maintenance (Extender Form) to get the continent name. Ideally, my view should retrieve following:

Customer ID, Continent ID, Continent Name

Now, when I try to create an Extender View linking my Extender Window and Form, I end up facing below issue:

Snip20140114_4

Snip20140114_6

Did you see that? I do not have my Extender Form fields shown here. I have two fields; Continent ID and Name. Where are they? Why are they not shown here? Shouldn’t it be available for me to link with my Extender Window’s Continent ID?

REASON: If your Extender Form DOES NOT have any other field than an ID and a Description (in my case, Continent ID and Name), ADD LINK To Field will not list out the ID and Description fields.

Is that the actual reason? Let’s confirm by adding another field to Extender Form as follows:

Snip20140114_7

After adding above field, Additional Info., look at my Extender View Add Link now:

Snip20140114_8

Did you see that? They are available now. AFTER adding a field in addition to default ID and Description fields.

And I am not sure how many have ever noticed this. I am noticing it for the first time now. I haven’t created any form with only ID and Description till now. I had to spend 4 hours to identify this reason, honestly. Had no idea whatsoever.

Those who are going to deal with Extender views with form(s) having ONLY ID and Description fields, save your 4 hours. 🙂

VAIDY

GP Web Client: Rendering Issue – Some Facts

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Almost a month back, I had posted my GP web client test drive results on how the client is rendered on Mac based browsers and possible issue with Silverlight plugin. I am probably wrong.

Everything works other than pictures; that’s what I had found. Upon drilling down further, what I realised is that it sounds obvious that it doesn’t work on Mac based browsers. Reason: Native Pictures.

Definition of Native Picture says following:

Snip20131230_12

Consider, for instance, the following snapshot of GP login window on a web client rendered on Mac Safari:

Snip20131230_10

It’s not shown. Initially I thought it was something to do with Silverlight rendering. But not exactly. It’s because, this picture is a Native Picture. And by definition, it’s specific to Windows OS. Look at this picture definition below:

Snip20131230_9

Apparently, by nature, it’s NOT supposed to show up on any OS other than Windows.

It’s not just this picture. Lookup Button icons, Note icons are all Native Picture types. And due to that, they are not going to render on any other OS. And if I am not mistaken, this will remain as it is at least till next major version of GP.

Those who implement GP web client MUST be aware of this.

VAIDY

GP2013 – Purchase Invoice Inquiry Zoom Bug (Change)

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I received a strange support request today from one of my users that PO number is not shown fully on Purchase Invoice Inquiry Zoom window. Just tried to inquire some purchase invoices myself and I got what she mentioned:

Snip20130807_12

 

If you see above highlighted PO number, it’s not shown fully. This will be the case only if you use GP’s standard PO number sequence or used entire PO length of 17 characters.

When I checked it on Modifier, I found a nice little icon sitting right next to PO number field, but overlapping it by some millimeters.

Snip20130807_11

This icon denotes whether the PO line item is Drop-Ship or not.

And boy, isn’t that icon looks cute? But unintentionally, it is overlapping on PO number field. Not sure how folks at GP dev team skipped this.

Solution to this issue? Modifier. Use modifier to resize the field, till we get this fixed by GP dev team.

VAIDY

syExcelReports Table & SQL Server Native Client 10.0 – Thanks Aaron Berquist

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While upgrading our GP from GP2010 SP3 to GP2013 SP1, DYNAMICS database upgrade stopped unexpectedly with GP crashing without any information for me to debug.

But it stopped exactly at table syExcelReports and crashed. Without spending anymore time, I just went and checked my ODBC DSN setup, as explained by Aaron Berquist on his blog High Dynamics Range. Expectedly, the ODBC DSN driver was not pointing to SQL Server Native Client 10.0.

For some reason, GP fails to process upgrade further if your DSN driver is NOT native client 10.0 or above.

Those who upgrade your GP to latest version, please check DSN before you start database upgrade using GP Utilities.

VAIDY

Quick Tip: Debugging Visual Studio Tools – Developing For Dynamics GP

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Awesome tip up there on Developing For Dynamics GP blog on how to debug VS Tools For Dynamics GP.

I am late in blogging about this post. But NOW is the time, as this post just saved my 1/2 day. Seriously. Not kidding. I was stuck with one SQL query execution. There were records to be retrieved, but my code didn’t. After 5-10mins of frustrated troubleshooting, I remembered this post. I should have done that immediately then, but I didn’t.

I setup my VS Tools project to launch GP as instructed on this post and within 2 minutes I could find the issue.

This one deserves to be there on Microsoft Dynamics GP Cookbook (technical).

VAIDY

Refresh Application Navigation – Support Debugging Tool (SDT)

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Are you serious about your Dynamics GP as ERP and are you serious about retaining it till GP becomes completely irrelevant to your business requirements? Contact your partner NOW and get Support Debugging Tool (SDT).

Let me come to the topic now. Earlier, before SDT happened to all of us, when I created a menu item using Extender, I had to restart GP to get this new menu item effected. What’s there in that? It’s something common in GP, isn’t it?

How about creating a menu item using Extender, but instead of restarting GP, just click on an option to get this new menu item immediately effected? Magic? Nope, it’s a reality now. With Support Debugging Tool (SDT), you can.

Open Security Profiler of SDT, and select the menu item Refresh Application Navigation, as shown in below screenshot:

Snip20130418_1

 

This does exactly what happens when you log on to a company. Cool, isn’t it?

Now, reach out to your partner (if you are a customer) OR download this gem from above SDT portal link (if you are a developer/consultant/partner) and install it on your customers’ GP environment.

This post is to show you a very simple yet tremendously useful feature of SDT. Trust me, there are hundreds of such terrific features available in SDT which will ease your life and earn you reputation as smart consultant.

Find time to appreciate the people who made this SDT possible (and made it a FREE tool for all); David Musgrave & Team. There is a voting going on DynamicsWorld to select Top 100 Influential Microsoft Dynamics People and David’s on page 4. Go ahead and vote for him. Without him and his team, Dynamics GP would be just a mere ERP product, like any other.

VAIDY

Where is my Custom Reminder window to add reminders to my GP home page?

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I was reported with a very vague issue: user could not create a custom reminder from a smartlist. He received an error message as follows:

Snip20130417_3

Basically, below is the window which user is trying to open:

Snip20130417_5

Ideally, you would think that this window is a part of Microsoft Dynamics GP dictionary. But it is NOT. It is a part of Smartlist dictionary.

But trick here is, you cannot see this window listed on when you try to assign this window a particular Security Task using Security Task Setup window. Then, how? How would I give access to this window?

After around an hour or so, with several script logs and profilers misleading me, I found one interesting statement on SQL Profiler trace, that was executed when the user tried opening that window:

Snip20130417_6

Exactly after this SQL statement, the above error message was thrown at the user. Which means, I must focus my troubleshooting efforts on this table; DYNAMICS..SY10000. This table is simply called User Security.

When user tried to open Custom Reminder window, system checked this table and see whether this user has got access to a window whose resource ID is 1452 in dictionary 0 (which is nothing but product Microsoft Dynamics GP) inside company ID 1 (which is my production GP company).

I was always thinking about something in Smartlist (which is, without any doubt), but system was checking something else in a different dictionary altogether. I wanted to see the window in Microsoft Dynamics GP dictionary which is of resource ID 1452. Opened the DYNAMICS.DIC on Dexterity and checked it, only to realise with disbelief that it was referring to following window:

Snip20130417_7

I did not understand first. Why would it check something totally irrelevant from what user wanted to open? Why would it check access to this window, when opening a window in different dictionary? I have no answer to these questions.

But I just thought I would take a chance. I checked this user’s security task setup and found that Reminders window was not assigned. I assigned that window for this user as shown below:

Snip20130417_8

Tested whether he could open Custom Reminder. To my utter disbelief, IT DID.

So, if somebody is facing same issue and has already lost almost all your hair, here you have, a solution that would bring upon peace.

VAIDY

Fixed Assets Depreciate Button Disabled For User – Solution

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This issue was a bit tricky but not THAT tricky, though.

One of the users reported to me that he was not able to run depreciation because when he opened the Depreciation Process Information window (Microsoft Dynamics GP -> Tools -> Routines -> Fixed Assets -> Depreciate), the Depreciate button was disabled. Below was the screenshot that he sent to me (disabled button is highlighted in RED box):

Depreciate Window

 

Reason: After quite a bit of analysis (Dex Script Log & SQL Profiling using SDT), I found that there is a table where FA module temporarily records the depreciation activity initiated by any user and will retain that record the process is complete.

User confirmed to me that last time when he ran the depreciation process, it got stuck at the time of printing the results.

Solution:

The table which records the activity is FA40203 (display name: Book Setup for Depreciation). The table contains three fields: User ID, FA Book Index & FA Book ID.

I took a backup of this table (a simple T-SQL SELECT * INTO…) and removed that stranded activity record for that user.

User confirmed that he could then start depreciation process.

Its always good to start a day with some brainy troubleshooting. But not certainly good for users to start with an issue, though.

VAIDY

Infamous “Sales distribution amount is incorrect” Error

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I received an email from one of my users seeking my help in clearing this issue. While posting an invoice, this error message popped up:

SDE-01

 

Upon running the Edit List for this invoice, I realized that it was due to an imbalance in Markdown Amount and corresponding distribution line. Below was the error report that I got:

SDE-02

There seemed to be Markdown entered on one or more line item(s), but there was no distribution line for that amount. But the issue was not THAT simple and didn’t stop there.

When I ran thru’ all line items, none contained a Markdown. Now that’s the problem. After some minutes of thinking, I realized something must be stranded on header record’s Markdown field, for which GP requires a Markdown distribution line, but since line items do not contain any Markdown, it’s not creating one. Strange.

I decided to query the records from SOP10100 (SOP Header) and SOP10200 (SOP Line) to understand the issue. Below is what I found:

SDE-03

SERIOUSLY…?!?!?!?!

But yes, that was the issue. And most baffling thing is, when I tried to reconcile this sales document, this major mishap didn’t get cleared at all.

Obvious solution for this abnormal situation is as follows:

1. Take backup of this SOP10100 record.

2. Update Markdown fields with ZERO.

3. Reconcile this sales document again to see if the above update had caused any imbalance.

Happy new year and happy troubleshooting…!!!

VAIDY

User Access Setup Error: GPS Error RevokeUserAudit: 58

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I faced this error message from the time I upgraded to GP2010 R2. The error message is thrown when we revoke access to a user on a company. Below is the exact sequence of error messages that I received:

Since I had not doing this frequently (it’s maximum 3 users in 6 months) and also the purpose of revoking access was working without any issues, I did not consider this as a harmful message.

Yesterday, I had to revoke access to users for an existing company due to some maintenance. Minimum of 10 users and I started receiving this error message each time I select a user and revoke access. It’s then I decided to check this out and clear it once for all.

I could get only one link with exact error message, which I found on our Community Forum. User Access Setup Error: GPS Error RevokeUserAudit: 58.

Let me explain what I did to get rid of this.

1. Check the second error message. It says it did not find the stored procedure *mxCallRevokeUserAudit*.

2. I checked whether this stored procedure is available on any other company that I had on my GP environment. I could not find one on any company.

3. I was intrigued by the name of this stored procedure since, it’s not similar to any Microsoft Dynamics GP SQL object naming convention.

4. I then launched GP and opened Tables Resource Description (Microsoft Dynamics GP -> Tools -> Resource Descriptions -> Tables).

5. Since the message said something about *Audit*, I thought I would first check with *Audit Trails* module. To my surprise (and joy, of course), Physical Name of all tables started with *MX*.

6. I then concluded that the SQL Stored Procedure what I am looking at, is also of *Audit Trails* module.

Now I could not do much with that, since I could not find that stored procedure anywhere. I checked my GP licenses and it did not cover *Audit Trails* module at all.

When I upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics GP2010 R2, I had selected this module also for installation. Since this module is not covered under my license, it installed the dictionary but it did not create the SQL procedures (that’s my assumption and I may be wrong).

The only option that was left; to remove this product from my environment (by removing DYNAMICS.SET file contents alone and not the dictionary itself).

This removed that now (in)famous error message.

VAIDY