Navigation List Builder not redeploying changes to a previously saved list

During the Drill-Down Builder and Navigation List Builder training session (for class materials, click here) I held at GPUG Academy Training Day 1 in Las Vegas, prior to the GPUG Summit, I found that Navigation List Builder had an issue redeploying changes done to a previously created and saved navigation list. In reality, this issue came up days before when I was preparing the class, but I really did not give it much thought and attributed the problem to an ‘environmental’ issue on my machine. The Microsoft Dynamics GP version is 2010 R2 (11.00.1752).

One of my students saved his navigation list to the wrong series and deployed the list. All things worked, except the navigation list was showing up under the Financial bar, instead of the Sales bar where it should have been saved to initially.

Navigation List Builder – list saved to the wrong series

Upon realizing the miscategorization of the list, the student returned to Navigation List Builder to make the proper adjustments and set the navigation list appear under the Sales bar. Easy feat, right? Sure was! After saving the changes to the navigation list, the typical deployment window flashed.

The student then proceeded to click on the Sales navigation bar and did not see the navigation list he had created. He then clicked on the Financial navigation bar and nothing showed up. In essence, the list was gone.

Returning to Navigation List Builder, we could retrieve the List ID we created. However, after adding a few new columns and saving to redeploy, we were not able to see the list on the Sales navigation bar. Finally, after a few trial with no success, we decided to delete the navigation list and recreated with the same name, this time, saving to the Sales navigation bar (as originally intended). This time, the new list displayed just fine.

There are a few more things we did not test, so consider this a limited scenario. Other things that could be tested include saving a navigation list to the correct bar, then return and add some changes after the initial deployment, though I suspect this problem would have manifested itself in the support archives pretty quick.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Microsoft Dynamics GP Home Page scripting errors on Citrix XenApp

For the past 2 weeks I have been working on a fairly complex installation of Microsoft Dynamics GP for a hospitality staffing company whose hardware infrastructure is hosted by a very reputable provider. My client has made all their applications available to their end users via Citrix XenApp. Xenapp is Citrix Systems’ secure on-demand application delivery platform for the Citrix Presentation Server.

After completing the installation of Microsoft Dynamics GP on the Citrix Servers, the next step was exposing the application to XenApp. This by all accounts is a fairly straightforward process. I logged into XenApp, launch Microsoft Dynamics GP and everything was working fine: home page, reports, SSRS reports, Business Analyzer, Management Reporter, the whole 9 yards!

A couple days later, users began reporting home page script errors as the one shown below:

Typically, if you follow the prescribed KB article 918313 – Frequently asked questions about the home pages and area pages features in Microsoft Dynamics GP, specifically Q21 and Q31 you end up understanding the following:

1. There must be a UserData folder under the %Appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer folder. Under normal circumstances, this folder will get created when the user profile is first initiated.

2. You cannot roam user profiles and in particular the user Temp folders as this causes issues with Microsoft Dynamics GP.

We went through both questions – well, we went through all the questions – and realized that the UserData folder was not created for the end-users. Remember, I was not getting this error under my domain account, but I attribute this to the fact that I was a domain admin. Effectively, we setup the UserData folders, but the problem persisted.

I then went to the Run… command utility with my Windows account and typed %Appdata% and quickly realized that Windows Explorer was taking me to \\\UserData$\Appdata\…, in effect confirming that roaming profiles was active for all users on the domain.

This seems to contradict the previous point #2 above. However, this is where all hell broke lose with the infrastructure vendor. It turns out that disabling roaming profiles on a Citrix farm may cause all kinds of unpredictable results for other applications such as Microsoft Outlook which tend to lose personalized settings when bouncing between servers in the farm – this is a load balanced environment with 4 servers.

In short, disabling roaming profiles was not an option!

However, in working with the point Citrix and Windows engineer at the infrastructure provider and running some ProcMon traces, we realized that each time the home page attempted to load a file, ProcMon would display errors stating that the file location could not be found (effectively what the error was displaying even after the UserData folder was created). Since the profiles were being roamed this was disconcerting.

Of course, the immediate thought was, “it must be a permissions issue!”. We then tested this theory by opening Windows Explorer and attempting to navigate to the Roaming Profile location with a standard user account. No luck!

The engineer quickly realized that the only way this could happen was via a Global Policy setting. In doing some more research, the likely candidate emerged: Remove Run Menu From Start Menu.

Clearly, from the policy description above, UNC paths are blocked and accessing local folders like \temp is a no, no (temp is roamed off to another server, remember?). Once we disabled the policy, Microsoft Dynamics GP started working like a charm and the errors were gone!

Now, you may say, “not sure we want to enable the Run commad for end-users”. In my client’s particular case, this made no difference because applications are being deployed via XenApp and not accessed from a desktop, so disabling the policy won’t have any effect. At the end of the day, we all went home happy, which begs the question…

Can the above KB article be revised?

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Running Fixed Assets Depreciation causes Microsoft Dynamics GP to "hang"

I just completed a full upgrade of Microsoft Dynamics GP from version 9 to version 2010 R2 for a client and they were going through their first month-end closing in the upgraded system. 3 weeks ago, after the upgrade, they reported experiencing an issue running Fixed Assets depreciation from two laptop computers, where apparently, when running depreciation the system would hang. The only option to recover would be to terminate the Dynamics.exe process from Task Manager. Nonetheless, we did not pay much attention to this at the time since the process was completed successfully from another machine, just in time to close the month of August – more on this later.

The client called back on Thursday morning, letting me know they were ready to run Fixed Assets depreciation again, and this time I offered to be onsite to see the problem first hand. So effectively this past Friday morning I drove to their location and stood behind the Sr. Accountant to see the process in action and spot any possible issues while there. The accountant proceeded to log into the company database for which he would run the depreciation, entered his September cutoff date and clicked on the Depreciate button… as luck would have it with some support cases, nothing happened and the process completed successfully. Well, after some chuckles and the typical apologies from the client, I was back in my car on the way home.

Fixed Assets – Depreciation Process Information


Halfway through, I received an email saying that as soon as I left, they logged into another company and were able to reproduce the hung up issue.

Now, I began playing all the typical troubleshooting plots in my head… the problem happens only in one company, the problem can be reproduced by all users, the problem can be reproduced on all machines. Typically, when an issue is constrained to one company, it’s related to some problem with the data or the way that company is configured. Not a bad proposition since I was only dealing with some 300 assets… but I am in my car, remember? So I offered the client to look at the issue when I was back in front of my computer, since I had discarded a user or workstation being the culprits.

Back at home I VPN’d into their system, then RDP’d to the SQL Server. I had the Sr. Accountant log into GP and start the depreciation process again. In troubleshooting the issue, I could see that the depreciation process was being correctly added to the Process Monitor and that the process showed Active, but it did not seem to complete.

Process Monitor

I also ran a SQL Profiler and noticed that the same set of T-SQL instructions would appear to be processed over and over at the database level. This told me the depreciation process was in an endless loop of some kind and something was preventing it from finishing.

SQL Profiler Trace

I then offered to run the process from the server with the ‘sa’ user and noticed that the depreciation was stopping on a particular asset ID (by clicking on the Progress button). This was now promising, because I now had a piece of data to look at.

Fixed Assets Progress window

I queried the Asset Master table and noticed that this particular asset had an acquisition cost of zero. In looking at the Asset Book, I noticed that the Cost Basis was USD $.01 (1 penny). Not sure why this grabbed my attention, but I asked the Sr. Accountant why had they set this asset up this way and he replied that they did it only to record the asset and keep track of its location, but that it had been fully depreciated in the past.

Asset General Information

Asset Book

He also added that the process was working fine in GP 9.0

So I figured I would try something by changing the Depreciation Method to “No Depreciation”. After all, if the asset had an acquisition cost of zero and a Cost Basis of 1 penny, what was there to depreciate? I ran the following statement to change the Depreciation Method to “No Depreciation”:

-- Created by Mariano Gomez, MVP
-- This code is licensed under the Creative Commons 
-- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license.

-- Remove the lock for the book being depreciated
DELETE FROM FA40203;

-- Change the depreciation method
UPDATE FA00200 SET DEPRECIATIONMETHOD = 15 WHERE COSTBASIS <= .01;

I then asked the Sr. Accountant to re-run the process and this time it completed in less than 10 seconds and produced the reports he was expecting.

Since it was not enough to fix this issue, I went out to the Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner Online Technical forum and found a case where a partner reported having the same issue at her client’s site. It seems Microsoft has identified and logged this as a problem report, but no concrete fix date has been given for it. So for now, the above query should do.

Also, you could end up with a cost basis of 1 penny at the end of the useful life of an asset, which would throw the system into an endless loop if you attempt to depreciate such assets once more. If you feel this is your case, the above script should also correct the problem.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms’ after upgrading to Integration Manager 2010

When trying to run an integration in GP2010 (after just upgrading from 9.0), you may receive the following error:

Log Report Failure
Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

The latest versions of Integration Manager now incorporate the ReportViewer Control for displaying the different reports generated by the application.

If you receive the above error, install the ReportViewer Redistributable component from one of the following locations:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21916 (Visual Studio 2005 components)

or

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6576 (Visual Studio 2008 components)
The latter will work just fine with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 or 2010 R2.

It is also recommended to install the 2007 Office System Driver Data Connectivity Components, which can be downloaded from:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?amp;displaylang=en&id=23734

or

Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable, which can be downloaded from:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13255

Keep in mind that the above are not a substitute for Microsoft Office and are just intended to facilitate the transfer of data between existing Microsoft Office files such as Microsoft Office Access 2010 (*.mdb and *.accdb) files and Microsoft Office Excel 2010 (*.xls, *.xlsx, and *.xlsb) files to other data sources such as Microsoft SQL Server. Connectivity to existing text files is also supported. ODBC and OLEDB drivers are installed for application developers to use in developing their applications with connectivity to Office file formats.
Once done, reboot the machine.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

"Object Reference Not Set" error when running Integration Manager with eConnect Adapter

I have seen a number of forum posts around this subject and have even received a few calls for help in troubleshooting the issue. In the occassions I have assisted someone, I have noticed that most of the time the developer or consultant was using an event or field script of some kind, which almost always attempts to get some information from Microsoft Dynamics GP.

So, in an attempt to reproduce the problem, I have recreated the following VBScript based on a recent case:

' Created by Mariano Gomez, MVP

'  This code is licensed under the Creative Commons 

'  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license.



Dim objConn, objRec, cmd, sJE

 



set objConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")

objConn.ConnectionString = "database=" & GPConnection.GPConnInterCompanyID

GPConnection.Open(objConn) 

 



Set cmd = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")

cmd.ActiveConnection = objConn

 

cmdString = "SELECT NJRNLENT FROM GL40000;" 

Set objRec = objConn.Execute(cmdString)



if Not objRec.Bof and Not objRec.Eof then

  objRec.MoveFirst

  CurrentField = objrec.fields(0).value

end if

  

'Close recordset when finished

Call objRec.Close

  

'Close connection when finished

Call objConn.Close

 

Set cmd = Nothing

Set objConn = Nothing

NOTE: This script purposefully contains errors and does not follow best practices. It was recreated to illustrate the issue on the subject.

In summary, the above script was added by the consultant to retrieve the next journal number for a GL Transaction integration with the eConnect Adapter. The consultant reported the script working on and off on the server and not working on the workstations. However, in each case the error reported by Integration Manager is as follows:

Opening source query...

Establishing source record count...

Beginning integration...



DOC 1 ERROR: Error Executing Script 'GLTransaction.Journal Entry#' Line 9: - 

[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

Integration Failed

Integration Results

    1 documents were read from the source query.

    1 documents were attempted:

        0 integrated without warnings.

        0 integrated with warnings.

        1 failed to integrate.

The error indicates the is a problem with the data source name not being found, which leads to an object reference problem when the connection is attempted. But why would this code work on the server at times and not work on the client? Then it hit me!

The GPConnection object retrieves the connection and login information for the user currently signed on to Microsoft Dynamics GP… and therein lies the issue! The GPConnection object actually requires the Microsoft Dynamics GP user interface to be active for the object to retrieve the connection information, which is typically not the case for eConnect Adapter-based integrations.

As a side note, the times the integration did work, the user interface HAD to be active, but this was not apparent to the consultant.

So, how can we adjust this integration to follow best practices and work without the Microsoft Dynamics GP user interface having to be active?

The answer is relatively simple. The above code will need to switch out the way it obtains the connection string for an actual (as in hardcoded) connection string.

'

objConn.ConnectionString = "Provider=SQLNCLI10;Server=yourSQLServerName;_

Database=YourCompanyDB; Trusted_Connection=yes;" 

Because the script uses a trusted connection to the database (a best practice), it is advisable that proper permissions be granted to the user’s domain account on SQL Server in order for the integration to be successful. The domain account will also need to be added to the DYNGRP role. What many customers have done is created specific domain accounts to execute eConnect integrations under a trusted connection. This further limits the exposure to security breaches.

For a final look at a technique to implement the above script, see the following article on this site:

Integration Manager: Integrating journal entries with Analytical Accounting Information

Hope you found this post useful.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Default Printer not ‘sticking’ when running Microsoft Dynamics GP in Terminal Services RemoteApp

A bit of theory…

RemoteApp programs are programs that are accessed remotely through Terminal Services and appear as if they are running on the end user’s local computer. Users can run RemoteApp programs side by side with their local programs. A user can minimize, maximize, and resize the program window, and can easily start multiple programs at the same time. If a user is running more than one RemoteApp program on the same terminal server, the RemoteApp programs will share the same Terminal Services session.

The following Microsoft TechNet article explains in more detail:

Terminal Services RemoteApp (TS RemoteApp)

Background

Microsoft Dynamics GP (versions 10.0 and 2010), is currently supported in a Terminal Server RemoteApp environment, but a number of my clients and forum users have reported in numerous occasions that the Default Printer settings are not ‘sticking’ or simply saving when loging out of the application (which also closes the RemoteApp session) and returning to it.

Print Setup window

The Solution

Puzzled by this, I began doing some digging and found out that the default printer “problem” is actually not a problem, but rather the way RemoteApp decides how the session disconnection will occur. Playing along with the disconnection, there was a new Terminal Server group policy setting that was introduced to control time limits for disconnection and there lies the dirty little secret.

If you are experiencing the issue I described above, please take a look at the following article by the Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) Team Blog:

Terminal Services RemoteApp™ Session Termination Logic
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2007/09/28/terminal-services-remoteapp-session-termination-logic.aspx

The article unveils the steps required to change this behavior and make your Microsoft Dynamics GP printer ‘stick’.

Also, if you are using Named Printers with Microsoft Dynamics GP in a Terminal Services RemoteApp environment, take a look at the following articles over at Developing for Dynamics GP:

Using Named Printers with Terminal Server
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/developingfordynamicsgp/archive/2008/08/15/using-named-printers-with-terminal-server.aspx

Named Printers application default printer selections not “sticking”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/developingfordynamicsgp/archive/2011/06/24/named-printers-application-default-printer-selections-not-quot-sticking-quot.aspx

Troubleshooting Named Printers Issues
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/developingfordynamicsgp/archive/2011/05/26/troubleshooting-named-printers-issues.aspx

Please let me know with your comments if any of the above recommendations by the Remote Desktop Services team worked for you.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘CONTACT’ error when clicking on Items List in Navigation Pane

Moving on from my previous article on a similar subject – see Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘BASEUOFM’ error when clicking on Items List in Navigation Pane, I recently came across this error, Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘CONTACT’ when clicking on the All Purchasing Transactions list under the Purchasing Navigation Pane option, after performing an upgrade from Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 to Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2.

All Purchasing Transactions list error – Purchasing Navigation List

The name of the global temp table – in this case, tempdb.dbo.##2093338- varies in almost all cases, but the end result of the error is the same. The issue has been identified running Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 RTM, SP1 or SP2.

Upon further review, the issue is due to bad data in the Vendor ID (VENDORID) column in the Purchasing Receipt History table (POP30300). In summary, if you have a purchasing receipt with a blank vendor ID or a vendor ID that does not exist in the Vendor Master table (PM00200), it will cause the Items list to fail with the error above.

The following query should help in identifying the offending record(s):

' Created by Mariano Gomez, MVP

'  This code is licensed under the Creative Commons 

'  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license.

SELECT * FROM POP30300 WHERE VENDORID NOT IN (SELECT VENDORID FROM PM00200);

Once you have identified the record(s) causing the failure, you can use the Vendor Maintenance window to add the missing vendor or further study the issue to remove the offending receipts if necessary:

Vendor Maintenance window

Patrick Roth, Escalation Engineer with Microsoft and blogger at Developing for Dynamics GP, provides a full explanation of his troubleshooting method for this error at the Partner Online Technical Community forum:

GP2010 Purchasing List Error – Partner Online Technical Community forum

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Integration Manager for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 hangs when running an integration – Follow up

After some additional testing to find the route cause of Integration Manager 2010 hanging, it seems the issue has been narrowed down to a glitch in one of the slides cycled by the Connect gadget on the home page, and not an issue with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 as originally thought.

For those of you who follow closely on the community news through the Connect gadget, you may have noticed the service being down since last Friday – around the same time Microsoft Support started receiving reports on the issue. Sources tell me that this was done as part of the standard testing protocol to discart new functionality causing the problem.

The slide causing the issue was removed this afternoon and the Connect service has been restored. If you were getting prepared to apply a new hotfix or service pack, you will be glad to know there may be no need to do so.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Integration Manager for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 hangs when running an integration

The forums are hot with users and partners reporting an issue with Integration Manager for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 hanging when running an integration. Everyone seems to agree the issue started sometimes this past Friday, August 5, 2011, with most users reporting a normal behavior and the ability to run trouble free integrations prior to that date.

This issue has been written up under the following hot topic article

Integration Manager for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 is Unresponsive at the Beginning or End of an Integration

According to a Microsoft representative with the Escalation Engineering team:

Our development team has identified the issue to be the result of a change in .Net Framework 3.5. At this point our development team is working on creating a new Integration Manager build which will then undergo testing to verify the build and that the issue has been resolved. As soon as we have a new IM build that resolves this issue, we will post the install on CustomerSource/PartnerSource so you can download the update and begin updating your IM installations to correct this issue.

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 was released in 2,007 and has since undergone a Service Pack 1 release in November of 2,008, and some security fixes just in July of this year.

Other releases of Integration Manager appear not to be affected by this as they use earlier versions of the .NET Framework.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘BASEUOFM’ error when clicking on Items List in Navigation Pane

Just recently a few partners began reporting getting the error Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘BASEUOFM’ when clicking on the Items list under the Inventory Navigation Pane option.




Items list error

  The name of the global temp table – in this case, tempdb.dbo.##0251007 – varies in almost all cases, but the end result of the error is the same. The issue has been identified running Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 RTM, SP1 or SP2.

Upon further review, the issue is due to bad data in the Unit of Measure Schedule (UOMSCHDL) column in the Item Master table (IV00101). In summary, if you have an item record with a blank Unit of Measure Schedule or a Unit of Measure Schedule that does not exist in the Unit of Schedule Master table (IV40201), it will cause the Items list to fail with the error above.

The following query should help in identifying the offending record(s):

' Created by Mariano Gomez, MVP

'  This code is licensed under the Creative Commons 

'  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic license.

SELECT * FROM IV00101 WHERE UOMSCHDL NOT IN (SELECT UOMSCHDL FROM IV40201);

Once you have identified the record(s) causing the failure, you can use the Item Maintenance window to correct the problem:

Item Maintenance window

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/