Things seems to look better as the Red River is reportedly levelling off, according to CNN’s report.

Let’s flood our prayers and extend our support (in whatever way we can) to guys there in Fargo to overcome this tough time. May God be with Fargo People and lift their spirit up to fight this tough moment.

God Bless.

For the entire Dynamics Community: Kindly be patient for the responses from MS Dynamics Support Team in Fargo to any of your queries. Things will get better at the earliest and we will be having this excellent team’s support sooner.

VAIDY

DUOS is defined and explained by Mariano on his latest post. Must read.

VAIDY

I surely missed this one. Mark is kind enough to put it on web: 50 Tips in 50 Minutes.

Make sure that you don’t miss this truly amazing pieces of information.

VAIDY

Important Edit: For those who do not have MS Office 2007 installed on their machines, you can find the compatible Powerpoint Presentation file on this link: 50 Tips in 50 Minutes (PPTv97-2003).

This one is of tremendous value. David explores more on DUOS and shows us how to Create Views out of DUOS Data.

While mentioning about this, Mark Polino had specified that DUOS is the better option to store some extra values. I agree completely with his views.

Additionally, VBA & DUOS is a boon for GP Developers to write even a complex customization simply and effectively.

VAIDY

I have just read about this: The eternal feeling that one experience when one hold his/her new born kid and see her smiling at him/her…

Well, this is one of my all-time favorites. I have been completely interested and involved in VBA Customizations nowadays, and Mariano’s Online VBA Workshop came at the right time.

First article, Adding Custom Fields and Lookups to a Window, is a step by step detailed article on how to add custom resources and lookups to any window. The beauty of VBA is that, we can develop seemingly complex customizations involving any forms and 3rd party products, with less or just above less efforts.

Second article, Setting Up the VBA Project, explains us the points: Adding Windows & Objects to VBA, Setting up Cross Dictionary References with VBA and Adding VBA Code with the VBA Editor. The best part of VBA, to stress this again, is it’s coding. We can write a single statement instead of bulk of statements. The code example given in this article, which opens the Smartlist Debtors/Prospects Lookup, is just a single line of code, but actually it would have involved more than just that. Adding Cross Dictionary References to our VBA project reduces the bulkiness of coding.

Third and Final article, Adding VBA Code to the Project, explains us how to write code to our VBA project. Topics covered are: UserInfoGet(), Continuum API & DUOS. VERY VERY important topics for any VBA developer to know. I do have couple of samples up my sleeves, but this one is NOT just the sample. It is going to be more like a Dynamics GP VBA for Dummies.

Thank you Mariano, for this wonderful workshop. This workshop has just kindled further my interest in VBA and related topics.

VAIDY

We now have a collection of articles, from David, in a perfect sequence to learn about Translating Dexterity Applications.

The first two articles, Writing Translatable Dexterity Code & Writing Multi-Lingual Dexterity Code, discussed about what needs to be done to make our custom code TO BE and NOT TO BE translatable code.

The third article, Translating Dexterity Code, introduced a tool which translates the string and message resources to the respective native language and also steps that need to be followed to achieve this translation.

The fourth article, How to Horizontally Flip the Windows, explained us about doing this smart stuff of flipping windows horizontally. This is especially useful in ME region, as the users like to see the screens on Arabic language and with this flipping, the screens look exactly how GP is developed on Arabic from the scratch.

The fifth article, Dexterity and Double-Byte Languages, explained us about why Double-Byte characters are not supported in Dexterity. Well, we would expect though, in future, to have this added to GP technology, but as David clearly mentioned, it is not in the wish list, at least for some more time. That does not stop from one to do the R&D and get something done like the screenshot that is shown. We can certainly go about it. The screenshot of that Chinese version, tells us that nothing is impossible.

The sixth and final article, Handling Translation when Customizing with VBA, is a much needed article for me at least. David was kind enough to add this originally unlisted article to the series after my query on how to handle the VBA Customizations while translating. It so happened that I was working on a VBA Customization when this series came up and since we all write VBA event codes on ModelDialog Handling, it was quite imperative to know how to deal this. And the explanations were more than enough to feed my thoughts and experiments.

On the whole, this one is a series of valuable articles to treasure as a GP Developer. Thanks David, for your time and efforts in consolidating the necessary information and giving us this series.

VAIDY

So much is happening here on GP Blogosphere… And here comes a blog from Microsoft Dynamics GP official team itself: Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP.

So, let’s crave for more and more tremendous articles to enlighten us.

Most importantly, do visit this blog as you do with other blogs, to know better.

VAIDY

This series is leading us to some terrific topics and concepts.

Translating Dexterity Code tells us what needs to be done to actually translate the String & Message Resources. This introduces a smart and efficient tool which does this translation.

Horizontally Flipping the Windows instructs us how to literally flip the UI horizontally. This is very critical in Middle East, as rightly shown in the sample UI (SOP Entry). Always, we feel comfortable and happy to see any system on our native language.

The whole series is of tremendous value and a must read, to know some of the untouched concepts.

VAIDY

I and my Project Manager, couple of days back, discussed many things involving GP and Dexterity. One particular topic was very interesting and something very weird.

Required Fields in GP are displayed as we specify in the User Preferences -> Display Options. For instance, if I have set the preferences to show the Required Fields in Bold & Red, then I will be seeing the required fields in Bold & Red. But this will not be happening for the fields which are in a Scrolling Window.

For instance, Unit of Measure in SOP Entry form is placed in the SOP Line Scrolling Window, is a Required Field for an SOP Line. If we do not enter a value, we won’t be allowed to leave that line. But the prompt (Label), which is right on top of the grid, is not shown like it is setup in the User Display Preferences.

The issue is, the User will not be knowing which field he needs to enter and which he can leave. When the message pops up, he will not be shown with any meaningful message, such as “Unit of Measure is a required field. Please enter… … … “. If a field in a Scrolling Window is Required, then it needs to be indicated to the User somehow.

There is a limitation in Dexterity that we need to link the respective field to it’s Prompt, using Link Prompt in Dexterity. For a field in Scrolling Window, it is not possible technically to link this field to a Prompt which is in the Header Window. Since Scrolling Window is considered as a separate window in Dexterity, this becomes impossible.

I am still thinking of how we can achieve this. Thanks to Sajeesh, who fed my thoughts with this point. It will be really helpful for the Users to know all the Required Fields, both from the Header and the Scrolling Window area, to effectively enter their records.

Sincere welcome to any ideas regarding this.

VAIDY