There might be various situations, where you would like to bring external documents or transactions into your Corporate ERP application as Sales Invoices, EDI Purchase Orders, etc. We would like to review two methods. One of them typically doesnt require programming (however you can have event driven VBA scripts to alter integration logic as well) Integration Manager. And the second one is eConnect SDK here you can include its libraries into your Microsoft Visual Studio project and go from there. There are other options, such as Web Services, where you can call them from non-Microsoft computing environment, such as Linux with PHP, Oracle. Web Services are actually an abstraction built upon eConnect encrypted stored procedures, please see our earlier publication. Lets begin with IM:

1.Every Great Plains consultant with reasonable experience knows how to pull into GP information from structured text file (CSV, Tab, or custom character delimited). If text file is not structured, consultant usually deploys Excel to clean the records, resort them and export into structured text file. But, when you need to bring data from external ODBC compliant database, you may here the recommendation to export it into text files first and work from these files. Let us give you advanced scenario from the technical perspective. In your Microsoft SQL Server company database you create connection to External DB, such as SyBase, MySQL, Oracle, Lotus, MS Access or you name it. Then you create cross platform SQL View to join tables from one or several ODBC compliant sources. Then in Integration Manager you create Advanced ODBC connection and pull data from the View. When transaction is migrated you need to mark it as migrated, so it doesnt show up in the future integration you do it in After Document VBA Script in your Integration. IM could be a good integration technology, when you are deploying your ecommerce shopping cart and payment in Linux on PHP platform with MySQL database. All you need to do is to provide connection via ODBC to your MySQL ecommerce database (where shopping cart originated transactions are recorded). With IM tool there is no need for expensive ecommerce extension, as all the job is done in the integration itself

2.IM scheduling. If you expect only reasonable number of transactions per day (say hundred or less) you may just have Integration launching routine to be one of your employee daily work duties. Integration launch could be also scheduled. There is the tool available from MBS which allow you to schedule, or feel free to deploy freeware or shareware Windows macro oriented application. If you schedule integration to fire every twenty minutes this would be the example of quasi real time approach (where real time requires integration to fire immediately after the shopping cart was paid)

3.eConnect SDK and its libraries. With eConnect you can technically program real time integration, if this is what you need to accomplish. eConnect itself gives you control over GP transactions (SOP Invoice, POP Purchase Receipt, Employee Paycheck to list few examples) and master records (Customer, Vendor, Employee, Address, GL Account, etc.). SDK has code samples in VB.Net, C#, C. As modern programming is often following the examples, be sure that you have programmers with these languages available in your IT department (of consulting company). Also we would like to mention, that with modern versions (we are composing these lines in April 2011) 2010/11.0 and 10.0 Integration Manager has eConnect based connectors, so similar job could be achieved in IM without programming (or just with limited VBA or SQL View programming)

4.Going beyond IM and eConnect boundaries. Full control over the integration functionality you can get in Dexterity, where such issues, as automatic document batches posting could be programmed. Dex is not something that is recommended for in-house IT programming as learning curve is substantial and requires dedication to Dexterity coding as the profession

5.Old version considerations. Integration Manager is version proof, and if you have registration key for this module, you can use it for legacy version: 9.0, 8.0, 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0 (obviously eConnect was not introduced for those historical releases, but traditional and reliable OLE Server based connection was there since mid 1990th). If you are thinking to deploy eConnect or Web Services, we recommend you to upgrade to at least version 10.0 (of course it is always good idea to be on the newest version, it is 2010/11.0, it was introduced in April 2010)

6.Direct SQL Insert Statements. Dynamics is open for such SQL commands, but we would like to discourage you from doing integration on that level, as business logic could be compromised. If you are experienced Great Plains consultant with high exposure to SQL data repair we assume that you know what you are doing. For the rest of you we recommend you to consider IM or eConnect. Or at least try your initial SQL Stored Procedures or Insert statements against your test environment

7.International Considerations. GP is available internationally, but not really World Wide. If you are representing a multinational corporation with presence in such countries as China, Russia, Brazil, Germany, France, Japan, Korea we recommend you to consider Dynamics AX (formerly known as Axapta). GP is available in most of the English speaking countries and Spanish speaking Latin (Central and South) America, Arabic World (where several blends of the localization are available from regional partners)

8.Archaic versions considerations. Please, note that Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows or Mac: 9.5, 9.2, 9.1 and earlier releases is not the same as Dynamics. There is still the way to connect to GPA Btrieve database via ODBC, but there are multiple limitations (including 32 bit Windows 7, Vista or Windows XP 64 bit version is not supported). We have access to GPA Technical Support database (which was frozen in 2002). If you are on GPA we can generate new company registration key for you (if you sign Partner Change form to our company)

9.Small Business Financials, Great Plains Software tried to go down to smaller businesses with introduction of Small Business Financials 7.0 (later rebranded into Small Business Manager 7.5, 8.0, 9.0)

10.If you feel that your concerns are not addressed or your question is not answered, please feel free to contact our office. Support domestically in the USA, Canada, Mexico and internationally. This option is possible via Web Sessions, Skype or Phone conferences and direct visits onsite (in the case of the large scale project). Our consulting team speaks English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Filipino. Feel free to call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, or email [email protected]